Yes republicans lost big time in 2008, but they learned that venomous attacks were necessary to win elections and the attacks started immediately. Everything including the stimulus package, the health care package, supreme court nominees, the budget, Obama's citizenship, Obama's religion, and on and on was attacked. Democrats and in particular Obama were blamed for everything from the phase of the moon to the tides. And guess what? The attacks worked. Republicans won the house and despite truly crazy nominees for the senate almost won the senate.

Now democrats, including President Obama, have lost the ability to attack. Not since the days of Hubert Humphrey running for president have the democrats had a candidate who truly attacked republicans. We democrats have always been the party of reason, but under President Obama we have become the party of lets come reason together. When dealing with a party of "its my way or the highway," lets come reason together just does not work. With republicans throwing lighter fluid on us, we are striking matches to help republicans see the light. The result is we burn. Adding water only spreads the fluid to all democrats. The flames must be smothered.

And therein lies the problem. To stop the republicans from adding lighter fluid we democrats and President Obama in particular must use a flame thrower on the republicans. The country may burn, but as long as republicans keep adding lighter fluid, the country will also burn. We must characterize republicans as unpatriotic fascists who would rather destroy the country to seize power than to solve the country's problems. Worse they want to destroy the country in some mistaken belief that by destroying the country they will become stronger.

All of this is accomplished with hatred. They hate the other and democrats are the other. They had Obama because he is black. They hate Obama because his mother is white and his father is black. They hate Clinton because Clinton had the good fortune to come to office when energy prices were falling due to the Kuwait war and Clinton raised taxes balancing the budget. They hate the non religious. They hate the different than they are religious including Mormons. They hate government regardless of the good government does. And worst of all they hate themselves.

Fueling this hatred are some rich bastards and bitches who mistakenly believe that they will become richer by pumping hatred into the land. They are sitting on a coach pulled by the rest of us, whipping us all towards the fire. There is no realization that they will be burned too.

Somehow we must have the audacity to rise up and put the fires out. The urgency of now is upon us to change our entire system so that in the future when people look back they will wonder why any allowed the fires to burn.

With apology to Edward Bellamy, the author of one of my favorite books Looking Backwards.