Someone posted recently, asking if our Goldwater moment had arrived....

[DeepModem Mom]

I have a stronger sense than ever before that our country is in real trouble on almost every front. And what's more, with Bush's poll numbers in the 30s and low 40s, the people are finally waking up to it. Yet Democrats, the opposition in what's left of this democracy, stand publicly in alliance with those now supported by 30 to 40% of the people when they could have followed their brains, their convictions, and their consciences, and done otherwise. Frank Rich spoke to this in Sunday's New York Times.

This post is not about the DLC. It's not about issues: abortion, gay rights, or even economic justice. It's about conviction and zeal. It's about standing for common sense, no matter the polls at the time, or the political consequences at the time. Democrats should have opposed what they knew was a sham war, that has ended up costing America lives, bankrupting our treasury, and is soon to install an Islamic state in Iraq where a secular state had been, endangering us further. We should have hammered climate change every time a hurricane, flood, string of tornadoes, or deadly heat wave hit people hard.

We may not be capable of changing the national discussion to issues of jobs and wages. We have to play on the playing field we find ourselves on. But that doesn't mean we can't define ourselves as progressives, different from those who've led us down a disastrous path, even if the cable pundits, the provincial Beltway smartasses (who are ignorant of and isolated from the real world), or Rove and Mehlman ridicule and dismiss us.

If we had persevered, and clung to our convictions, we would now be on the side of the 60 to 70% of this country who disapprove of what's going on in America. I don't know if if it's too late. I don't know if we have to wait for Gen Y, a generation of enormous numbers, to change things in some way all their own -- or if it's too late even for that. I have come to the conclusion, however, that we must have new leadership. And I don't know who it is, or where it comes from -- although I think part of it comes from places like this because this is where conviction and zeal are found.

We need, IMO, to speak in broad, simple terms. We must change direction in this country, or we (except for a very few) will be bankrupt in every way. The people are beginning to understand this, I think, but they are at a loss as to where to look, just as we as a party are at a loss as to where to look for leadership or a Presidential candidate in 2008. Where is there a Gene McCarthy, an RFK -- a figure who might not be as easy to assassinate (character-wise, or literally) in a time when Karl Rove's strangle-hold on our press must surely be loosened by an awakening public?

Howard Dean did stand up, but Rove was still in his glory days then. Dean got the Rove treatment. Cindy Sheehan has gotten the treatment, been damaged, but still stands. Paul Hackett stands. Our Goldwater moment, I think, is here. How we find the seed for it, how we nurture it and guard it, how we work day and night to make it grow until it flourishes and restores the country we've lost -- alas, I do not know. I only hope, watch and wait, and try to do my own small part.