Isn't this a straw poll kinda' thingie?

Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics?

And then after your mind is totally scrambled, You, too, can be a Republican.

Maybe that is the fate of both parties, simply because they have tried to be too inclusive

That's a bit kinder than I would put it.  I think this is the fate of all organizations, because all organizations ultimately exist for the purpose of consolidating power. And we all know what power does.

In the end (and it doesn't even take very long), all organizations become more focused on consolidating power than on achieving whatever purpose they originally organized for. The parties became "inclusive" because they wanted as much power as possible...and the way the get it was to bring as many people as possible into their tent.

Today, the main lament about "catering" to the leftier wing of the Democratic Party is that then you will lose the center, and by catering to the center you will lose the left. I have no doubt both Parties would happily extend their political platforms across the entire political spectrum, if they could figure out a way to do it without losing anybody.

I think this is the reason that no one will touch the definition of "progressive" with a 10-foot pole. All political organizations on the left side of the spectrum, from the DLC to DFA, want be free to call themselves progressive without having to define what it means, because they want to bring in as much support as possible.  If they settle on what they mean by "progressive," some folks are going to decide that the definition doesn't fit, and move on.

I have thought about the possibility a disintegration into lots of little parties, as well as the role that the internet could play in this grand drama.  However, I think that, as long as people are inclined to party, they will be inclined to party big.  My hope is that, ultimately, the internet will form a framework that will undermine that inclination entirely, and we will have no parties at all.

Free at last, free at last...

there is no guarantee, but as both were centrally about restoring Democracy, I think Obama will probably beg Howard to stay. With a grassroots organizer as the head of the party though, Dean may feel the party is in good hands and go home. He and his family have sacrificed their private lives for the country for the last 4-5 years. He should be lauded and allowed to exit, or rewarded with an offer of VP, but I don't think that will happen. I can still dream I guess, especially as Howard would make a great heir of the Obama legacy, because he is an amazing administrator. Just the kind of guy you want to really flesh out a vision.

Obama is the Dean campaign part II, with an awakened populas, and a messenger who can move the masses. And he has a way of saying "We need to get those guys with confederate flags on their pickup trucks to vote for us" in a way that goes down a lot easier.
 

I'm no longer a Democrat.  I'll be shopping for another party, if not another country.

......in setting a progressive course than the general election will be.  Although there is not as much diversity in the positions of the Democratic candidates as I would like we still have a variety of methodologies from which to chose.

Hillary definitely espouses the old guard status quo which is beholden to corporate interests.

Obama naively believes that the mega-corporations and the right-wing extremeists will happily make efforts work with the progressives and the environmentalists for the common good.

That leaves us with Edwards who is committed to take on those invested interests that are plundering our country's wealth and resources in the name of more and more profits into the pockets of this country's billionaires.  

Then your vote will be taken for granted as the candidates centralize their fight and forget all about progressive causes.

and look what happened. Going from being best known for their fiscal conservative philosophy to one that is evangelical through and through.  

I don't believe something along those religious lines would happen to the Democrats.  But, look what happened after Christian Conservatives were considered the base of the Republican Party.  Very bad things occurred and still are.  

I hope the same doesn't happen to the Democrats or we're in for a long 4 years of Republicans occupying the White House.

Get it together, Democrats, or we're sunk.

The Democratic Party as we know it probably won't exist past 2009 no matter who wins or from which party.

If the GOP wins, and watching the primaries suggests this as a real possibility, I think progressives will walk out on the Democrats on the basis of irrelevance. If Democrats can't win when everyone except the Bush 22%ers knows that the GOP has screwed America up, perhaps terminally, when can Democrats win?

In the event of Democratic victory, elected Democrats have the choice of governing for America or for Hillary's "real people reptesented by K Street", which non-Hillbots recognize as meaning Fortune 1000 C-level people. People weren't noticing that much when the political pork awarded to connected corporations came out of our hides. The next stage is pork taken from our internal organs, and even the low-information voter is going to notice.

If it's late 2009 and

• We still have a major presence in Iraq
• the American people find that "Democratic national health care triumph" means "Buy Federally approved junk private sector health care insurance or you will be punished
• more major offshoring job losses
• there's a Second Great Depression in progress and the only people getting bailed out are the Richistani

Party's over. The Democratic Party name will be radioactive mud, and deservedly so.

I expect the Democratic Party to go on the rocks Real Soon Now, and it's time for us to start looking at building us a lifeboat... to start looking seriously at the mechanics of building a new progressive party. (somewhere else... thinking small working groupa at the moment)

The time to design and build a lifeboat is before the ship is sinking.

I like your analogy.  We can help to prevent the disease by for starters getting rid of corporate money in elections and changing the status of corporate personhood.  

Which went through the same period of stagnation, decline and collapse America is now going through.  While the Eastern half survived another thousand years as what we call today the Byzantine Empire, it too fell into stagnation, decay and eventual ruin.