Let's also not forget that . . .

. . . we didn't do as bad as we think we did in 2002 and 2004--we just think we did because we lost. Their magical Get Out The Vote operation is nothing but a myth. IF their GOTV was so superior, they would have gotten far far stronger results in those elections than they actually eneded up getting.

Look at these results from 2004:

Dems picked up 5 GOP seats

GOP picked up 8 Dem seats

Out of those 8 seats the picked up, 5 were from the DeLay redistricting scheme.

If there had been no redistricting, we would have actually picked up 2 seats total from the Republicans. So we need to stop looking at these results through a revisionist lense. A 2 seat pick up in 2004 would have been good considering how "strong" the Bush GOTV was.

And in 2002:
The GOP picked up 6 seats in the wake of 9/11, in the wake of 90% approval rating from Bush, in the wake of recent "success" in Afghanistan, in th wake of the Iraq run up (which was popular at the time). So you know what, 2002 was not as huge a disaster as people seem to remember. They ought to have picked up 20 seats in that environment.

The bottom line is this: we didn't do as bad as we remember doing in those last 2 elections, and we aren't doing as bad as we think we will be doing this election. I know we got stung big time in 2004, but the environment in 2004 was not like this...no one expected big Democratic gains in Congress in 2004, that was never a consideration, so the fact that we actually picked up 2 seats (minus TX redistricting) is pretty fucking good. So let's just stop this nasty pessimism that isn't based in history or reality.

Our GOTV is stronger than ever this year, and theirs is nothing but a big myth. We are very very well positioned for 2006.

"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution. They don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." --J.R.

by michael1104