This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on December 16, 2003. If you missed it then, it's worth a read, especially in light of the Democrats' failures in October 2004.

The Democrats' platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

The Campaign of Hate and Fear, by Orson Scott Card