OK - I'm about to take a metaphor way to far...
I was participating in a great conversation over here at BOP and GrandMoffTexan made a comment about finding our political center that really struck a chord with me.
I take a martial arts class (Tae Kwon Doe) a couple of times a week and while I'm not very good, I have learned a couple of things about how martial arts work in general. One of the first things that they teach you in these classes is that your stance is key to pretty much any technique in martial arts, whether it's a "soft" technique where you use your opponent's force against themselves or a "hard" technique where you use your own force against an opponent. The reason that stance is so important is that it teaches you to find your center and keep it well grounded. If you can do this, then you have a solid base from which to launch a hard technique or a solid pivot point from which to turn an opponent's force with a soft technique.
You can see where I'm going with this... The Democrats have lost their center. We are not connected with our base. The effects of this are clear. Every attack that we attempt is either weak and ineffectual or gets turned against us with spectactularly bad results. The war in Iraq springs immediately to mind.
The Republicans are a well centered party. They know exactly who they are and where they want to go and their base is complete agreement with them. What do we want? Right now, the only thing that is centering us is our agreement that we would like the Republicans to stop beating up on us.
We need to find ourselves before we can bring any sort of fight to the Republicans.
So, Grasshopper, try to snatch the pebble from my hand...