Christopher Ruddy:

During our conversation I recalled when electioneering used to begin on Labor Day and didn't take off in earnest until October.

Those days are gone, perhaps forever.

"You have to go back to the founding of the country, when candidates had duels, to find some parallel," Anderson said of the animus this campaign season has seen.

We discussed the reasons behind this political civil war. To Anderson the answer is obvious: The Democrats are desperate.

How desperate? Very.

As Anderson sees it, the Democrats are almost completely out of power.

He reviewed the political landscape for me.

The White House is Republican. And so are the Senate and the House. Even the Supreme Court predominates with Republican appointments.

At the state level it gets worse. In the last election cycle, a majority of state legislatures became Republican, and Republicans hold a majority of state governorships.

The largest four states in population have Republican governors: George Pataki in New York, Rick Perry in Texas, Jeb Bush in Florida –­ and we even snatched one from the Democrats in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger's election.

"We don't realize how good we [Republicans] have it," Anderson suggested.

His analysis is unassailable per the known facts. Almost everywhere there has been a rising Republican tide.

And:

My back-of-the-envelope accounting shows that the 'poor' Democrats will outspend the 'rich' Republicans by a factor of 2 to 1 or more.

Here's the rough calculation: Democratic 527s will raise more than $150 million over what Republican 527s raise. Add to that figure another $150 million the major unions have already committed to help Kerry get out the vote. That's $300 million cash flow for Kerry.

Why did liberals lose power after the 90s? Why isn't their 2-to-1 advertising ratio buying them more of an edge? What's going on here?

As best as I can see it, "normal folks" -- of all political persuasion, including what we'd would have called "Democrats" until the mid-90s -- are deciding they don't like what today's Democratic party has to offer, and are opting for the alternative.

Of course, that's obvious: Just a restatement of the current shift in representation.

Why, then?

There are two things politicians have to offer: Personality and policy.

I don't believe charisma is inherant to party affiliation. For every Ronald Reagan Sr., Republican, there's a Ronald Reagan Sr., Democrat. Or William Clinton, if you prefer. Until I see evidence otherwise, I'd guess that charisma is distributed all over the political spectrum, and doesn't give any party a decisive edge.

That leaves policy.

And the economic policies of today's Democrats are...

Aversion to military action in the national interest.

Class warfare.

Racial preferences and racial division.

Opposition to free trade.

Government favors for everyone.

Except the rich and corporations. Sometimes. Confiscatory taxes for them.

Support for trade unions.

Higher minimum wage.

We've learned a lot in the last twenty years.

We've learned sometimes lowering taxes raises actual tax income receipts and stimulates the economy. We've seen the Soviet Union disintregrate, Swedish healthcare start to privatize, and Cubans continue to starve, demonstrating the futility of socialist systems. We've seen, in the difference between East and West Germany, what difference economic policy can make in just a generation. We've learned that poor people in the third world are harmed by government subsidies in rich western nations, and that free trade would benefit them. We've learned that preferential policies (including based on race) generally harm the very people they're designed to help. We've learned that technology and civilization generally decreases the environmental impact an individual has. And we've learned that as societies become more prosperous and educated, they naturally have fewer children, automatically controlling population growth.

And though we've changed socially too, we've reasserted that there are certain limits to what we will accept, downwardly, at a certain point.

So how have conservatives changed?

They've started to take the intellectual lead in explaining how and why welfare hurts people, and why social structures and mores are important to explaining poverty. Many have gone from supporting to opposing farm subsidies. They've offered alternatives to preferential policies, like the Bush's top-10% admission experiment. They've embraced school vouchers, an idea first suggested by liberals like Milwaukee's Annette Polly Williams. They've looked to economic ideas like game theory to study how independent actors can work to build a better society. They're offering new ideas like the "ownership society". They're thinking and talking about how to fix many problems associated with our current system of taxation. Bush has more minorities in his cabinet than any president before ever has, including even Clinton.

Further -- to the chagrin of many traditional conservatives -- Bush seems to have embraced big government, social spending, and nation-building (rather than isolationism), and funding limited embryonic stem cell research -- all traditionally not conservative stances.

So Republicans have certainly changed with the times, and there are a great variety of opinions among people now labelled conservative -- from support for big government and gay marriage (Ahnold) to those who support small government and not-gay-marriage.

And how have the Democrats changed with the times?

Re-examine the list of their policies above: more government, preferential policies, free stuff, class/race warfare, wealth redistribution... These policies are essentially unchanged since... well... since Marx spelled out the perfect socialist state. When Kerry promises healthcare for all, the appeal is fundamentally no different than when Hillary or Hitler promised the same.

So who are the real "conservatives" here?

Who are the ones who cannot change, who offer no new ideas?

So what are the exit strategies for the Democratic party?

(1) Personality. They can hope to find a candidate (or collection of them) so stunningly charming that people won't care if his or her policies are fundamentally cooked. Consider Bill Clinton. Or, you're liberal and don't know your economics, consider Reagan.

(2) Policy. They can abandon these long-dead ideas of how society should be structured, get with the latest learning, economically, and start finding something more meaningful to differ with Republicans about.

For example, Democrats could embrace a VAT, a flat tax, or national sales tax, leaving one of the alternatives for the Republicans to embrace, and fight over that. Whether your're for higher or lower taxes, everyone can agree it makes sense to have a more efficient collection system, no?

Again, Clinton seemed to do a bit of this, too. Sadly, today's core liberals are far to the left compared to Bill Clinton's economic policies.

(3) Population. There's always a new generation coming in, and old geezers kicking off to match 'em. Not to mention wild-'n'-crazy levels of immigration these days. If you can't change your policies to match the best state of knowledge, you can always attempt to keep people ignorant.

And to some extent, this is accomplished quite nicely by liberal dominance in the educational system and pandering to illegal immigrants. But in four years, this will only make a fractional difference, and conservatives like me and others are out there, hot 'n' heavy, trying to educate those who've never been formally exposed to conservative ideas.

(4) Power. Lacking all of the above, what remains is to embrace the tactics of the Nazis or Bolsheveks, using deception by subverting democracy and/or the law to achieve your ends.

To an extent, we're seeing this today, including though the tight coordination between the Kerry campaign and supportive partisans in the news media, and increasing using of the judicial branch to implement policies unpalatable to voters. I'm reminded of Al Gore's use of the courts to try to shift the vote count in his favor, as well as judges in St. Louis who ordered the polling places in heavily Democratic districts to stay open longer than those in more conservative areas. Not to mention Torricelli and Wellstone.

If you look at the political life of a country, the fundamental functions consist of executive, legislative, foreign policy, press, and control of the military. By controlling activist courts, liberals gain executive and legislative power. And to an extent, they can cooperate with hostile "allies" to discredit undermine foreign policies of sitting presidents they don't favor.

But obviously if you control the executive branch, this gives you a huge leg up.

For example, FDR, who socialized whole segments of US industry.

In the end, I don't think Democrats are going to change their policies, and the population, as I mentioned, doesn't change the quickly in the short term.

That leaves the use of personality and power to achieve office. But when people are angry -- as Democrats are now, and probably will be moreso over the next 4-8 years -- that limits your ability to use "personality" as well, except, perhaps, deceptively. Exhibit "A": Howard Dean.

So that leaves Power.

In retrospect, I've thought of one more I missed, but one not universally believed: Prayer. If you believe in that, you just might consider doing it, for all of us, about now. For all the aforementioned reasons.