They worked on that hard in 2004. They absolutely slaughtered Bush in OH with the foreign trade/outsourcing issue. Kerry, for a variety of reasons, couldn't sell that message with quite enough people, although he did better than Gore in the previous cycle.
GWB turned the tables in FL, doing better there in '04 than in '00, but again, it's a close thing. If we lose either one, we lose.
Can Hillary! do it in '08? As a liberal NY Senator, one of the liberal northeastern politicians the 'Rats have floated in a couple of elections, Kerry in '04 and Dukakis in '88, she probably can't. But Hillary! won't run as a northeast liberal. She'll masquerade as a centrist, like Bill Clinton did, touting her Midwestern roots (growing up in IL) and southern connection (living in Arkansas all those years). Will it work? Like I said, it will probably be a very close thing.
I am optimistic too. But I would be even more optimistic if:
1 Hillary was discredited
2 Bush passed private accounts. Then every cab driver gets into the market and likely owns stock. All of a sudden EVERYONE would be for GDP growth and less gov spending. We also would not have to spend too much time on commonsense measures like developing domestic oil.
3 We get out of the WTO and promote bi-lateral with countries on mutually beneficial terms.