Looking Ahead: what it takes to win

Demosthenes is one of the Blogsphere's oldest voices of liberal sanity. His analyses are always thoughtul and prophetic. His latest post of what it will take to win the general election in 2004 is no exception:

I think the thing that people should keep in mind is that the successful candidate will need practically every advantage possible to take down the Bush machine. He'll have to have the Dean-esque volunteer machine. He'll have to have the party behind him, in a way that Gore never did with the DLC. He'll have to be able to handle, nay, control the media coverage of his campaign. He'll have to get Dem-leaning pundits out in force in order to support him (yes, this does mean the bloggers doing their part, as well as American Prospect/Washington Monthly/American Guardian types getting into the act and onto TV as much as possible). He'll need to have some sort of basic story for his campaign that makes him fit into an archetype that Americans can accept (like Bush's "folksy" bit).

Most importantly, he'll need to train every remaining resource he has on checking the Republican oppo research and responding in kind. (Yes, this is also a role for the bloggers. It's one of the things we're good at.)

Honestly, if even one of these things is ignored, Bush will likely get re-elected. Each would provide a hole through which the Republicans could fit a wedge that would crack the Democrats wide open, and no candidate so far has all of these covered. If Dean can make peace with the media, he could be close, but right now the Republicans are defining the Democratic race- witness Russert- and that's a huge, election losing problem.

This is not pessimism, it is realism. What makes Dean a powerful inspiration is his issues, but the Republicans have built a systematic political machine out of ignoring the issues and tilting the playing field (witness 2000). Victory in 2004 starts with the right candidate - Howard Dean - but it does not end there. And we all have to play our part.