And here’s my last column from YearlyKos, on what it takes to gas-up the progressive Prius:

LAS VEGAS — The folks who gathered here this weekend for the first ever YearlyKos conference (named after the popular liberal Web site, Daily Kos) had better hope a Democrat does not win the White House in 2008.

Nothing smothers a growing movement of the politically disaffected quicker than premature victory.
…

One gentleman I spoke to at YearlyKos was J. R. Jenks, a small businessman from Chicago. He drove out to the conference with his wife in their Prius. The top issue that drove him to hybrid it half way across the country, he said, was “how to set things back on track.”

“I’m a pacifist and a vegetarian,” he said, but even he is concerned about “what’s happened to our military.” He’s worried that we’re spread too thin to protect ourselves.

…

How many activists, bloggers, and blog readers, it must be asked then, would be driving half way across the country, standing around making silly hats, and sitting around all day and night reading and writing blogs if, say, Nancy Pelosi, were speaker of the House and Hillary Clinton or Al Gore were president?

In other words, Democrats will have to keep losing — at least for a little while — for this movement to solidify. They should be home free.