One of the most difficult tasks will be in terms of foreign policy (see my diary "Re-Framing Is The Key To A Sound And Winning Foreign Policy"), where large majorities want us out of Iraq, but where the problems goes much, much deeper, and very little thought has been given to crafting a coherent alternative.  As long as hawks are dominating the debate, the Democratic Party cannot even seriously begin the discussion that needs to happen about articulating a foreign policy vision that is fundamentally non-violent... not out of weakness, but because violence itself is a sign of failure.

I would caution against putting too much stock in these gallup numbers.  Look at the results in 2004 for both of the questions Chris cited.  

There appears to be little actual improvement for the Democrats from 2004.  In terms of favorability, we're basically at the same point we were before the swiftboating and republican attack convention walloped Kerry and the party.  Basically, we've bounced back, but we're hardly in a true position of strength.

In both of these questions, what we're seeing is that the republicans are sinking fast, and the Democrats still have yet to make up ground.

Not that I don't think we will, but there is still reason for alarm.  Hopefully the Dems on the Hill can get their act together for the rollout of our positive agenda thats supposed to happening soon.

Unfortunately the activist base of the party Schews,who is nominated in pretty much anything other than a presidental election i.e. since 82% of Democratic activists id them selves as Liberal 12% Moderate and 1% conservative

While Democrats as a whole 27 percent identified themselves as liberal, 26 percent as conservative, and 42 percent as moderate.

We end up with candidates that are generally outside the mainstream of the areas they live in. A situation where when mainstream candidate trys to run they can't find any activist support or support ingeneral unless they can buy it i.e. people who would support them in the primary generally won't come out to do anything for them other than vote and unless they can spend alot of money to over come this they can't win and in this enviroment it is hard for those candidates to make it to the primary or even be heard from.  

So even thought they say a generic Democratic they want a generic Democrat they are willing to support not a generic democrat that the activists in the party want so more or less we go around in circles of the activists think this candidate is great spend a ton of time support the candidate get them thru the primary then they get murdered in the general when the republican pulls off 1/3 to a 1/2 of Democrats, in areas that are outside of metro or highly liberal areas.

Then we go around in this vicious circle of blaming the republicans for cheating, denial anger and then doing the same thing all over again.

That is part of how we got to this point. It's not about what the party activist want it's about what the party as a whole wants and the majority of party activist seems to be out of touch with that
 

McCain still scares me more especially since he has run once.

It is pretty clear Hillary is a loser except against a weak opponent.  I like her but I have always thought she was too polarizing nationally and these head to heads show that.