Sometimes, in my dreams, I'm James Carville

So I want to beat George (the W stands for "Whopper!") Bush. And I'm not just talking about a blunt object here. For the good of the nation, he needs to go. Put it on your answering machine message: Bush lied, people died. I have a strategy that I have posted occasionally to other people's comment sections, but now that I have my own blog, I'm throwing it out here, too. I'm really hoping that people will catch on to the idea.

Too many people (not Howard Dean, by the way) are saying that Democrats can't win the South (or more specifically, that someone who isn't Edwards or Graham can't win the South). You hear it a lot about red states in the West, too, and we only have one candidate from west of the Mississippi, and he's from Missouri).

Of course we won't win the South on abortion and civil unions, and we won't win the West on gun control and environmentalism. But this strategy I've been working on is designed specifically for winning the South and West, and I hope the Democrats will adopt it, because it will win us at least some of the softer red states, maybe even non-southern or -western states like Ohio.

The Democratic candidate must do a town hall-style meeting in all 50 states, one or two per day between Boston and the debates, with an audience of people who lost jobs, insurance, or both during the Whopper's first term. Yes, it might get old, fast, but the point has to be driven home, repeatedly, state by state. I think the economy will win us the South and West. They're hurting there, and if, every single day, the country sees and hears from real people who have been hurt by this administration, the point may start to get across.

I mean, when the Republicans are in New York City exploiting 9/11 with their convention, we should be in the Hudson Valley, and Newark, and Philadelphia, and, hell, even NYC itself, driving home the point that this administration hurts people--more people than 9/11 did (not to denigrate that day, but compare any quarter's jobless numbers--any week's jobless numbers--to the death toll, and you see my point).

In addition, I think it utterly appropriate, at the same time, to talk to these same devastated families about their plights locally. How many of them had teachers or librarians laid off from local schools? How many are paying more in property taxes, fees, state income taxes? There are two economies in the country, and the Whopper has ruined both.

This is a great opportunity for the Democratic candidate to say, "Can I promise you a job on January 21, 2005? No, I can't. But I promise you this: The first bill I sign into law will be a bill guaranteeing you, your family, and your children the right to affordable health care. The second bill I sign will be an economic stimulus package that puts money in your pocket, not the pockets of the wealthiest Americans and corporations."

And then, after meeting just a small percentage of the 3 (or 4 at this rate) million people who will have lost their jobs by October 2004, the Democrat can go into the debates and ask, point blank, what the hell the president has been doing for four years to bring the country down to where it is, and how the hell Americans can possibly trust him to fix it.

The Whopper isn't going to talk to or about the unemployed; Rove isn't that stupid: It would like putting a guilty defendant on the witness stand. So all of the Whopper's sputtering and stuttering about WMDs and the war on "terra" will begin to sound like evasion. And the Whopper can't evade this question; he can't call unemployment numbers "fuzzy math."

I worry about stuff like this because I can't shake the fear that Democrats will never be able to win the spin on defense, even though you and I know the Whopper is absolutely beatable on so many grounds on that one. And besides defense (or Homeland Security) and the economy, there aren't many other nation-wide issues in play (see my opening point: selling CUs in Alabama will be hard). We have to push the economy to win.

Oh, yeah, and we also need an entirely separate machine--one that cannot be associated with the candidate--hammering the "Whopper" idea. We must keep reminding the people that Bush is a liar, but we don't want the candidate to get his--or her--hands dirty there. That's where James Carville comes in.

Repeat after me: We can win this one. We can win this one. We can win this one.

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