Of Kos they do...

Check out this post on the Daily Kos.

Usually the Daily Kos spends its webspace making well-informed but unscientific predictions about the political back-and-forth (often predicting smashing Democratic victories that rarely materialize), but this time a post addressed a real and important issue, and one that I've thought about a lot:
What do Democrats stand for?

The post is kinda dumb. The poster's answer to this question (Strong Families. Strong Communities. Strong Nation.) sounds a little like the kind of platitudes every presidential candidate throws in at the end of a nomination acceptance speech. The poster is short on specifics - how to provide universal health care, for instance, or how to lift communities out of poverty. He predictably spends a lot of time listing the sins of the Republicans. And his proposed mantra is too general to make a lasting impression on the electorate (don't Republicans want strong families, community, and nation too?).

But my eye was really caught by this quote:

Do Democrats stand for something? Of course we do. We stand for strengthening America from within. Every family, encouraged and protected. Every community, made economically stable and prosperous. The entire nation[.]

It struck me that the Democrats of Roosevelt's time and Kennedy's time were basically a party of national unity, a nationalistic/patriotic party whose basic goal was turning the nation into one big community. Seen in this light, the mid-century Democrats' main policies - poverty reduction programs, minority equality measures, and opposition to the Soviet Union - seem motivated less by socialism and more by the idea of basic American togetherness; the idea that America can't allow itself to leave Americans behind. Maybe it's time for the Democrats to give up interest-group politics and return to their communitarian, nationalistic roots.