Fox and I had a conversation about this months and months ago, which he then posted here. It's been plain for a while.

Howard Dean is building the machine for 2008. He doesn't think so, of course. All those starry-eyed volunteers will get their chops from this one. In four years they'll have experience, they'll be tempered by defeat, they'll be hungry, and they'll have an entrenched Republican establishment to play off of. Too bad it will take four years. Actually, it could be time to get back in the game. Might be fun, for a change.

The Democrats may be unconsciously doing just what you say, but doing it they are.

The smartest possible thing to do is to stand back and let the Republican party abandon the poor and pretend to support the middle class. The middle class aren't stupid. They'll soon put the results together. (The seniors are already putting together the "benefits" conferred on them in the recent Medicare reform. They are really mad at the AARP, but they're just getting started.) The fate of the poor will not make them a political force -- the poor are never a political force by themselves -- but will bother the consciences of people higher on the economic ladder enough to make them a cause.

In the meantime, if the Republicans become a party that wins decisively in a general election, it will also become a party whose candidates have the most to lose in a primary, where the party faithful come out. That's a lovely opportunity to radicalize Republican candidates.

And if the Republicans are completely in charge, then everything that happens will be their fault. Whining about Clinton will not be about Clinton anymore, it'll be about whining.

The big problem is, four years is a long time when the world is unravelling. And of course, there's the issue of the courts. But we'll see.

Regards--
Mary Anne