Here is a New Year's prediction: Heading toward the 2004 election, the word that Democrats will use most in attacking President Bush, his administration, and his re-election campaign will be "balance." That word will be used to suggest that Bush is not a bad person and that his ideas aren't all wrong, but his priorities aren't right and he doesn't have the interests of all of the people in mind.

It is virtually impossible for Democrats to claim that Bush wasn't the right person in the job on, and immediately after, 9/11. That argument simply does not ring true beyond the hard core of the Democratic Party's base.

What's more, public opinion and election results argue that a move back to the old agenda of the Democratic Party would make no sense politically-that the approaches represented by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society are no longer relevant, attractive, or even remotely acceptable to most voters today.

So where do Democrats go? An ABC News/Washington Post survey of 1,209 adults conducted on December 12-15 suggests possible

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