Our Blogfather
Jerome Armstrong has a terrific post debunking Fred Barnes' theory of the "Incredible Shrinking Dems." Jerome puts the numbers together and demonstrates that Barnes is just plain wrong. Two things of note from Jerome's post:
(1) The GOP gains came in the South, while Dem gains came outside of the South-
What we really had in 2004 was a "southern peak" for the Republicans, where they gained 4 open Senate seats in the South, took over state leg seats in TN and GA (IN too), and saw an even stronger performance by Bush in the South than in 2000. But outside of those gains, Barnes is left stretching those gains into a projection of what's happening nationally. Maybe it's a stretch calling Barnes a liar, but these are basic factual numbers he's talking about, and they are not open to interpretation. Maybe Barnes is just unaware that Democrats are actually gaining outside the South, and the WSJ apparently doesn't fact check.
Those familiar with my posts know that I advocate a Lincoln 1860 political strategy for Dems because I believe the South is out of reach for Dems in the short term. I think these results back me up.
(2) The other important point is that Barnes and Jerome ignore the impact of the national security and WoT issues and their magnified impact in the past elections. I believe it is the primary image issue we face, but that it is very much fixable. If we do this we can improve our fortunes everywhere, including the South.
Update [2005-1-1 17:32:1 by Armando]: Miribhatia informs us of an interesting C-Span program on "The Future of the Democratic PArty." It's a repeat from 12/10/04.