Georgia10 is more optimistic about the Democratic Party than I:

"....If you're anything like me (read: a political junkie who loves her country), then you're thoroughly exhausted. You're tired of being outraged by scandal after scandal. You're sick of waiting for the truth to be exposed. Your heart is still filled with sorrow from the 2000 and 2004 elections, because you mourn for what this country could have been, and what it has become. WE get it. We're the heart of the party: the ones working ourselves to the bone day after day. We're the ones without healthcare, the ones with our family members serving overseas. We're the ones kicked out of public events and placed on watchlists because of our political beliefs. We're the ones with kids who are taught "intelligent design" as part of the war against science. We're the ones who can't get married, the ones whose homes are subject to sneak and peek searches, the ones who have to wait 12 hours to vote and who pray that our votes will actually be counted. It is us, goddammit, who truly realize what this country has become and where it is headed. It is our rights being stripped away from us, our America slipping away before our eyes. All we ask is that our party recognize this. That a holistic approach towards government is needed. That while the Democrats focus on individual battles, it is our entire government which needs to be saved. As Lincoln noted, our nation will never be destroyed from the outside. We are the world's greatest military power. No terrorist or rogue nation will ever be able to destroy us. Not with hijacked planes or nukes or cavalries. No, if we are to be destroyed, it will be from within--because we destroyed ourselves. It will be because we, as a party, were too afraid, too complacent to stand up as the Constitution is being pried from our clenching hands. I admit, I've let myself get hopeful about our party's effectiveness. Bursts of courage, from Murtha to Feingold, have led me to conclude that our party is up to the task of saving this government. But a little part of me anxiously fears that such instances of courage may be isolated events, rather than a shift in our party's approach to politics. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for our party to realize the enormous task before us: saving this government. If we embrace that theme, we will once again know victory. And that victory will not just be defined by how many congressmen have a "D" after their name. It will be defined, ultimately, by restoring America to the nation it once was: a nation with a government for the people, by the people, and the greatest country on earth."