I have had this discussion with many of my wary liberal friends, why are people just now turning against the Republicans? Why did they not respond to earlier failures? These are good questions. I have some theories. I have worked on political campaigns since 1996. I have preached this my theory for years. In 2005, I personally used the approach I am about to describe to help take out 2 Republican incumbents.
Here it is, public opinion moves in fits and spurts, not linearly. There are few silver bullets... This means that people hold onto their cognitive dissonance until offered overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Of course, like all things involving big numbers there is a natural mathematical curve of change in public opinion. It is not necessarily factual, but some mix of facts and feelings.
In a nutshell, create a narrative and run all campaign communications through it. Look at 2004 and John Kerry or Al Gore and the 2000 election. The Republicans made up narratives with small kernels of truth and drove all of their communications through them. Al Gore is dishonest and will do anything to get elected and John Kerry well pretty much the same(Their opinion, not mine.). The drip, drip, drip is what changes public opinion, but public opinion polls are always behind the curve. Now we have Iraq war, Abramoff, Afghanistan, Katrina, budget deficits, an underperforming economy and finally Mark Foley. The narrative is incompetent corruption. Many voters have seen too much information to continue their support, they have essentially said "To hell with the Republicans, let's get rid of them and change the subject. Here the narrative organized itself; we should have pre-organized the narrative earlier.
I argued in 2004 the way to beat Bush was with a theme of incompetence. Would there have been earlier success if we had been more competent ourselves? There was more than enough evidence that Bush was a failure in 2004. Once again, a crappy economy, budget deficits, think-tank government, Iraq and Osama Bin Laden, pure incompetence. Bush ran as the CEO President, but he cannot manage his way out of a paper bag.
If we win a majority in one or both houses, how do we avoid the mistakes of the Republicans in 1994 and today? How do we push an agenda that is good for the country? Should we try to stick to consensus issues and rebuild our reputation as a party or should we make the most of power while we have it? How will we holdup under withering Republican attacks? Are we prepared to govern?
We missed opportunities to hasten this process in 2000 and 2004 by not have a strong message, being timid and having a weak overall campaign operation. In spite of the trouble the Republicans are having there is still no guarantee of a win.