The Republicans have known for some time that their program only appeals to a minority of the voters. So one of their most effective tactics for continuing to squeeze out electoral victories had been to suppress and disenfranchise those voters deemed most likely to vote Democratic in an election. In the past this tactic has focused on racial minorities and the poor. Another demographic that seems to be breaking more reliably against the Republicans in recent years is the young. Can we help counter the Reoublicans' tactics by lowering the voting age by a significant account—say, to 15? And is it reasonable to think that people in that newly enfranchised age group would be mature enough to make responsible decisions when voting?

There's a special circle of Hell reserved, in the minds of liberal and moderate Democrats, for anyone who claims to oppose the crimes and delusions of the Republican Party who then ends up voting for a third party candidate, or who doesn't bother to vote, or who (worst of all) ends up voting for a Republican. The very mention of the name Ralph Nader sends these folks into verbal fits of frothing at the mouth and textual fits of ALL CAPS. The Green Party and the Libertarians can induce similar if not quite so violent seizures. And the targets of their wrath are generally to be found in those groups known as the independents, the "swing voters", the hopeless idealists, and the disaffected non-voters or infrequent voters.

It's old news by now, but the latest repetition of a discouraging trend: huge majorities of Democratic and Republican Representatives voted last month to pass HR 4279, titled "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008". The effect of this expansion of the existing federal code on protection of "intellectual property" will be to create a federal Intellectual Property Enforcement office in the White House to help prioritize the prosecution of alleged IP "crimes" and explicitly include Internet file sharing violations in the list of "crimes" for which federal grants can be made to state and local law enforcement agencies. A quick scan of the text of the bill reveals that the concept of "fair use" is nowhere mentioned.

It looked like it was going to be an exciting race on the Republican side in 2007-2008, with a crowded field and plenty of candidates with money (Romney), media adoration (Giuliani), dark horse potential (Huckabee) and wingnuttiness (Tancredo) piling on against the guy who had been waiting his turn (McCain). But then, suddenly, the race was over when it had barely gotten started, and one candidate was Inevitable. In a lot of ways it resembled the Democratic affair in 2004.

Now about the only excitement left on the Republican side is going to come from McCain's Vice Presidential pick. Is there anyone he could pick that would really help his chances, that would make you really worry?

In another diary I talked about the idea of physically breaking up the US Government so that it is not all centered in Washington, DC. For completely different reasons, another idea that is worth thinking about is whether we should break up the most heavily populated US states. Several people here have noted that Congressional districts for Representatives now cover far more than the original 30,000 people that the Constitution set down as a maximum size, and the disparities in the population size of districts (despite periodic redrawing) translates to certain voters being underrepresented compared to others, in terms of the dilution of their votes.

But an even more flagrant case of vote dilution exists in the US Senate, where the population inequalities of the original 13 states have ballooned to a point where states like California and Texas should probably be thinking about secession (or the threat of it) to get back some of the clout that their population numbers warrant.

In some ways the measure of a leader's greatness is how radically they are able to change the conventional wisdom on politics and the state of the nation by virtue of their tenure in office. Just below are some examples of the conventional wisdom before and after 7 years of George W. Bush that highlight the great role his leadership will be assigned in future histories and discussions about the fate of our country.

In a Huffington Post blog entry titled "J'Accuse", Gary Hart says just what the Democrats should all be saying about 9/11 and the Bush Administration. This is about as direct and no holds barred a critique of the myth Bush has constructed about Republicans and the War on Terror as I have ever read.

Calling Mr. Albert Gore. Calling Mr. Wesley Clark. For all practical purposes, you now have less than two months to get into the Presidential race and probably less than one month to make the decision and start the serious planning. You two need to talk, soon.

Instead of imagining some of the dire possibilities that could intervene between now and then, let's imagine something more cheerful: the 2008 election goes forward as planned and we win! Imagine you're the new Democratic President taking office in 2009. Now the next question is, who should be in the new cabinet?

In the UK, with its parliamentary system, the parties out of power each have a "Shadow Cabinet" that consists of the people who would most likely get each ministry portfolio if their party took over the government. I've often thought it would be an excellent idea for Presidential nominees to announce their shadow cabinets once they won their party's nomination, since this would give the voters a lot better idea of what to expect from the candidate's administration--realizing that some of them might not ultimately get the job if scandal or health problems or some other factor made them bow out or fail to get Congressional approval. Knowing at least who the candidate preferred for some of the major posts like Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense would help voters gauge how the candidate's government might shape up.

At almost every step in the political process, attempts to return power to ordinary people and diminish the overpowering influence of corporate money run afoul of the legal concept of "corporate personhood", the theory that a corporation is a legal "person" with all the rights and protections afforded to a person by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Although the original basis for this concept appears to be dubious (see below), there have been a series of legal precedents that have been established recognition of corporations as persons and their "free speech rights" as including the "right" to direct money to whomever they wish for political purposes. The only comprehensive way to repudiate this notion once and for all would seem to be a Constitutional Amendment.

Should we break up the United States government? By which I mean, is it time to take the major branches of government and physically separate them across multiple geographic locations rather than having them all in Washington, DC?

We often want to believe that Democrats should get the votes of voters from the vast ranks of ordinary people (as opposed to "the haves and the have mores" that Bush-2 calls his base) if only those voters would recognize their own self-interest and not be distracted by wedge issues. The essence of this argument is that Democrats do things to benefit ordinary people when they're in control of the agenda, whereas Republicans only benefit the elites.

Is this really true if we look at the performance of Democrats AFTER the New Deal? I don't know the answer, but I tried to put together lists of what the major accomplishments were that Democratic Presidents from Truman on could take credit for to see what it looked like. Maybe you can add to, delete from or otherwise correct what follows.

NOTE: corrected to remove Tokyo bombing from Truman, OKC from Clinton, as noted by replies; add Clinton's fixing of Republican deficit mess. (2007-03-27)