It's useless to even TALK about trying to work with "moderate Republicans" in the House or Senate in a time when there's no such thing as a "moderate Republican" in either chamber-even Susan Collins has a voting record that would place her slightly to the right of Barry Goldwater on the issues-and when we already know that no Republican congressmember or senator will ever even try to work with a Democratic president again.

There is a massive backlash against "pro-business" economics, obsessing about the deficit, the idea of punishing the poor AND the idea of U.S. military intervention in other countries as something that simply has to be accepted as a permanent fact of life. Democrats won't gain votes from anybody anywhere by reducing the message to "it's enough to have a Democratic president doing it".