This is going to be sooooo much fun! I almost can't stand it. I almost exploded here in '06 on election night and the next morning when I found out we had gone totally Democratic - just about every race - I really did just dance for sheer joy!

I can't wait!!!!!!

This has all the potential to be one of the most awesome election cycles for Democrats ever.

Somewhere, Howard Dean is smiling.

That 50 state strategy doesn't sound so nutty, does it?

The "approval rating for Congress" is such a canard; comparing it to presidential approval ratings is apples and oranges. (I'm not faulting Eric for that; unfortunately, we don't have anything better.) But just for reference, the reasons why the comparison doesn't make sense are:

1. It's easier to hate a group than an individual, which is why the unpopularity of Congress is always higher than the unpopularity of nearly every individual congressman.

2. People don't vote for Congress, they vote for their congresscritter.

3. The rating is for all of Congress, no matter how often Republicans and our braindead political media describe it as the rating for "the Democratic Congress." In the one poll we've had in the past year that asked about congressional Democrats and Republicans separately, congressional Democrats rated well above the president, and the overall rating was dragged down by congressional Republicans having even lower approval than the president.

4. Anti-government conservatives can and do drive down overall congressional ratings by blocking action for purely political purposes, and then claiming it's evidence that "government doesn't work."

I wish we could have a simultaneous approval poll of each individual congressperson, and then slice and dice those results to get some meaningful comparisons. But it would be expensive and there's probably no one who would see it as worth their while to pay for it.

This is as important as electing the President, if not more so.

The first thing to remember is that the GOP is the party of money. In the current environment, wealthy people have been pulling their money out of the market. When the stock market goes up a few hundred points due to Fed rate cuts or bailouts, these people take advantage of the tide coming in to float their boats off the reef and set sail for other economies.

In other words, the market is "pricing in" President Obama - and at the same time attempting to limit his opportunity to make any changes during his term. This is the essence of Republican "borrow and spend" policies. The idea is to encumber the government with so much debt that no social policies, such as health care or legal reform, can be successfully implemented or funded.

Only a "war government", with a President and a veto-proof majority in both houses, can expect to pass the Rooseveltian kind of legislation that the American people need. The interests of American investors and entrepreneurs, and the interests of the rest of the American people, have become separated - partly because of cheap Chinese labor, partly because our entrepreneurs no longer aspire to build a greater nation.

So it will only be in 2010 or 2012 that the American people, rocked by gas prices, falling home prices, unemployment, and global unrest, will have to swallow hard and line up with President Obama and his Congress against the party of big business.

In this battle, it is likely that the MSM will begin as an enemy.

The US government will have to try to tax corporations on their overseas assets, and prevent wealth from leaving the country. The government and the bulk of the people will have to stand together in a crisis situation far more severe than 9/11.

This conflict will pit the poor against the rich. The rich will holler for law and order, and recommend repression, more police, more prisons, and so on. They will try to set the middle class against the poor classes, as usual; but the middle class should be able to see that what they're being offered isn't as tempting as it once was.

Therefore the attempt of the government to gain leverage over the financial system and to raise revenues that will be sufficient to feed and care for the people as a whole - this will be resisted fiercely. It might be necessary, for example, for the government to nationalize major industries (oil industry, drug industry, etc.) and set prices. It might be necessary for the government not only to lay the foundations of a socialized medicine, but actually to demand that licensed professionals contribute more pro bono publico than they do now.

I realize this sounds unlikely now; but I think it's probably pretty conservative.

If things play out like this, then Obama stands a pretty good chance of being, if not the father of his country, perhaps its savior. And the Democrats stand a good chance of ending up the only party that matters. The two-party system translated a period of time during which America could have done pretty much anything it wanted to. As we enter a period of time during which America will have to scramble to survive, either the American people will develop a completely new feeling of ownership of their own government - or it will fail, and the United States will be sold by its own investor class to the people who are already holding the whip hand in the global economy.

Now if we can just get Nancy Pelosi to shut up we might even pick up a few more. This is the time for Dems to unite. Nancy Pelosi and leaky Leahy are not helping this cause by putting their foot in their mouths.

Please remember that the republican party has been the party of endless money. PR dirty tricks work, but it sometimes can be counterd by enough public outrage. Every dirty trick the republicans pull in campaigns WORKS to some extent. Sometimes it just isn't enough. That is what I hope this election cycle. BUT the repubs, and the money parties in this country ALWAYS make things worse than they should be. Progress gets jilted, laws get reversed, loopholes are created. You can count on republican money to make every race more competitive than it should be. We will win less seats than we should. Less seats than voter sentiment allows. With their money, dirty tricks, election fraud, and a pliant corporate media....all the money in the world, all the ground game, all the voter sentiment is not going to make it easier for the dems. The repubs will pervert the systemand the will of the voters, and the elections will not truly reflect the mood of the country. It may go shockingly dem, but no matter what the dem wins will be less than they should.