Turning of the Tide?

For the last six years, Democrats have sat in a stunned, jaw-on-the-floor silence as the GOP took control of the government in nearly all spheres. Despite calls for unification and leadership amongst its members, the Democratic Party failed to produce a candidate with an ounce of charisma or political intelligence (see John Kerry). Complete political ineptitude has ravaged the party and sent moderate Democrats reeling to the right. Instead of unifying against the opposition, the party gradually collapsed, falling into the trap of in-fighting. Now--without overstating its significance because there is still a long way to go--we do have an indication, courtesy of the midterm elections, that the political tides may be turning. As the Democrats take control of the House, and potential '08 candidates gear up for their run at the Oval Office, the parties seem to have switched places. A formally united Republican party has begun to splinter over issues of education, immigration and now, the war in Iraq. In his most recent article entitled My Kind of GOP, Chester E. Finn explains that the Republican party has a lot to figure out before '08:

For most of the past 30 years, Republicans were America’s smart party, the party of ideas. Conservatism was intellectually respectable, abounding in imaginative people offering fresh approaches. But where will tomorrow’s ideas come from? When the Democrats ran out of ideas and tilted toward their own extremists, some wise folks started the Democratic Leadership Council, a charter member of which was Bill Clinton, the most successful (despite his character flaws) Democratic politician of my adult life. Where is its Republican equivalent? Who will lead it? Shouldn’t we be addressing those questions before the 2008 primaries begin?

For over six years, it has been hard to be a Democrat, let's hope Hillary or Barack can change all that.