That said, let me clear up a few misconceptions:

(1) Criticizing a particular comment is in no way equivilent to saying someone is stupid.  The only people who never say stupid things are people who never say anything at all.  Since you've obviously misunderstood my intention, let me make it perfectly clear: I don't think you're stupid. I don't even think the statement you made was stupid. As I said, I think it contained a valuable--but now dated--perspective on things.  I apologize for hurting your feelings. But, at the same time, I think it advisable for you be more thick-skinned if you want to get the full value of perspectives other than yours in forums like this.  This leads directly into...

(2) Phrasing a response in a provocative manner is a commonplace on the internet, where conversational conventions are a lot looser and more diverse than IRL.  Economy of expression is a good thing, and people are often much more blunt and to the point than they would be in conversation.  Challenging each other's ideas is a good thing, and our egos should be either (a) strong enough to take or (b) set aside for the greater good.

(3) Paul Hackett was just the epitome of all the forces in play, a convenient figure to hang my hat on.   I'm not arguing that every candidate can be a Paul Hackett--indeed every candidate doesn't have to be.  What he showed is that there's a good deal more fluidity in partisan allegiences than had previously been supposed. This, in turn, has altered the calculus of candidate recruitment, as well as other factors that impact on the possibility of electoral success.  Some of these are commonly recognized by campaign professionals, some of them are not.  My point is that judgements based on CW assessments of what's likely are not looking too terribly reliable right now.  The internet is a rapidly-evolving wildcard, and the 2006 elections are a long way off.

Sure, the GOP could close that gap, as they have in the past. But the opposite could happen as well--things could get much worse for them.    1974 worse.

There are at least two good reasons for this:

Liberating & Empowering Technology: As Chris and others have been arguing for some time, there is cause to believe that the internet will increasingly come to favor progressive forces to a disproportionate degree--offsetting somewhat the advantages that have allowed the GOP to come from behind in the past.

A fundamenetal shift in vision and values: There are two frames for this argument. First,  Kevin Phillips's Wealth and Democracy and his observation of the pattern whereby world powers go into a roughly 2-generation reactionary phase following a stinging defeat at the peak of their powers, followed by an egalitarian reversal.  We're a bit on the early side for this, but Katrina was the sort of tear-the-fabric-of-reality event needed to trigger the sort of reversal he was talking about. Typically, it doesn't happen all at once, but it's a force much deeper than anything the GOP has had to fight against in a very long time.  The second frame is Lakoff's work on cognitive metaphor and framing, explicitly grounding our politics in a moral vision. The more that our candidate learn to do this, the more effectively they will harness and catalyze the underlying shift that Phillips writes about.

I don't expect you to buy this argument. Given the background you've touted, I expect you to dismiss it without taking it seriously in the first place.  But I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised.