Dems rally party spirit at Disney

[Thom Little]

State and national Democratic Party leaders predicted Saturday that public disillusionment with Bush Administration policies in Iraq and "a culture of corruption" in Washington and Tallahassee will give Democrats a shot at taking back political power next year.

About 2,000 party activists at the Democratic State Conference whooped and applauded a series of partisan broadsides party leaders fired at Bush and Republican congressional chiefs. Sales of T-shirts, bumper stickers and lapel buttons calling for a pullout from Iraq and lampooning Bush's appointment of Judge Samuel Alito were brisk in the lobbies and hallways of a Walt Disney World convention hotel.

"My friends, we are about to embark on the most important election in our state's history," said state chairman Karen Thurman, a former Dunnellon congresswoman who took over a broke, dispirited party last May. "The Republican Party is engaged in a culture of corruption, while waging an all-out assault on our values and our priorities."

Thurman conceded that "quite frankly, the Republicans have been beating us at our own game" by mobilizing voter turnout and drawing voters behind family and pocketbook issues. But she said the Iraq war and financial scandals in Washington will make the GOP lose many moderate and conservative Democrats who have strayed in past elections.


http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS02/512110322/1010

[ultraist]

1. More on the FL Dem Party convention

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/051210/480/flbp10712102024;_ylt=AlNmaleS4pai3zA76HuRsLdh24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-

Democrats Test Themes for `06 and `08 By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer
2 hours, 6 minutes ago

Democrats Test Themes for `06 and `08

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - To hear Democrats tell it, an anxious and isolated public craves a sense of national community and would galvanize behind a leader who asks people to sacrifice for the greater good. John Edwards says he's that leader.

Wait a minute, so does Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Ditto for Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.

Edwards, Vilsack and Warner, all likely presidential candidates in 2008, are toying with the same lofty community-and-purpose message. And that says as much about the sour mood of the country as it does about the state of the Democratic Party.

"There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in," Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, told delegates at a weekend convention of Florida Democrats.

"Americans don't want to believe that they are out there on an island all alone," the former North Carolina senator said.