We won, almost. Virginia remains officially up in the air at the time I'm writing this, but whatever. This was a mandate for change, and the President's very obseqious press conference (a first!) clearly demonstrated that he got the message. But wait, you better start sobering up. Put down that bottle of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, and get ready to start all over again.
Now we have to sharpen our knives, and prepare to give our own some tough love. You see, we're only 730 days away from the enxt election. And Americans demand change rather quickly these days. And Bush will likely begin using his veto pen to make the Dems seem weak, ineffective, and rudderless.
We need to keep the folks we sent to Washington in line:
1. We need to hold them to higher ethical standards than we've come to expect since 1994.
2. We need to find a concensus candidate who won't rip our party apart for 2008.
3. We need to build an even larger ground force, with better resources, more access to capital, and improved message consistency.
4. We need to build better pipelines into the media (which will tilt our way a bit, now, anyway. They love winners).
5. We need to carefully watch some of the folks we sent to DC who straddle a bit too much on critical issues.
We need to keep fighting.