In a great Salon article, Emory professor Drew Westen sums up what Democrats have to do to win the White House next year. The short version: More Jim Webb, less John Kerry.

“If you look at [Virginia Sen.] Jim Webb‘s response to the State of the Union address this year, Democrats should watch the tape of that over and over and over until they get it in their minds that here is a guy who is as centrist as you can get, I’m not sure that he’s even left of center, but what grabs people in the center about him is that he knows how to throw a punch. He can do it with conviction. When he speaks about national security he can take what is thought of as a left-wing position, which is the most stridently antiwar position anyone really is taking … and enunciate that position with crystal-clear clarity as a values issue: that families like his are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country, but that the flip side of that contract is that their leaders have to be judicious in the ways they call for them to sacrifice. Sending them to the desert in the wrong war into the midst of somebody else’s civil war is not judicious and is betraying the military and is as far from supporting the troops as you can get.”