Here's a strategy we Democrats can use to seriously demoralize the Republican base leading up to the midterm elections so as to maximize our prospects for winning three to seven Senate seats and additional House seats on November 2nd 2010.  

As I explain in greater detail below, there is substantial and growing evidence that the Republican Party, as it has existed over the last century, is on its last legs.  The strategy I'm suggesting calls upon Democrat bloggers to publish an avalanche of well-researched and detailed pieces on the damaging factors that are converging on the Republican Party; factors that are expected to intensify as we move through the next two decades.  I present a general thesis for this kind of attack below, and am confident that in the hands of professional bloggers, the strategy will depress Republican voter turnout in 2010, and let all of the steam out of Teabaggers' and other Republican groups' attack engine long before they can mount a midterm elections offensive.

For their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira examined demographic, geographic and social trends during the last several decades, and concluded that "Democrats are likely to become the majority Party of the early twenty-first century."  In March 2009, Teixeira updated his 2002 thesis in a 51 page report for the Center for American Progress titled New Progressive America; Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority, and the trends and dynamics he reported seven years earlier remain essentially unchanged.

Now is the time for us Democrats to begin burning the meme deeply into the electorate's soul that it was Republican ideology, economic policies, huge tax cuts for the rich and lying us into a war with Iraq that destroyed our economy and cost us millions of jobs.  While we should save our full assault until after President Obama's State of the Union speech in January, now is the time to start laying the groundwork for a loud and unrestrained "Blame the Republicans" offensive.  By way of warning, if President Obama chooses the Carter rather than the Reagan model of appearing presidential, and if we Democrats choose the Kerry model of refusing to attack a clearly visible target, we will suffer Carter's fate of losing the confidence of voters and Kerry's fate of being swiftboated on an issue with which we can and should be successfully clobbering Republicans.

As the health care battle winds down, our Democratic leaders need to inject accusatory statements against the Republicans into every press conference, email, public statement, interview and every other communication with the public.  Now is not the time to go into discursive explanations describing why Republicans are responsible for our economic woes; now is the time to simply assert and assert and assert that message until it gets firmly, strongly, and permanently into voters' minds.

Had we launched this attack months ago, we would likely have done much better during this month's election.  Our mistake was in thinking that we could not ask Republicans to work with us on health care while blaming them fiercely for causing the economic meltdown and continuing to champion the policies that cost us the highest unemployment figures in decades.  The reality is that Republicans will not cooperate with us if we refrain from blaming them, and voters will not resent our placing the blame for our economic woes strongly and squarely on the Republican Party.

It is important to realize that the intended treaty-forging nature of Copenhagen failed because the world's people have not yet sufficiently appreciated the full threat of climate change to their future, and especially to future generations.

Without that appreciation, Mexico and subsequent conferences will be facing that same obstacle, and will be likewise unable to muster the political will forge effective treaties.  I suggest that the newly proposed goal setting nature of Copenhagen be devoted to making commitments regarding how much time, energy and money each country will spend during the next several years to educate their citizens regarding the danger they and their progeny face, and what specifically this public education will be comprised of.

Without this step, any treaty-forging will ultimately fall short of what needs to be done to avoid passing that point of no return threshold for irreversible global warming.  Here's a modest proposal for exactly what countries need to tell their citizens about climate change.

An open letter to our Democratic Leaders;

I am writing to suggest an uberbold political campaign that has President Obama and our Democratic Congress use climate change misinformation legislation to more speedily create millions of green jobs, to finally put, and keep, the seriousness of global warming at center stage, and to help us win Senate and House seats in November 2010.  The powerful and ingenious dynamic of this legislation is that it would not need to pass and be signed into law to have its intended effect.

An unapologetically draconian Climate Change Misinformation Act (CCMA), would make it illegal for media corporations and large organizations to deny, or provide a podium for individuals to deny, the reality and seriousness of global warming.  The bill would be based on our Country's longstanding precedents prohibiting individuals and corporations from practicing medicine and law without a license, prohibiting individuals and corporations from making false advertising claims, and protecting the public health, as through the banning of cigarette ads on television.  

The Climate Change Misinformation Act would, of course, allow peer-reviewed professional scientific journals to challenge established scientific findings on global warming.  It would also allow individuals to deny, and self-publish material denying, global warming.  The bill would, however, prohibit corporations and large organizations from challenging the established scientific consensus on global warming, and require the courts to impose severe financial and other penalties, including the imprisonment of top officers and executives, for transgressions.

There's been talk in the media that the Senate will not pass a health care bill because Lieberman has vowed to filibuster any bill with a public option.  But the Senate bill does not have to include a public option for President Obama to sign a bill including the public option into law.

It's my understanding that the Senate can vote on its version of the bill without including a public option (so that Lieberman won't filibuster).  After it passes and the House and Senate versions are combined in committee, the public option can be included before the bill goes to President Obama for signing.

That's my understanding of how it works, so the Lieberman threat seems inconsequential.

A lot has been said about the limits of having 60 Senators because there can at times be one or two rogue Democratic Senators who would join Republican filibusters.  It looks like we are about to see the full power of having 60 Senate seats.

Health care reform, especially with the public option, has not been the easiest kind of legislation to pass, but it is set to pass the Senate next week because all of our Democratic Senators stuck together.  In a week or two, we will better understand just how much power 60 Senate seats gives us.

This post is part question and part suggestion.  Here's the question; what is the best way for the Senate to pass an avalanche of legislation that is very popular with the American People, but not so popular with the Republican Party?

In 2006, we were lucky that voters held Republicans accountable for Iraq and corruption.   Luck is not the only thing on our side this time. While Republicans usually out-raise us in campaign funding, this election cycle we Democrats have sensed opportunity and reversed the relation.  However, if we are to begin winning elections not by chance but because of our ability to consistently out-fundraise Republicans, we must first understand why, aside from rare, anomalous, instances, Republicans routinely raise more cash than we do.  Upon analysis, the answer becomes glaringly obvious.  

Our money comes largely from the salaries of our wage-earning donors, while Republican money comes largely from the profits wealthy donors earn selling Americans products.  The way to end this major fundraising disadvantage is equally obvious; we need to beat the Republicans at their own game by selling our own products.  The rest of this diary describes how, if we begin now, we can sell enough products to raise several million dollars for Democratic campaigns by October 2008, and if we keep working beyond November, we can raise at least $100-200 million dollars for the 2010 elections.