CraigS,

I love the sentiment behind the cliche you posted, and I often use it myself.

The thing is though, we've seen over and over again that the ONLY result of the majority of eligible voters not voting, is Republican majorities and one party rule.

The current campaign for the US House leadership is interesting, in that a consensus does finally seem to be forming that centrist appeasement strategies have failed abysmally for Democrats, but have worked really well for the right wing Republican party, where "compassionate conservatism" neturalized the Republican moderates, who have been ostracized forever it seems.

Clinton was a bit of anomaly, and I think won in Democrat name only. Which was why the radical right wing Republicans did everything in their power to destroy him. He proved that Republican centristism and moderation worked really well. What Clinton's domestic agenda represented was moderate to conservative Republican ideas. Clinton won by turning the Democratic party hard to the right. Bush, however, hasn't had to do that with his party, because the number of true Republican moderates are now so small and inconsequential.

The extremism of the right is what wins elections when the majority of eligible voters don't turn out, as happened in the midterm election when the Gingrich Republicans swept into the House.

I say Clinton was a Democratic anomaly because he truly was. He was never able to create unity within the party, nor did his presidential victories ever have a coattail effect--rather, it was just the opposite effect in many local races.

Could it possibly be that the Democratic party might now wake up and smell the coffee, and realize they won't ever win, much less stand for anything meaningful, if they don't rejoin the democratic wing to the Democratic party? I really do think that if Democrats clarified and magnified substantially different visions for the country that reflects the liberal and progressive agenda that the party once DID represent, they could start winning AND moving the country back to the center. As it is, as long as the right wing Republican agenda keeps winning, regardless of whether people call it the Republican Party, Reform Party, or Southern Democrat political agenda, all of the country is going to continue losing.