You may have seen this before.

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag."

This is true. But that's not all.

I wouldn't doubt that we're all shocked and appalled at what happened last night. Average Americans - for the most part - voted in an extremist with at least some knowledge of what he'd done. Why did we do this?

I believe (as most liberal thinkers do) that people are inherently good (even Republicans), so let's discount that possibility. No, when it comes down to it, it's because this election was the culmination of Republican control of the national narrative over the past several decades.

How can we fight this? Well, the idea of "rush to the center" isn't working very well, because it helps the Republicans claim that liberalism is a bad thing (amongst other things I will get into later on.) I propose (and I concede that I am certainly not the first to do so) that we seize upon this "Goldwater Moment" to reformat and reorganize ourselves as the mirror image of the conservatives - an appropriate good to fight the evil we see. I put parts of this theory together by watching Howard Dean, the Daily Kos, Don't Think of an Elephant!, the modern Republican party, and the modern Green party. Ideas and conjecture below the cut.

Last week was a definite turning point in this election. John Kerry proved to Joe American that he would be a strong, mature leader in the war on terror/Iraq insurgency. I'm confident he'll do the same with the other topics in the debate as well.

However, now is not the time to rest on our laurels and assume the second debate will be as easy as the first one. We're going into this one from a totally different point of view, and Kerry's questions will come from a different audience: the American public. (dun dun DUNNNNN!)

The difficulty here? A large part of voters get their news from the media. No, not DKos... that other media. I'm concerned that Fox/CNN/[insert local Repub newpaper name here] will make its subpar brand of journalism felt by audience members asking rougher questions of Kerry than of Bush.

(More analysis and some solutions below the cut)