The Dems know that booting Lott made their ranting moot. If they bring up Lott in 2004, it'll backfire bigtime because the voters will say, "That's all you have for a reason to vote Democrat?"
Exactly so. If they put Lott in campaign ads against republicans in 2004, many people will see through it cause everyone knows the death knell that was dealt to one of their own--hardly the actions of a racist party. Lott's gonna be just another member of the senate and it'll be worthless if they're gonna use him--sure it might shore up the black base, but if that's all they're gonna run on, then we'll win with the larger group of independents.
It'll be funny watching to see how the dems attempt to demonize Frist effectively--he's impressive both in substance and style, and worse yet, he's handsome too! They've got a hard job ahead of them.