A significant minority of the Kos community seems ready to write off the Democratic Party in the 2010 elections. The argument runs something like this. The Dems have been so feeble and half-assed in challenging big interests that they have lost support they could have had with a bolder program. So they're in big trouble, and since we didn't screw up, we shouldn't have to bail them out.
The arms control expert Roger Fisher once told, IIRC, a story about a bomber flight in WWII. The pilot, just playing around, had shut off all four engines in mid-flight. He'd forgotten that this also shut off the electrical generators so that routine restart was impossible. One of the crew members turned to Fisher and said of the pilot, "Boy, is he in trouble." (Somehow an emergency system got an engine started again, so we know the story.)
Barack Obama is not the one really in trouble. Those of us who need for the new health insurance plan to be properly funded and implemented, who need for the new financial regulations to be adequately enforced, who need fair-minded federal judges to make it through congress, that environmental agencies will not mainly be engaged in undermining regulations...., we are in the ones in trouble. We are the ones who need to make sure that the House stays in Democratic hands and that not too many 6-year Senate seats dribble away in close elections.
The sacrifices we are called on to make are small. Donating money until it hurts, making phone calls, going door-to-door don't amount to much in the scheme of things. The idea we have to get across is that the barbarians actually are at the gates in the form of the modern Republican Party. We honor our predecessors for making much bigger sacrifices, often under much, much worse leadership, to hold off other barbarians. Now it's our turn