Thinking back to John Kerry's loss twenty years ago, I'm reminded how pointless it actually is at this stage trying to determine with any degree of certainty precisely what the Democrats need to do in four years time (beyond the obvious thing of just finding a good candidate). After Kerry's defeat there were many people talking about how the Democrats needed to be more socially conservative, friendlier to big business, and more hawkish on foreign policy in order to ever have any hope of winning an election again. Of course, by the time 2008 actually rolled around, those would have been the absolute last things Obama wanted to do.