Erick, this one is for you. And I dare you to promote it.

You have fallen into the soft, easy trap of negativity. You have convinced yourself that disaster looms, and we must scramble to claw ourselves into a position to protect our last vestige of self determination.

Guess what, Markos Moulitsas agrees with you. And he has you exactly where he wants you.

This is from his post
called “Crush Their Spirits”. Looks like they have already succeeded.

I’ve been making the case the last couple of weeks that we can’t just focus on winning in November, but that we have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement’s backs and crush their spirits. In the White House, that means getting Obama a broad popular and geographic mandate for change. In the House, that means annihilating the Republican caucus and working toward a 100-seat Democratic majority. In the Senate it means getting to a 60-seat filibuster proof majority.

Republicans will claim that McCain wasn’t one of them, hence rationalizing away their loss. But if we decimate their ranks, including their conservative icons, it’ll make it harder for them to justify their spin. Remember, we want them broken, their ranks thinned, their treasury in heavy debt, their morale in the gutter, void of any leadership, discredited in the eyes of the public.

Hence our need this year to take advantage of this perfect Democratic storm to not just win, but to utterly wipe the board clear of as many Republicans as we can catch in this wave.

A key component of this effort is to destroy their most beloved leaders. And in that sense, our Orange to Blue fundraising list targets some of the conservative movement’s top leaders. Don’t take my word for it, take that of conservative blogger/operative Patrick Ruffini, freaking out about the tsunami about to hit:

And while we all to some extent will continue to fixate on the Presidential race, we need to understand the very real consequences if the Senate is irredeemably lost, and if our bench in the House is wiped out. You may not know it, but conservative icons like John Shadegg (AZ-3) and Tom McClintock (CA-4) could lose.

Both AZ-03 and CA-04 are on our target list, with Bob Lord focused on taking out Shadegg, and Charlie Brown fighting McClintock.

There is a sudden realization on the right that they are on the precipice of losing not just their majorities, but some of their most cherished voices. We have been blessed with an opportunity to help that process along.

**They’re already expecting to lose**. You want to see them truly crushed, you need to help (among so many others) Lord and Brown win their races.

Leave everything on the road.

(Bolding mine)

I’ve said it before, and I will repeat it. We are either a socialist nation or we aren’t. If we are, it doesn’t matter if we go down swinging or not, we were going to lose anyway.

But if we aren’t, and this nation still remains center-right, with a rough parity between the parties, then the doomsday scenarios that are being projected around here are asinine. The ONLY way they will win, is if we allow ourselves to be demoralized and not trust the voters to do what they have done every election since 1980. Vote for the center-right candidate.

If on November 4th, the Democrats really do turn out +14 over the Republicans (which the polls assume), then we only have our own demoralizing attitudes to blame. However, Markos’s predictive powers have never been all that great, so I respectfully suggest that people quit feeding into it.

Update: Screw the respect, I suggest you get just as pissed as I am, AND FIGHT THEM FOR THE SOUL OF OUR COUNTRY