FINE TUNE?:

Democrats fine-tune plan to regain power in Florida (John Kennedy, November 6 2003, Orlando Sun Sentinel)

[D]emocrats will be fighting recent history. In 1996 Republicans claimed control of the Legislature for the first time in 122 years and two years later, with Gov. Jeb Bush's election, Florida became the first Deep South state where the GOP dominated both the governor's office and Legislature.

In 2000, Democrats were buoyed by the election of Democrat Bill Nelson to a U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Connie Mack. But last year, Republicans swept to complete control of the state Cabinet.

Many agree that with Graham out of the picture, next year's Senate campaign is quickly shaping up as an epic struggle between the parties over a seat that could help decide which of them controls Congress. [...]

Democratic candidates are focusing on the state of the economy, the war in Iraq, education and health care.
Doesn't that last sentence kind of undercut the plausibility of the rest of the story?

MORE:
-Comfort-free zone: On the ground, a recovery is good for America. On the stump, it may be bad for the Democrats (David M. Shribman, November 05, 2003, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

An earthquake rumbled across the political world late last week. It upended the assumptions of the New Hampshire primary. It shook the foundations of the various presidential candidates. It also left a lot of Democrats worried -- and deeply uncomfortable.

That earthquake was the report that the gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 7.2 percent in the third quarter. You could almost hear the Democrats saying: That wasn't supposed to happen. There was no hint it was happening. There's no plan for responding to that. There's no precedent for that -- not since, Lord help us, 1984. This is big trouble.

Big trouble, and big discomfort, because the Democrats are in the troubling and uncomfortable position of knowing that things have to go very wrong with the country for things to go right for them.

-The Age of Uncertainty (Farai Chideya, November 5, 2003, AlterNet)

To state the obvious, if sobering, truth: What's good for America seems good for President Bush. If the war in Iraq is "contained," it increases the President's chances of re-election. If the economy blossoms rather than withers, the same is true. America is fundamentally a conservative country: conservative in the sense of conserving energy and reserving harsh judgment. Voting out a sitting President, even one with such an egregious track record on issues from the economy to the environment, strikes many Americans as somewhere between impossible and undesirable.

Progressives/left/liberals/you-name-it must move beyond the politics of opposition, where what's bad for America is good for the President's foes. We cannot rely on America's fortunes continuing to tank -- the up-tick in the economy proves that. There has to be a way to encourage and enjoy any improvement in America's fortunes while still building a base for change.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 6, 2003 9:39 PM