I originally wrote this as a late response to a thread that is already yesterday's news.  But I think some of the points are worth discussing, or at least noting, more broadly.  Chris wrote about the Republicans coming back to close the gap.  I agree that we need to, as the cliche goes, run as if we're 10 points behind.  But the game has changed in some ways, all in the Democrats' favor.

1)  Money.  Yes, the GOP still has an advantage.  But the advantage is much narrower than in recent election cycles AND they suddenly have a lot more terrain to defend.   The House and Senate campaigns are much more fought on terrain that they're trying to hold than on terrain we're fighting to hold.  In other words, we're on Offense, they're on Defense.  I like it.

There's more...

Crossposted at Corrente.

One of the Democrats' biggest strengths is that we're the party of, in no particular order: good sex, kinky sex, sex outside of the onerous bonds of marriage, pot, booty shakin funk, hard drinking, good food from France, puppets, baby animals, religious rituals that happen at night with your shoes off, gay sex, and perhaps most importantly, the belief that people shouldn't have to work 75 hours a week for no pay in an environment with all the benefits of slavery. We also like to have sex.

I think one of the reasons why there's such a push on the Right, in the media, and from the DLC types to denigrate and belittle the blogosphere is because they are afraid that once more people realize how much fun we're having out here...

There's more...

My first MyDD diary yesterday (Why Moderates Resent Progressives, which I'm stunned to find atop the Most Recommend list tonight) sparked some inquiries about how ordinary citizens made real, progressive change in the small city and rural county where I live.

The following is in response to several readers' requests for more details of how we prevailed, and specifically to a very thought-provoking post at janinsanfran's blog which she linked to in the comments.

In fact, this new diary is actually the text of a very long email I sent to Jan this afternoon. While lengthy, it is just the tip of the iceberg of what we learned -- the hard way -- about winning at the grassroots level.

Jan found a terrific piece by early Apple Computer booster Guy Kawasaki in which he gives pithy advice to startup businesses -- which Jan then applied to her own work advising citizens on how to "Win from the Outside." The full text of the message to Jan follows after the jump. Kawasaki's original suggestions are in plain text, Jan's comments are in italics, and my responses are in bold.

There's more...