I went looking around and saw Bernie at Bejata dot com. That helped.

What did not help was a post referred by Booker Rising by Dennis Sanders, who describes himself thus:

The Moderate Republican

If you are a moderate Republican who wants to bring the Party of Lincoln back to its roots, you've come to the right place. I am your host, Dennis Sanders a 30something, gay, African American, Republican minister living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I was, however, able to put aside the cognitive dissonance for a moment.

I had to dismiss this:

The South, the Border States and most of the Midwest went to Bush. The Kerry campaign pretty much ignored the South, putting all its eggs in the Florida basket. The Dems ignored growing states like North Carolina and Georgia, both with 15 electoral votes each. That makes a difference.

…because both parties ignored those states it felt the other party had a lock on. Dennis does get to the point, though:

During the primaries, Howard Dean stated that his campaign would reach out to guys with "Confederate Flags on their pickup trucks." Many Democrats howled when he said that. They thought that he was pandering to racists and that they should be ignored. What they didn't see is that these people are the blue collar folks that are most affected by the economy. They needed to reach these persons, but they really didn't.

I agree with this. In fact, days prior to Howard Dean making that statement, I registered with Kicking Ass for the specific purpose of making a suggestion in an open thread. I had just heard a primary speech where the candidate listed all the minority groups Democrats were looking to support. I felt white folks would feel excluded, even though every program Democrats support directly benefits mainstream types, because they weren't specifically named. I asked that they specifically name white folks in their speeches. Dean did it. Clumsily, but he actually recovered from that because it was so damn necessary to do.

But see, this is where I get a little rude. The party of Lincoln doesn't exist anymore and neither does the Dixiecrat party. However, the attitudes of those parties are still in full effect. If you stripped away all names, got the people with Dixiecrat attitudes in one pile and party of Lincoln attitudes in another pile, then asked the party registration of the folks in each pile you'd be a lot clearer about what each party represents. I can't understand why people aren't clear on that.

Yet I have to accept that they just aren't. And Dennis says:

There was a time that the Democrats were a of the working man. Now, it seems to be a party of coalitions: such as gays, Blacks and feminists and so on.

Like Blacks aren't working men. Hell, working women are working men. Gay folks are working men. And it's pretty obvious Dennis isn't a jerk

So Dems need to think long and hard about what Dean said. That and they need to make some trips to Harlem and sit down with Clinton.

But I'm not sure if he understands that his liberal friends

I've noticed how many of my liberal friends tend to look down on working class folk, thinking of them as idiots and racists. And then they wonder why they lose.

are just disdainful of people who, as Dennis notes, vote against their own self interest.

Okay, that's me. Maybe his friends don't understand.So let me make it clear.

Democrats lose elections because Republicans have convinced people to vote for ego strokes instead of results. Democrats offer the prospect of gain, Republicans offer protection from loss (which wouldn't be bad if they actually protected you). People respond more strongly to avoiding loss than to prospective gain…a bird in the hand and all that.

I'd like to tie this all together all neatly, but I'm still in analysis mode.