Tony K’s got something to say

This is a pretty good account (login mat be required) of where things stand with the “top 3″ Dems in the race.  What I would like to know is–what it will take to get Bill Richardson up in the ranks of the media darling elites.

Change is needed–but just noting we need change is not making change.

Bush-bashing is not enough. Unless one of the Democratic candidates finds the courage to step up and offer a vision of an American future so compelling that voters head to the polls with a sense of excitement and great expectation, the Republican Party could once again capture the White House (despite its awful performance over the past eight years) with its patented mixture of snake oil and demagoguery.

The G.O.P. game plan is already being pieced together. The White House hopes to inoculate Republican candidates on the Iraq war issue by bringing home a significant number of combat troops in the middle of the general election. And the demagogic issue of choice for 2008 is immigration.

The Willie Horton ugliness of 1988 will be like nothing compared with the concerted attack to be unleashed by the G.O.P. on illegal immigrants next year.

The Democrats will have to figure out a way to counter that with an appeal to the better angels of our nature, and that will require courage.

The need to offer an honest vision that is almost electric in its intensity is especially important for Senators Clinton and Obama. Both have to rally enough voters to overcome deep wells of prejudice in this society. That can’t be done by referencing a résumé, or in a nine-second response to a question from Wolf Blitzer.

The American public, tired of war and economically insecure, longs for a leader who will tell the truth and offer a way out of the current morass.

A Democrat can win with a realistic plan for exiting Iraq and, more important, a full-blown economic strategy that addresses the growing anxiety over the fading American dream.

This debilitating anxiety is fed by an uncertain job market; by the housing crisis and the humongous debt that is smothering the middle class; by the long-term erosion of health and pension benefits; by the increasing cost of higher education; and so forth.

It is this spreading anxiety that makes it so easy for the demagogues to gin up the rage against foreigners.

A Democrat who makes a believable case that these problems can be dealt with effectively — and who asks the public to roll up its sleeves and join in such an effort — can win.

But that’s not what we’re getting. Not so far. And maybe it’s not necessary. Maybe the economy will be so bad next year that a Democrat will win in any event. But that’s not the kind of tea you want to hang your hat on.