Maybe If and when we democrats regain control

[Ironpost]

we make lying to the public by a government official illegal and an impeachable offence, 'oh I'm sorry it already is, Just ask The Big Dog.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. When we regain control...

...it will take us at least ten years just to undo the damage that the Bush administration has done. Just look at what they're doing with staffing in the departments. They're inserting extremely conservative staff at every level. It seems as though this is an attemt to give the departments a conservative bias long after Bush has gone. If the democrats return to power, we will be lucky just to maintain the *current* levels of environmental protection, labor rights, economic security, etc, etc, etc after all this damage is done. We'll have to re-fight battles that were fought in the 60s and 70s, just to re-establish basic principles-of-operation within the government.

All of this leads to a point that has been brought up by many others on DU - that we need to start winning more elections at the local and state levels in order to counter the republican machine in Washington. I think this strategy makes a lot of sense, as it will do much to re-establish the democratic party as a functioning political entity and will also provide platforms for experimentation with various policy proposals.

On the other hand, much remains to be seen. It's still possible that Bush could fuck up so badly that we'd be able to do something with congress in the '06 elections, but I'm not holding my breath. To me, it seems better to build the party at the local level, so that when the '08 elections roll around, we've already got a solid operation in place. Granted, this will take some power from the presidential nominating process and give it back to the party, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, given our distress with choosing a nominee this time around.

Anyway, just a thought.