Future Woes for the Dems

John Fund sounds a warning for the Dems:

The Red Get Redder

There are good reasons why smart Democrats are scrambling to find new language and issues to appeal to voters in the "red" states that backed George W. Bush.

Polidata, a political redistricting firm run by GOP strategist Craig Benson, calculates that present population trends mean that states won by President Bush in 2004 will gain six electoral votes when the 2010 Census is taken. Florida and Texas, which comfortably went Republican last year, will each gain three seats. States that went for Senator John Kerry will lose a corresponding six electoral votes, with New York's loss of two seats leading the way.

Under that new likely Electoral College arrangement, Mr. Bush would have been elected president even if he had lost the key battleground state of Ohio. It's therefore no surprise that Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has been spotted lately in such unlikely places as Kansas and Kentucky, diligently downplaying his party's stance on issues such as gun control and abortion.