The immediate challenge: Don't let the Democrats wimp out in Congress

[bluestateguy]

Kerry lost. Fine. It was still a close election with record turnout, and 49% of those voters voted for someone else. Somebody has to represent them, as well as the many people (though we don't know exactly how many) who did not vote. The Democratic leadership of Congress may think that their party's fortunes are best served by being nice, calling him "President Bush" and generally giving in to the other side on the major issues that come before Congress. That approach worked real well for Max Cleland, Jean Carnahan and apparently, Tom Daschle. But that will be what we hear from the echo chamber: that Democrats should be nice and concillatory like the Republicans of the 1930's were. If we the people in those blue states and red states don't implore our Democratic representatives and senators to stand and fight they will make the same mistakes the party made leading up to the 2002 elections, and then we'll all be back here lamenting what went wrong in the 2006 elections.