It's a kind of over-the-top-rhetoric in its own way to react in such a literal-minded way to what I said. You know it's all metaphor, starting with the term "election campaign".

I must've forgotten for a minute that the Right approaches politics with the gentle pacifism of Quakers. Sorry to have offended your delicate sensibilities, SDAI-Tech1!

The Great Undecided Middle remains the prize, as it always has. I don't really think that the Republicans have succeeded in radicalizing the country as much as they claim, or want to believe in a fit of self-aggrandizement. A large measure of credit for Republican successes goes to Democratic failures, in both organization and in articulation of a clear belief system. Both those problems can be fixed (with the invaluable help of the Republican role model), and the 2% or so necessary to win the next election is far from out of reach.

I can say those things, and talk about the emerging shape of the future strategy, and you'd think I'd be giving away vital secrets. But the Right's spent three decades developing a truly impressive political machine, and instilling a profound discipline that keeps everybody on-message and marching in lockstep. It was designed to defeat the Left that used to be, and let's be honest, it succeeded. But that same machine has so much inertia, and has become so rigid in the name of discipline, that there's no way it can turn and maneuver fast enough to defeat a reconstituted Left. Especially a Left that's been given a powerful and painful education on what it takes to win. It's an old story: The vanquished learn from the victor, and rise again. Think of it as reverse-engineering a political strategy.

In Asimov's original Foundation, a recording of Hari Seldon would appear at intervals corresponding to Seldon Crises, and give advice based on psychohistorical predictions that seemed uncannily powerful and wise. Then the Mule appeared and disrupted the psychohistorical timeline; and more and more the messages seemed like non sequiters, out of sync with reality, and the advice lost its power. I'm starting to see signs like that in the rhetorical clash between Left and Right. More and more, I read good Republican soldiers like Tom responding with standard boilerplate from the Republican Canon that is increasingly out-of-sync with what's being said. The old reliable rhetoric is losing its power. Labels like "commie" and charges of "treason!" are starting to seem quaint, like historical curiosities from a bygone era. Conservative rhetorical icons like the "cultural elite" are starting to look more than a little silly and cartoonish.

Ya know, Techie, when I look back at it, the Right really pulled a fast one on the Left. We started to believe we were the underdog, started to flinch when people used "liberal" as an epithet and cravenly tried to disavow the label. We were so on the defensive that we failed to point out even the simplest lies, the transparently Orwellian things like "Clear Skies Act" and "tax relief".

We conspired in our own defeat.

But now it feels like we're waking up from that bad dream, and, knowing how the trick was done, it ain't gonna work twice. Everybody's studying the Republican playbook...and you can be sure, improving on it.

You have awakened the sleeping giant....