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to count you a pessimist or a defeatist or a superficialist. Same difference, I guess.
For one thing, what The People didn't like about Democrats when they last held majorities and pluralities, ~1990-1994, was the way they indulged in vicarious powerfulness- the way they couldn't get themselves to make the really concrete progress/changes in domestic policy and American life they were always talking about. This attitude was justifiable and (in fact) desired by The People throughout the Cold War- very careful, very small, bits of domestic progress and rethinking of them were what was considered best. Democrats remained in positions of legislative power in order to ensure that things would ratchet, would not fall back substantially or cause (more) domestic conflict, throughout the length of that War. But as soon as the Cold War really seemed over- in the collapse and aftermath of the Russian coup effort in late 1992- The People let all the wild things and bad ideas/ideologies loose in domestic politics, let them work by process of elimination. The first to be eliminated were the obsolete Democrats who considered their role to be that of essentially passive placeholders, aka conservative not-quite-Republicans.
The People want Democrats to be a force, not a ratchet, and to prove it. Republicans represent an anti-Modern force that is, in fact, becoming increasingly feeble- it's turning into a ratchet. (Look at the 'pro-life' and anti-gay marriage voters. Look at the swing vote this election- no joy there in voting for Bush. Look at the numbers in support of Bush's present agenda items.)
I realize you don't want for Democrats to play the mere ratchet bit either. But Democrats were a weak force with grotesque schisms (ask Nader) in 2000 and a weak force with conservative internal dysfunctionality on display (Deanite elitisms, bad latent social conservatisms e.g. DLC, and the fruitless pro/anti Iraq war righteousness in general) in 2004. What you are thereby saying to The People, even if you don't think you mean it, by insisting that Democrats should have won in 2000 and 2004 is: Democrats in power as ratchets for progress, as deadlockers and defenders of the status quo, is good enough.
I look at the present situation and the history of the bitter strife since the beginning of the Nineties, and Democrats are roughly fought into a position the Union had in the Civil War in the early winter of 1864/65. As a matter of fact, real Union control of Confederate territory did not change much between December 1863 and December 1864 and a hugh amount of soldiers were killed and wounded- in that sense it was a terrible year for the Union. But the Confederacy's power was broken down in that year, falling from seemingly indestructible to irrecoverable. Everything crumbled, was over in the next four months and change. A large part of the Union fighting was internal, too, with the compromise-prone conservatives- the McClellanite Democrats- ultimately giving in and allowing passage of the 13th Amendment in the House, long after the Senate passed it and the states were known to be ready to ratify it and with great pressure from Lincoln. That defined the overall, historical, meaning of the military victory.
Outside of the analogy, I look at what stands between Democrats and taking over federal power as a very few, but serious, issues/dilemmas. Democrats have to offer liveable solutions and stand for answers and transitions involved in Modern life in America, a full scheme rather than piecemeal bits, and state and enforce the central rule(s) of the renewed society. More obviously, Democrats have to come up with a serious resolution to the problematic American involvement in the way the Middle East has met Modern times and the Western world, a revision to all involvements in the region since 1940-something.
I don't find enjoyable how The People has voted, either- each election reminds me of the grotesqueness of much of the American condition- but The People sets the standard higher for our side. It may be the only way they can get a political party- and ours is the talented, imaginative, side- to deliver what the country really needs. We will continue to get rejections, but narrow ones, until/unless the Democratic Party decides to serve its role in the game fully, resignedly, and adequately. I think we are rather close to that. Check what is really in the polls, look at why swing voters really narrowly went to Bush and what they really think of the Democratic platform (they agree with it) and its leaders (they're okay with them) vs the Party innards' dorky selfrighteousnesses (which they don't like, or understand). Republican support implosion simply is an increasingly real possibility. What can possibly go right for them in the next year or two? The Bush foreign policy is hemorraghing, the Republican economic policy is unjustifiable and unsustainable, the Republican social policy is the political capital propping it all...but also bleeding.
You come up with a good prognosis for the Bushies, I'll show you a prognosis for their three policy emphases slipping into backfire over the next year or two.
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