Good article, even some of the comments are very interesting, including one by this guy,

sinz54 // Aug 30, 2009 at 10:09 am

Bartlett sez: “The party’s adults formed the Democratic Leadership Council to push the party back to the center and it was very successful”

Yes, they did. One year after Mondale’s 49 state shellacking by Reagan, proving that after four years of Reagan, the public really did prefer Reagan to the Dems’ doctrinaire liberalism.

It was that kind of a wipeout that enabled the Democratic Leadership Council to say “We have to make MAJOR changes if we don’t want another shellacking like that again.” If Reagan had just eked out a less impressive win, the DLC would have probably failed to make their case to the rest of the Dems.

In other words, sometimes a spectacular failure is required to knock some sense into people’s heads.

He has an interesting suggestion (controversial to some, but I’ll post it here),

A comparable scenario would have Sarah Palin (the favorite of the GOP base) clinch the GOP nomination in 2012, and then go on to lose 49 states to Obama. Unless that kind of shock occurs, the GOP base will go on believing that the reason McCain lost was that he wasn’t conservative enough.

So I say: Let the GOP base have it their way for a change. Let them get their favorite candidate nominated (who in all probability is Palin). And let them lose overwhelmingly. Only then will they be so discredited that the GOP leadership can safely give some other folks a chance.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe they need to fall to the absolute rock bottom for the to understand that a real change is required. Maybe a complete abject failure is what will finally discredit the religious right and get things back on track.