How many times have we had the "center-right nation" maxim shoved down our throats over the past quarter century?  Every Democratic win has been tempered by it.  Every Republican defeat cushioned.

The problems with the harebrained theory are obvious ... first, it connotes a permanence that hasn't existed throughout American history.  Was America a center-right nation during the New Deal?  When Harry Truman won (despite two Democratic independent competitors) in 1948?  When LBJ crushed Goldwater?  Could a nation that elected a Democratic House for all but two years from 1932 to 1994 be considered center right?

So obviously, there was a time when what counts as an American Left held the power in our system.  There has been an ebb and flow and will continue to be an ebb and flow.

But pundits keep returning to the Center-Right Myth (from here on called CRM) because Republicans promote it enthusiastically and consistently. They cite that only one Democratic Presidential candidate since World War II has topped 51 percent of the vote.  They demean Democratic Congressional power over 62 years as proof of the power of Dixiecrats.  They point to polls that show Democrats dying off every year, while conservatives dominate the 35 to 55 cohort.

After tomorrow, all of these data points will be invalid and the myth will be officially dead.

Obama will almost certainly top the Carter line ... more important, he'll bring millions of voters into the process.  If they stay, the political equilibrium will tilt left with it.

Democrats will approach a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a Blue Dog proof edge in the House.  The Dixiecrats are not padding the lead this time, the South will remain solidly Republican and Conservative.

And most important of all, the new Democratic majority will not be forged by an aging, dying off generation, but by young voters who were disgusted by eight years of Bush failure and are now solidly in the Democratic camp.  If we can keep their trust, they will form the core of a solid Democratic majority for years to come.

So are we now approaching a "permanent" liberal majority?  Of course not.  Still only about 22 percent of Americans self-identify as liberals.  But that's roughly the situation conservatives faced in 1968. With success, people will slowly start to embrace the words liberal and progressive again.  Even Republicans now see that they have to ratchet up the attacks to the insane level of socialist to get a rise out of swing voters.   Now that conservative has been discredited, liberal isn't such a dirty word.

Tomorrow will be an important first step, one that must be reinforced day by day with good legislation, good judges and well-administered policies.  Liberalism succeeds when Americans feel their faith in government restored.  It won't happen overnight ... it's a process that will probably outlive the Obama administration.

But starting tomorrow, we have a chance to begin again ... the CRM is dead.  Long live the New Liberal America.

The closing argument for John McCain is a little off the wall.  It's not really an argument that Barack Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal or that he's untested and unready.  No, the real argument being sold over and over on Fox News and in stump speeches (especially by Sarah Palin) is that Barack Obama is a socialist.

It's a strange argument because it's not one that mainstream Republicans normally make in the closing days of a campaign.  When Bill Clinton proposed a middle class tax cut in 1992, Bush did not call him a socialist.  When Al Gore proposed a rival tax cut plan to Bush's son that spread the wealth among lower and middle class tax payers, not the wealthy, the s-word wasn't thrown around.

Socialism is an odd word to toss into an election at the last minute because the tried and true description for left-leaning Democrats -- liberal -- is much easier to attach.   So what's going on here?  Why, all of a sudden, does raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthy while lowering them for the middle class -- something that's part of a long American tradition of progressive taxation -- deserve this very un-American word?

Simply put,  it's code.  The McCain campaign is trying to do two things at once.  First, the word socialism reinforces the message that Obama is something less than a regular American.  He has strange, foreign ideas, popular in places like Sweden and Kenya.  In the closing days, expect to hear more about Barack's father and his descriptions of "our socialism" in Kenya decades ago.

The second message McCain is trying to raise -- as indirectly as possible -- is that he wants to take your (white) money away and give it to poor (black) people.  There's nothing in Obama's platform that they can magnify to raise this fear, so they are desperately looking for words, past and present, to take out of context so they can sell this concept that Obama wants to redistribute wealth from white to black.

He's not one of us ... that's the real message of the socialist smear.  Polls so far indicate it's not working.  But if it does, if it brings out a stealth racist vote in the final week of the campaign that tilts the election to McCain, one has to wonder whether the Republicans will inherit a ungovernable nation, because the backlash to this disgusting race baiting will be enormous.

Can everyone stop whining now?

Here are the things the Democrats need to get done this week:

1) Sell the Middle Class Tax cut.  John McCain doesn't offer one, Barack Obama does.  McCain is running ad after ad saying Obama will raise taxes -- it's a lie.  For the bottom 97 percent of American taxpayers, Barack Obama will cut your taxes and John McCain won't.

2) Pound the economic elitism storyline.  McCain gift wrapped an issue for Democrats this week by not knowing how many homes he owns.  He's out of touch. He thinks people who make $4 million a year are middle class.  He thinks the Bush economic approach is working.

3) Turnaround the celebrity/cult issue.  There's a real political cult stalking America, but not the one you think.  The real cult is one of warrior pencil-necked geeks ... a political Fight Club for all the boys who got beat up in high school.  They hold the corner offices in think tanks and dominate the op-ed pages of big city newspapers.  They walk in John McCain's shadow and throw around pro wrestling words like "smackdown," thinking that the U.S. military can restore their manhood.  And yes, some of them are U.S. Senators, most notably McCain's fey sidekicks Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman ...

