"If Democrats are smart, they'll all join the Republican party (a la Garrison Keillor and his monologues on A Prairie Home Companion) and dilute the thing to a point where some social reform can take place and moderate candidates can be chosen. Plug your noses, folks, and walk through those conservative doors. It's the only way."

Well, there is Blair's version of that - steal the other side's clothes, so that you come across as a rather less unsavoury version of your opponents; meanwhile your own people have nowhere to go, because of the way the system works against third parties (even more so in the States than in the UK).

It's already happened of course, to some extent, but I anticipate that, if Kerry loses, by the time the Democrats get back in, they will be signifcantly further to the right then they are even today.