Should Democrats get mad -- or get even?

Salon -- Grassroots Democratic activists believe America is in desperate trouble. At the recent Take Back America conference in Washington, which brought together the core of the party's liberal wing and the politicians who wanted to win its support, there was a conviction that George Bush is more than simply a bad president, an heir to Reagan or Nixon. He is the worst president ever, a leader so destructive to all that progressives value that the damage from his reign may be irrevocable. For liberals, Bush is a national emergency.

"A friend of mine said he feels like Bob Dole in 1996, saying, Where's the outrage?" says Paul Begala, the Clinton strategist turned Crossfire host. Managing that outrage gap is going to be crucial for Democratic political aspirants who need to motivate their furious foot soldiers while winning over a blithe public.

There's a consensus among progressive Democrats that they lost the 2002 midterm elections because they were too soft on Bush. The overwhelming message of the Take Back America conference, organized by the Washington-based Campaign for America's Future, was that liberals should be aggressively unapologetic about their values and their anger, just as conservatives are. Meanwhile, John Podesta, Clinton's former White House chief of staff, will soon launch the American Majority Institute, a Democratic think tank with a $10 million annual budget designed to play offense against the right. The Hill, a Washington congressional newspaper, quoted former Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart saying, "Certainly right now the conservative right does a much better job of feeding the media beast facts and arguments that make their case. This will be part of the push-back effort."

"Our task over the next 18 months is not to ridicule George Bush, but to get the George Bush story to the American voters over and over again," said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. "There has to be a patient investment of capital," says Brock. "The right worked on school vouchers for 19 years. What if an independent think tank had been working on healthcare for years before Bill Clinton was elected? Perhaps the political culture would be more receptive."

While Brock says it takes time to change the political culture, he believes efforts like Podesta's "are going to have a pretty huge effect rather quickly, because they're filling a void. I think that's why there's so much excitement."

Perhaps they're overly optimistic, but many progressives believe that Bush's popularity may be reaching a tipping point -- and that all they need to do is nudge people along. Bush's continued support, says Begala, rests on two things. "His principal claim is that there's a national security crisis, which there is. His second claim is that he's basically an honest man. If he loses that, it's over for him. The problem is that he doesn't tell the truth."

So far, he's gotten away with it -- which further stokes liberal antipathy. To understand why people continue to believe him, says Begala, it's important to understand cognitive dissonance. "There have been a lot of studies on how people deal with cognitive dissonance. The first reaction is to say, No! Bullshit! The second is to attack the source [of the information], which is why it's risky for Democrats to attack Bush. But if you can persuade people, they will reevaluate their beliefs and look for a way that they don't have to feel stupid." Only at that point, he says, will they really get mad at Bush for deceiving them.