1. We need two bonus states.  We can't have canidates from solid blue states (like Kerry) or from almost solid red states where they weren't terribly popular (like Edwards).  So we need two canidates from states that are red, but not by much.

2. We need to give up an issue.  The math doesn't work if we don't.  Gun control is an issue I'm willing to give up, and where logic is arguably on the side of giving it up (only law-abiding citizens follow gun control laws, rapes might go down if the rapist is afraid their target might have a .22 in her purse, etc.).  And this doesn't mean they just say "I support hunting", like Kerry did-they must consider guns as personal protection, too.  This is the NRA's decision-we must find somebody they can support.

3. By this, I mean no more senators.  They have too many votes that can be thrown back in thier faces, and they tend to, by instinct, have a wishy-washy speaking style (again, like Kerry and to a lesser degree Edwards).  They need to be used to being in charge and ordering people around, not working on consensus only.  Basically, only governors and generals need apply.

4. Lots of people, when Kerry said "I'm going to roll back the tax cuts on people making more than two hundred thousand dollars a year" heard "I'm going to raise YOUR taxes"-even if they made a quarter or an eighth of the cutoff.

So, who qualifies?

Hillary Clinton?  No way.
Barack Obama?  Nope.
Tom Vilsack?  Close, but he has a rep for being a "tax and spend Democrat".

The answer is Bill Richardson.  New Mexico is quite purple, barely going to Gore in 2000 (by less votes than Florida went for Bush), and barely going to Bush this time.  He signed a bill allowing people to carry concealed guns: http://www.georgewbush.com/NewMexico/Read.aspx?ID=4068 (Ironic link, no?  It's first on a Google search of "bill richardson" "concealed carry" "new mexico", so I might as well use it.)  The right-wing National Review praised him for his "supply side tax cut" proposal: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/comment-keating020703.asp

Who should be VP?  Wesley Clark, that's who.  Heck, you could even reverse the canidates if you wanted to.  He was my choice for VP this time-I think we would have gotten Arkansas if he was.  He might have been the only Democratic canidate who could have won the general election (in retrospect, considering how important Iraq was)-he only failed in the primaries due to his political inexperience, which resulted in him making some poor remarks at times.  But he's a quick study, and he's now a great talking head supporting our side.  Now, Clark has made some typical Democrat pro-gun control and roll back the tax cut statements, but he has four years to change those statements (with no votes or bill signed, this shouldn't be hard).  Being a general means guns are well associated with him, as well as killing terrorists and the like.

Now, the far left will be pissed.  Tough shit.  Getting any Democrat in at this point will be neigh impossible-you'll eat it and you will like it!  The problem with the left is that the majority of people who vote are on the right, and while there may be others who disagree with thier positions, they aren't going to vote.  I spent the day before the election and the day of the election on the ground in Las Vegas, hanging flyers on doors and ringing doorbells.  I had lists of registered Democrats and Independents-so I didn't have much chance to talk to unregistered people.  However, I did bump into two people who railed against Bush-but weren't registered (one said "I'm not a voter.")  You can't get these people to vote-the ground game this time was as intense as it could ever be (we bumped into a group of ACT people doing the same thing we were, for example), and it still wasn't enough to get these two motivated.  So, they don't count, and never will.

This sudden sneak up by the Republicans may not be so sudden after all.  The last Democrat to be elected president without artifical support was Johnson (Carter won because of Watergate (plus he was a deeply religious man, and from the south), I now see that Clinton won due to Ross Perot (cultural conservatives who were union members or poor voted for Perot instead of the Republican canidates-plus Clinton was religious and from the south, too)).  So we are going to have to use tricks and a movement towards the right on a couple issues to win.

Of course, the far left is quite disloyal.  They are not in a "reality based" world, like the far right is-they think that moving to the center (you know, where the votes are) hurts us.  They think that running leftist third party canidates (Nader, Cobb), draining the Democrats of votes, helps us.  They get turned off too easily and don't vote at all because they got half thier pie instead of all of it.

Even if we do get the presidency, getting the House and Senate will be hard with all the evagelicals out there.  And we probably will nominate somebody unwinable like Hillary.

In short, we're probably permanently fucked. The problem is not our ground game-we had as good a ground game as humanly possible this time.  The problem is that we keep nominating leftist canidates as the country moves to the right.  There are more of them than there are of us, and they vote now.

Of course, again, this is assuming we weren't Diebolded.  The exit polls lead credence to this-however, exit polls are very unreliable (I can see Bush voters saying they voted Kerry, Bush voters may be more likely to vote in the evening after work than Kerry voters, plus your usual "polls suck" margins of error).  But I see no direct evidence to support this conclusion-Bush's numbers were big enough that a massive conspiracy would have had to occur-they would have probably needed people in dozens of counties in both Florida and Ohio for this to work-and the popular vote trended Bush nationwide by a relatively large margin, so they would have had to be in many other states for this to be consistant, which it was.  It is still possible, though, and if so, it doesn't matter, because barring a whistle blower, we are even more fucked.

I hate to be defeatest here, but I live in a reality based world.  Richarson/Clark may be our only chance in 2008.