4) Destroy Joe Lieberman.  The Dems made a huge mistake in 2004 by not bloodying up Zell Miller in Boston before he could attack them in New York.  This time, Lieberman must be annihilated.  I'd use Jim Webb or Wesley Clark to twist the knife into him.

5) Get real.  No need for flash or showbiz.  No need for soaring rhetoric.  America knows we can do that, they expect it.  Talk about where we are, how we got there and exactly how we'll get out.  Bob the Builder chants aren't enough ... turn the convention into Extreme Makeover, America Edition.

Footnote ... at some point, it might be a good idea for Democrats to expose just how insane John McCain's health care plan is ... instead of giving companies a tax credit for health care insurance, McCain will levy a huge new tax.  The goal?  Forcing companies to drop the insurance altogether and pushing individuals into buying their own insurance.  That's great for big business, now off the hook for providing health care to employees, but horrible for individuals who won't have the advantage of buying their share of coverage in bulk.  The "subsidies" McCain offers individuals wouldn't come close to making up the difference in the premiums.  It's basically the biggest tax increase in American history.

While Jerome asked yesterday why the Obama campaign hasn't had a coordinated blog campaign, let me offer one that all left-of-center bloggers can agree on ... a simple message that would be easy to stick to without any help from 233 N. Michigan.

You simply call McCain a warmonger without calling him a warmonger.

Everyday McCain gives this narrative more validity.  Today he (probably carelessly) agreed that a draft might be necessary to finish the job on Bin Laden.

He's basically created a second American state named Georgia.

He's laughed about bombing Iran ... he's said we could be in Iraq for a millennia, for all he cared.

You see, McCain can't stop himself.  This has been his m.o. since he arrived in Washington.  He makes himself available for any TV camera that asks during any military crisis, voices support for the President and then, sadly, reluctantly (in the case of GOP Presidents) or aggressively (in the case of Dem Presidents) says we're not doing enough.

Because no one ever adds it all up, McCain just sounds tough and informed.  But if you go back ... for example, to the spring of 1999 ... you'll find moments where McCain is on record supporting three large scale U.S. military operations simultaneously.  Then he wanted a land war in Kosovo (because President Clinton's air war clearly wasn't going to be enough), he wanted regime change in Iraq and he wanted an armed attack on Iran to avenge Khobar Towers (yes, three years after the fact, with no conclusive proof that they were behind it.)

McCain shoots off his mouth and orders our troops around, rhetorically, at will.  Except if he's President, it's not rhetorical anymore.  And the idea that we'd need a draft to cover all of McCain's wars isn't theoretical anymore either.

If Democrats can't exploit this issue, we deserve to lose.  McCain is hoping to be the new James K. Polk, in a far more dangerous world.  Tell the truth about McCain and war and he'll think it's hell.

I used to have my own political blog, but turned it over to a photo blog of my twin boys when they were born last year.  I do this mostly for the benefit of my family, especially my mom.

Today, I heard a rumor that my mom has expressed support for John McCain.  I'll save my mother the embarrassment of detailing why she's against Obama ... but given her surprising position, I felt I had no choice but to wage my own personal negative campaign to change her mind.

Check it out:

www.danconley.com

I know this is going to seem like a joke, but unfortunately it's not.  CNN just spent 10 minutes, with Campbell Brown hosting and three conservative guests, ruminating on the burning question, "Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ?"

Umm ... I'm not usually in the boycott business, but CNN is officially dead to me this election cycle.  Not even Fox News has sunk to this level.

Todd Bennett took numerous potshots at me this week on MyDD over a guest column I wrote for Political Wire.  Included in his nonsense rant were comments such as:

>>Mr. Conley asserts further that Obama should not defend himself against blatantly racial assaults.

That is absolutely false.  What I actually wrote is that supporters of Obama should not take the bait when McCain and his backers start tossing out comments that COULD be interpreted as racial code words.  I was certainly not talking about overt racism.  Why take this bait and waste valuable campaign time bickering about race when there's interpretation involved?  Do you honestly think this is in the candidate's or party's best interests?  You're the naive one if you think that these arguments ever play out to the Democrats favor.

>>The part that galls me is saying electing Obama is change enough and  that he will not change peoples' attitudes about race.

Todd, think for a second before you spout off like an idiot.  Election of the first African American President in our history would be an enormous step forward in racial relations.  Anyone who thinks that we need to hold a daily seminar on race along the way is a fool.  Election of Obama will be a huge marker of change, real progress.  Why do we need more than that right now?

>>The suggestions made by Conley in this and other short sighted posts is part and parcel the remants of a party apparatus that ran from confrontation.  People like him are political dinosaurs and should be left behind in the scrap heap of history.

That comment is pure idiocy.  Anyone who has read my comments here or on Salon.com know very well that I believe in rapid, aggressive confrontation.  And I don't think Obama is being nearly aggressive enough.  This comment just proves your ignorance.

I don't know who you are, Bennett, but if you're going to call me out by name on a website, you really should pay closer attention to the facts.  My second Political Wire column had absolutely nothing to do with the issue of race, it was about the Russia-Georgia scuffle, as was my column on Salon.com yesterday.  To paint me, someone who worked tirelessly for America's first black governor, as some kind of old fashioned racist is too stupid to dignify.