The talk-show blowhards want to know if Republicans and Democrats can work together in Washington. I want to know if Democrats can work together.

Senator Charles Shumer and Congressman Rahm Emanual did a smart thing: They put winning ahead of ideological purity. They recruited candidates like:

• Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, who is pro-life.

• Health Shuler in North Carolina, who is pro-life and pro-gun.

Will the netblogs turn on them the way they turned on Hillary Clinton? If they do, the Democratic majority will be short-lived.

People in Raleigh and Eastern North Carolina need to pay more attention to Shuler’s victory. And so do people in Washington.

North Carolina Democrats like Jim Hunt put a lot of work into recruiting and helping Shuler. They knew Democrats needed to pick up 15 seats nationally, and they wanted one of those 15 to be from North Carolina.

It was.

Shuler’s signal should be a sign for national Democrats. We can win in the South. And we can win in North Carolina.

That bodes well for whoever challenges Liddy Dole in two years – and for Democratic presidential candidates in 2008, 2012 and beyond.

Here are some of the reasons Shuler won:

• He’s a local hero, a football star and a successful businessman.

• He was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, so it was hard to paint him as a Washington liberal.

• He’s personally a centrist, maybe even conservative.

• He’s not from relatively liberal Buncombe County, but from the conservative western part of the district.

And he ran a smart, aggressive campaign – tying Charles Taylor to the corruption and arrogance that voters saw in Washington.

Here is what 2006 says about the (potential) future of the Democratic Party:

• We’re no longer just a bicoastal party, though we have that base.

• We don’t just have to win in the Midwest, like Ohio, although we did.

• We can raid the Republicans’ own turf in Virginia and North Carolina.

But it’s going to take discipline – and tolerance for ideological and cultural differences. Washington Democrats haven’t shown that before.

Will they now?

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