David Sirota points us to this
LATimes Editorial about how the Dems are making gains in the West:
Just as Americans have come to accept the idea of a gulf between red and blue states, a grass-roots (or tumbleweed) shift has begun to blur the colors in the Rockies and the Southwest.
... Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona have elected Democratic governors, as have the swing states of Oregon and Washington. Democrats picked up a House seat and a Senate seat in Colorado and won both houses of the Legislature. Democrats took the Montana Legislature to go along with their new chief executive. Even in the presidential contest, Democrat John Kerry had strong showings in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. If they had gone to Kerry instead of George W. Bush, Kerry would have won, as noted in a Times report this month by Mark Z. Barabak.
... Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the new Democratic Party chairman, has been advising Democrats nationwide to cool their rhetoric, if not their beliefs, on hot-button social issues such as abortion.
But what's needed is less a retreat than a recasting of privacy issues (Terri Schiavo's ordeal, for instance) that will resonate with the hands-off individualism of the mountains and deserts.
Branding the GOP as extremist and championing personal liberty is what that last paragraph is about. I agree.