The Republican Party has engaged in a decades-long project to portray any Democratic electoral gains as fraudulent, chipping away at the legitimacy of any Democratic politician. A new poll by a Democratic firm shows that these efforts have paid off.

Every day I am reminded that change can only happen when citizens stand together and take ownership over their government, their country, their communities and themselves. Every day I am reminded our work does not end with a campaign, but rather begins with a new President, a new government, and a new day.

Electing Barack Obama has actually been sort of the same thing. For a lot of people, just getting Obama elected president was IT. They’d been fighting (or hiding under the bed, whichever the choice) for so long that this was the be-all and end-all. And then he got elected (with the help of a lot of people and people who actually went and stood in the voting booth and made their choice) and everyone held their breaths and waited for some disaster to hit before the inaugural. And then Aretha Franklin stood up and sang and the Chief Justice screwed up the oath and they did it again. And there’s been all this noise trying to delegitimize the entire thing.

Fred Barnes, who is the emergency back-up always-wrong person in case Bill Kristol is unable to fulfill his duties, points out that President Blacker Than A 1000 Midnights should never attempt anything that might turn out badly like, say, getting involved in a land war in Asia.

Rahm Emanuel and Max Baucus may have forgotten the Democratic Party platform, but it's still around. Health care is the first issue it deals with, and the first specific health care policy prescription is for a public option. Maybe someone could remind Obama before next week's speech.

In 2008, we put a Democrat in the White House, delivered a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate and a 79 seat majority in the House, just so. . . a Republican could write the health care bill.

Things that many Americans, thanks in large part to well-financed conservative myth machines, think are true but which aren't: "The 'Wild West' Didn't Have Gun Control." Oh yes it did.

The Republicans came at Obama with a barrage of lies in September '08, and he beat them. Does that mean he can do it again now?

Photographs from Pittsburgh