The problem right now, and the problem with the Democratic Party within recent elections, is not that the nation is polarized, but that it is not polarized enough. The Democratic Party has been oozing to the right for years, and it has finally reached that point that Harry Truman was warning about when he said (quoted above, but I'll repeat it here), "When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time."

The Republican Party pretty much knows what it wants, and we're seeing the results of that now. If the Democrats don't like it, standing around with their thumbs in various parts of their anatomy and saying, "Well, gee whiz, me too, only maybe not quite so--uh--you know--like--so much." What the Democratic Party has to do if they want to have any chance of winning at all is to offer a genuine alternative to the Republican Party, and not be wishy-washy about it. In short, polarize the nation.

And to clarify the matter of the two-party, winner-take-all system that we have: I wasn't saying that I like it or recommend it (nor is Thom Hartmann in the article I linked to), I'm merely pointing out the reality of the situation. When have you ever known a third party to win a national election? When did a third party not draw votes away from the party it's most closely allied to? That's just the way it is, and if we want a regime change in this country in 2004, we're just going to have to deal with it.

Don Firth