You'll pardon me if I dismiss this as the same old hand-wringing and excuse-mongering that conservatives have been making for republican failures of principle for the last 3 or 4 decades.
You see the results.
Same old... Same old.
Look at the threads elsewhere here about the way the Dems are fracturing. Down in Florida, the state affiliate of the NEA is collapsing. In New York and elsewhere, the black and Hispanic votes are beginning to fracture. We've got a number of unions that are working with Bush to open ANWR, and the Dems are sticking with the environmentalists on this. That's not going to just drive the rank-and-file. We're talking the Teamsters, Steel Workers, and other union organizations migrating or staying neutral.
The "Reagan Democrats" who went with Reagan in 1980 and 1984, Bush Sr. in 1988, returned to Clinton for 1992 and 1996, then split evenly between Bush and Gore in 2000 are about to break to the GOP, and this time the migration could be permanent.
The Dems are close to collapse. If we can hold on, and if we can outlast them, we could put them down the tubes for good. I see no reason why we should not get 25% of the black vote by 2008, or 50-55% of the Hispanic vote by that year. We have a chance to put the Dems in the minority for good. We can't afford to blow it.