Well, I found out what I wanted to know. Some of the Democrats think there will be another recession (because of Bush's economic policies) and this will totally alter the playing field, allowing Pelosi and the hard-left Dems to score major victories against the Republicans. I think this is more of the "Bush is a fool and bad things will happen to him" school of thought, which has proven to be... less than reliable. Or maybe it's Marxist-type "inevitable decline of evil capitalist blah blah blah"... who knows.
More of the Democrats seem to think there's a massive amount of people just waiting to vote for a hard left candidate, if one presents her/himself as actually electable. Energizing the base will lead to a massive turnout, people who never vote will come to the polls...
Naturally, I don't buy in to either theory. I think this is a huge mistake. It's too bad that I don't have the thread still on DU to link back to a year or two from now, I'll just have to make do with linking to this thread here on FR. Ohhhh welllll.....
Maybe what we need is a third site, to serve as a halfway point between DU and FR, so we might have some sort of reconciliation... it would be nice to make friends with the enemy. If Wellstone and that old Republican guy could be friends, why can't we? Maybe I can convince JimRob to set up an extra forum just for debating with the Other Side...