Mark Z. Barabak prominently features this famous Horace Greeley quote in his Los Angeles Times piece on Democratic prospects in the West. The idea that the future for the Democratic Party is in the West is not a new one. (I opined about it here in mid-December and the folks over at Western Democrat have been talking about it even longer.) Nevertheless, it's always nice to see a long article like this in a major paper. Barabak writes,

Democrats have reason for hope. In the Pacific West, California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii continue to lean their way in presidential politics. In addition to the party's strong 2004 showing in the Colorado Legislature, Democrats elected a governor in Montana and took control of the House and Senate in Helena, the first time they won either chamber in a decade.

The party also now has governors in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Overall, Democrats gained 31 legislative seats across the West in 2004, but the party continued to lose ground in the South.

At the presidential level, the West accounted for six of the 10 states where Democratic nominee John F. Kerry topped Al Gore's 2000 performance.

New Mexico and Nevada — which President Bush carried by less than 1 percentage point and 2.6 percentage points, respectively — had two of the four tightest contests in November.

"Given the closeness of the presidential vote in New Mexico, Nevada and even Colorado" — where Kerry won 47% of the vote — "we don't need to make great inroads," said Paul Harstad, a Democratic strategist in Boulder who has done extensive polling throughout the West. "We need to make incremental inroads."

It would be nice to see some of the Democratic establishment start to listen to these ideas, because they provide the party with a real shot at reemerging from the political wilderness. What's more, when you compare Democratic prospects in the West and the South, it becomes clear that not only should the Dems focus on the West, they must.

For more depth on the subject, check out our interview with Gary Hart.