> Any "pushing against the Democrats" that might have been possible
> (and it wouldn't have been much) should have been done before they
> got into office. Now that their cunctatorian strategy has "worked" to the
> extent of getting some of their snouts at the trough, they will be utterly
> impervious to pressure from the likes of us. Their goal was to get inside
> the fortress, not reduce it. Now that they're inside, we will simply find
> the fortress more numerously manned.
>
> But of course I could be wrong. Bottle of Haut-Brion says I'm right,
> though. Any takers? Winner to be decided two years from now by
> a poll of lbo-talk readers.
It depends on what the regular people who supported the Dems do. This is the time to concentrate in building for the long run, beyond the next election cycle. Potentially, this is a shift to the left. While it may be true that prior to the election, a constituency has more leverage on the established parties, that doesn't mean that afterwards there's no leverage at all. People learn and there's an implicit (credible) threat for those who can discern it. However gradually, this changes the expectations of the political game. The job of the left is both to articulate a vision of a better nation in the world and to build a collective memory. If these elections prove something is that people learn. This -- convoluted and iffy as it is -- *is* the way regular people are advancing a bunch of their deepest felt goals: stopping the war in Iraq, changing course in the economy, stopping the attack on immigrants, stopping the assault on gays and abortion, etc. That's the way I read the turnout. It is up to those constituencies to keep moving and make sure it's costly for the Dems -- or anybody else -- to betray those goals. E pur se muove.