Howard Dean, the guy who knows something about what Democrats need to do to win, had this message last night on the Rachel Maddow show.
This is like Washington was when I got there five years ago. You know, the Democrats really weren't sure they were Democrats. If you want to win, you actually can't sort of move to the middle and become a Republican. You've got to stand up and stand for the things that you got elected on and that the Democratic Party believes in and we haven't seen that in the healthcare bill and I think that's part of the problem.
I do not think, however, that this is a referendum on health care. I certainly don't think it's a referendum on President Obama. I think it's a very smart, tough Republican campaigner, people are upset because of unemployment and they don't that the climate in Washington--that people are listening to them in Washington. They think they're more interested in making deals with special interests than they are in dealing with the Wall Street bankers who ripped them off.
And on the blame game, he says get past it and move on.
I would say to my fellow Democrats that this not the time for appointing blame.... There are plenty of things that went wrong, plenty of blame to be spread around.
People who blame others are losers. If you want to win elections you stop blaming and you get to work. And that's what's going to have to be done after this election.... I think the message has been sent that if we plan to do better than this in 2010, we'd better do better for the American people between now and next November.
We need the Fighting Dem spirit of 2006 back again. We need Democrats to act like Democrats--even if they're from Nebraska, to demonstrate to the American people that Washington can be on their side and not to be fooled by the likes of the banksters' best buddy, Scott Brown.