Democrat Outsourcing

From Anil Adyanthaya, RealClearPolitics: "...the growing perception of Democrats as a party of opposition, instead of proposition."

On Meet the Press, Party Chairman Howard Dean admitted that there is reality behind that perception. "Right now it's not our job to give out specifics. We have no control in the House. We have no control in the Senate. It's our job is to stop this administration, this corrupt and incompetent administration, from doing more damage to America."

In that one statement, Dean perfectly encapsulated the state of today's Democratic Party. That is, that they have become what Johnson so despised back in 1964, an organization "against everything and trying to smear and fear." And that is a sad thing, not just for Democrats, but for all Americans who believe the country is better served by creative thinking and vigorous debate than by negativity and obstruction.

This is Howard Dean, emblamatic of the Democrats, the ex-Governor of the now dying state of Vermont--even he had to find a job out of state. The NY Times:

POULTNEY, Vt. — Not long ago, Ray Pentkowski, the principal of Poultney Elementary School, published an unusual request in the school newsletter. Please, he urged parents, have more babies. The school desperately needs them.
He was half joking, but the problem is real. His school, down to 208 children, has lost a third of its student population since 1999 and must cut staff levels, he said, "for the first time in my memory."

The Roe Effect bites the teacher's union, the core Dem constituency.

The lack of low-cost housing and anti-sprawl regs ( nothing to do and no place to do it) chases away what youth there is and bites the environmentalists (denizens of upscale vacation homes set in Ye Olde Public Park of Vermont), a core Dem constituency:

And Daniel M. Fogel, the University of Vermont's president, says some have not grasped the seriousness of the problem. They believe a shrinking population will prevent overdevelopment, but these "antisprawl folks are the very people who tend to value very highly the environmental protections and the social programs, which the state is not going to be able to afford if the working population shrinks," Mr. Fogel said.

The high-tax environment chases away jobs and tax revenues, bites into liberal seniors' social progams:

Arthur Woolf, an economist at the University of Vermont, said that by 2030, there would be only two working-age Vermonters for every retiree.
Without more working people, Mr. Douglas said, "we won't have tax revenue for anything other than public education and Medicaid. There'll be no money for anything else."

And Vermont is unhip now compared to Idaho or Montana, so even the Beautiful People can't save it:

The back-to-the-land influx of the 1960's, 70's and 80's, which once had Vermont growing faster than the country as a whole, has dissipated, Professor Woolf said. Vermont may have lost some cachet for the people often referred to as "flatlanders."

"If you live in New York or Boston and you want to get away from it all, these days it's just as cheap to fly out to Boise, Idaho, or Montana," Professor Woolf said.

And those are.....Red States.