Democrats - Where to now?

The presidential election just passed and as everyone knows by now George W. will be spending another 4 years in White House as Commander of Chief of the world. Err America. Not only that, the Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate.

I have been thinking about this ever since the election ended, but where exactly does the Democratic Party go now? The Republicans went through a major change starting in 1964 to Present day making great strides, but what are the Democrats going to do about this recent trend of thinking amongst the American people?

One suggestion is that the Democrats start broadening the spectrum a little more and start pulling in more religious rural users by using "moral values" or at least touching lightly on the subject. As most liberal Democrats will agree, this is not something we as a party want to go through, it might help out more with the right wing, but definitely not the left.

Other suggestions include dropping the Gun Control agenda or simply start using more affective advertising attacking the other side.

I however believe one of these two should take place:
1) Make the party more liberals. This would help out on the libertarian vote as well as the more leftist groups like socialists and the Green party. As the youth of America gets older the Democratic Party needs to expand to include their views. The voting turnout was not as great as anticipated for this demographic, but if the Democrats want to compete in the New Age they must start preparing now.
2) Less bashing, more conceitedness. Many will agree that Kerry spent too much time talking about why Bush was not meant to be President of the United States, but what he didn't do very well was explain his views and what he will do to be a better president. Time and time again when asked why didn't you vote, the response has been "I don't like Bush, but I don't know Kerry's views."

Like me, many will say that Kerry did a good job during the debates describing his views, but for some reason or another not everyone watches these. He must get out onto the campaign trail and make some one liners which will stick in peoples heads when they go to the polls on Election Day.

Other arguments are that he did make his voice clear, but just wasn't heard because the media only played his one liners against Bush. If this is so, don't make any one liners against him. With the FCC breathing down network throats, they have to have equal amount of time for each candidate. This means that if there isn't any audio of the Democrat bashing the Republican, they have to play one the other tape, which say something positive.

I am by no means a political expert, but I do believe whole-heartedly that the Democratic Party will have to go through major changes over the next four years to compete with the colossal machine we call the Republican Party.