The article doesn't have many original points (Republicans are weak but Democrats are too fractured to take advantage of it), but it nicely sums up the current difficulty facing the party. Among the gems...
On Democratic (lack of) strategic focus:
“For the Americans in the middle, who have no strong partisan allegiances, we have failed to articulate a real plan or vision,” say Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and Jerome Armstrong, two of the most popular Democratic bloggers. “It's not that people know what we stand for and disagree; it's that they have no idea what we stand for,” say [Clinton advisors] James Carville and Paul Begala[.]
On Democratic self-contradiction:
The Democrats are trying hard to sound fierce about the deficit...The party promises to restore the “pay-as-you-go” principle that was scrapped in 2002...But do the Democrats propose any specific tax increases or spending cuts that might actually bridge the deficit? Apart from promising to repeal Mr Bush's tax cuts for “the rich”—whom they take care not to define too clearly—no. In opposition, anyway, they have clamoured above all for more spending...Taken as a whole, the party's various eonomic manifestos sound cautious but fairly expensive.
On Democratic subservience to special-interest groups:
Democrats seeking public office are besieged by single-issue groups urging them to adopt policies that most Americans disagree with, such as support for racial quotas and unrestricted late-term abortion.
On the bizarre desire of Democrats to leave important issues to the courts:
Many more Democratic politicians have, over the past 30 years, tried to duck controversial moral issues by leaving them to the courts...In January, for example, during the confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito, Mr Bush's latest choice for the Supreme Court, some Democratic senators upbraided the judge for wanting to apply the law, not make it. Surely it would be better, “to ensure social progress”, if judges took “a more expansive, imaginative view of the constitution?” wheedled Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. In other words, Mr Kohl, a legislator, wants judges to do his job for him. This is how abortion was legalised in America, how prayer was barred in schools and how gay marriage came to Massachusetts.
On the fact that the red-eyed anti-Bush rage of the Daily Kos and its "netroots" ilk aren't helping:
[T]he netroots are always goading the party to get as angry as they are. They tend to favour the most frothingly anti-war, Bush-bashing candidates, who usually lose at the polls. And they express themselves in terms both crude and petulant.
It would be easy for liberal readers to dismiss The Economist as just a right-wing rag, eager to bash Democrats. Easy, but stupid. The Economist endorsed Kerry; it is a big supporter of gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, gun control, and universal health care; it clamors for the firing of Rumsfeld. Like Wikipedia, I'd describe it as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That means it's basically on our side. And since it's probably the smartest news magazine out there, when they talk we should listen.
As I see it, the Democrats have three basic constituent groups. The first of these are the party's centrist-liberal leadership, typified by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid, who hew roughly to the "New Democrat" philosophy espoused by Bill Clinton. The second faction consists of a number of single-issue advocacy groups - the pro-choice movement, the African-American lobby, teachers' unions, etc. The third faction consists of an activist grassroots "base" (including Kos and the netroots), which believes generally in liberal principles but doesn't know exactly whom to follow.
The problem is that these factions don't always fire their cannons in the same direction. The netroots base is so angry at Bush's hijacking of the country that, like an enraged bull, they simply charge forward bellowing. Instead of rallying around the party leadership (as the Republican base is known to do), they look for "outsider" candidates like Paul Hackett or Ciro Rodriguez who the netroots think will make the party tougher on Bush. Unfortunately, this often leads to vicious primary struggles, Democrat fighting Democrat, wasting money and effort and dividing the party.
Interest groups are even worse. Too many of them are maximalist - victory only encourages them to ask for more. The NAACP, after winning civil rights, integration, anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action, decided to press on into wackyland with a quest for "slavery reparations." Teachers' unions often stand in the way of merit-based pay, easier hiring/firing for teachers, and other sensible policies that could boost our pathetic public school system; this just opens the door for conservatives to insist that "school vouchers" are the only way. And so on.
And the Democrats' Clintonian leaders just aren't sure what to do about all this. They need the support of their interest groups, and they can't afford expensive, draining primary battles against the netroots. But they also realize that most of the country doesn't really support the things the Democrats' interest groups push for, and that most Americans, while they don't like Bush, don't hate him as much as the netroots do. So they're left doing a delicate, mincing dance - equally terrified of losing their base and losing the swing voters, relying on focus groups, polls, and hack advisors like Bob Shrum to tell them which way to turn this month.
The basic, fundamental problem here is that there's just nothing keeping the Democrats together. The Republicans have their own maximalist interest groups and frothing-at-the-mouth base, but they have the central animating idea of "conservatism" to keep them in line. "Conservatism" convinces Republicans that theocracy-supporting Baptists should spend their weekends working phone banks to support tax cuts. It tells profit-hungry business lobbies that Christian values will make the labor force work hard. The Republican "big tent" is really just a big hitch that keeps all the elephants pulling in the same direction.
Our donkeys have no such hitch. With civil rights and social equality mostly already in the bag, and with socialist economic policies not looking so hot around the globe, liberalism doesn't know where to go from here. Thus, to a large extent, the interest groups, netroots, and centrist elites that comprise the Democratic Party are part of the same organization only because they know they all don't like conservatism. But without an equally strong liberalism to guide them, they'll keep pushing very different anti-conservative agendas. And without a strong liberal ideal to inspire them, swing voters will usually only vote Democrat in protest against the excesses of conservatism.
The Democrats' problem thus runs far deeper than a simple lack of policy ideas. The party lacks a unified political philosophy that tells them what kind of policy ideas they should create.
The short-term fix for the Democrats is clear: Be pragmatic. Focus on issues that everyone knows are important for the country, like national security, energy independence, and education. Find common-sense solutions - beefing up the number of anti-terrorism personnel; funding development of cheap fuel-cell and electric cars; creating massive alternative-energy research projects; creating "innovation districts" where education policies that work can be demonstrated to work (a Barack Obama idea); beefing up science and math education; allowing people to buy into the national health insurance system; sustaining and broadening US alliances throughout the democratic world; etc. Disavow the Nader/Chomsky anti-American left. Stress national unity, competent and clean government, and fiscal restraint.
That should be enough to be enough to beat the Republicans for the next few years.
But to beat the Republicans in the long run, the Democrats need to have a guiding philosophy that's about more than fixing the leaks in the system. They need a vision of where the country needs to go to become greater than we ever were. To define the Democrats to the American voter, we need to define our ideals and our vision to each other. We need a new liberalism, and we need it as soon as possible. Otherwise we'll smack down the Republicans only to see them rise again, and again.
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