Guns are a problem in urban areas. Guns are a necessity in rural areas. Most rural people ARE pro-environment, but often times many primarily urban environmental groups have unwittingly pushed them into the arms of the polluters.

Despite the media's disdain for "class warfare", the message that the "big guy" is screwing the "little guy" works because the "little guy" knows its true. Small businessmen are a traditional Republican constituancy, but small businessmen and workers both have a lot of common interests economically. Health care for all would help workers get health care and take a burden off of small business that is considerably lighter for larger firms. Reigning in the big corporations would help smaller firms and workers.

Two years after they re-elected arch-conservative Jesse Helms for the last time, the good people of N.C. elected John Edwards. Because organized labor is so weak in NC, Edwards never actively courted the labor vote, yet he had a 96% AFL-CIO rating. He talked to the ordinary people in his state that most politicians ignored.

The Democrats need to be the party of ordinary Americans again. They need to be the party of Main St. over Wall St. They need to be the party that understands that the country should not be run exclusively for corporate profit. They need to run a campaign that touches so called "Red-America" deeper than the campaign of shallow prejudices run by the right-wing noise machine.

Fairly or unfairly, to a large degree John Kerry was a symbol of all that is wrong with the Democratic Party. They have gotten the image of a party of wealthy, liberal, northeastern intellectuals who are out of touch with those in the heartland, an image that, sadly, does have some truth to it. The Republicans did a great job in defining that image and the Democrats did little to stop them. The Democrats need to stop acting like Rockefeller Republicans and start acting like the party of the people again. Then they will, as Howard Dean said, win in Alabama, Wyoming, and South Carolina.

Also, the Dems need to cut through the lies about Bush's fake 'moral values' by pointing out the thousands of facts that show how hypocritical the GOP is. A good example is Bush's push to privatize Social Security. One good way to point out the problems with Bush's approach is to show how badly the privatization of Social Security-like programs has gone in Chile and Great Britain. Privatization favors the government and the financial services industry, not retirees. Especially now, with yields in the stock market being so low. (Dont expect them to go up, either, the US economy is mature, and millions of people will be retiring in a few years, taking their profits, which will drive stock market prices down.)

A worker in Chile retiring in 2004 under the privatization plan retires with less than half of what they would have gotten if Chile had sticked with their original defined benefit plan.

As far as National Security goes, I think we would be safer under a President who cared more about substance and less about appearances.

Plus, Bush is too friendly with the Saudis. With Osama BinLaden being the son of an old family friend, we DO need to be worried about this.

I'd love to see him at least run for the nomination in '08 or '12. He's part of that winning formula: populist charismatic governor from red state. Never forget that formula.