DENVER -- Speaking before the daily breakfast of the Arizona Democratic National Committee delegation, Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, addressed the weaknesses in the campaigns of Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) while expressing high hopes for the 2008 election.

McAuliffe cautioned the Arizona delegates not to pay attention to national polls, which show Sen. John McCain (R-Phoenix) and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in a statistical tie.

"It's too early," he said, while also adding that he thought Obama could pull off an upset in McCain's home state.

"If we could win Arizona this year, it would set such a milestone for the Democratic Party. We would bury the Republicans for 25 years."

Despite that Khrushchev-like assertion, McAuliffe devoted most of his talk to tough reflection on Democrats' failures in the 2000 and 2004 elections, and advocating strategies he thinks will reverse their losing streak.

"We should win this thing pretty easy," he said, "but I've been here before, folks. If anyone can screw this up, it's the Democratic Party."

Though he predicted Democrats would add six Senate seats and 20 House seats to those they currently hold, he said "you can't do anything without the presidency."

In order to not repeat the Democrats' fate in the last two presidential contests - including an embarrassing loss for former Vice President Al Gore in his native Tennessee - McAuliffe said the Obama campaign needed to get aggressive.

"There were two words no convention speaker in 2004 could say: George Bush," recalled McAuliffe. He said he wrote a "13-page tirade" against the president, and when the Kerry campaign edited it and sent it back, it had been reduced to a page-and-a-half, with all references to Bush removed.

He faulted Gore and Kerry for not exposing Bush's flaws, such as his lack of accomplishment during his first 40 years, his failed business ventures and his dubious record in the Texas Air National Guard. McAuliffe said Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, should have made that contrast central to his campaign.

"If you can't defend yourself, then you sure can't defend the American people," he said.

Kerry's hesitancy to attack Bush - and the fact the GOP had no such compunction with the Massachusetts senator - was cited by McAuliffe as the primary reason for his loss, and said Democrats have to learn to even that field.

Republican attacks "are going to make the Swift Boat ads look like public service announcements," McAuliffe said, which is why he advocated Obama hit at McCain hard, starting with next week's Republican National Convention.

"Republicans broke the rules" by airing attack ads during the DNC, said McAuliffe, and he promised that Democrats would be returning the favor.