Democratic (Party) Direction

As does Osama.

As do the pancakes.

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Of course, all the guys I like aren't in control of things.

Howard Dean the talker is iffy; Howard Dean the planner is better.

He's famous, sort of smart, well spoken and hot. All Reagan had was famous.

"More or less money will do nothing to make Defense Department programs and mangers accountable through rudimentary financial management. Managers in the private sector who fail on this measure are fired; some go to jail. In the Defense Department, none are held accountable; many are promoted. When that changes, competent program and financial management can begin...

The Democrats want us to ignore how they helped to create the mess and their current intention to do nothing about it. In fact, they are not even thinking about solutions--and the Republicans appreciate that."

http://www.forward.com/articles/7819

I found the assertion that raising the minimum wage or giving college tuition credits would be rallying policy points for the Democratic Party laughable (not that they're bad ideas - I support both - just that they are not BIG MORAL ISSUES that Dems can use to build a new identity)

I believe that there are some substantive differences between self-identified liberals and self-identified moderates and conservatives- there's more going on here than the changing image of a word. There's a school of thought that says that Dems don't need to change any of their positions - they just need to change how they talk about them (ie., the Lakoff school). However, I think that there's a limit to how far you can go with this, unless you are going to come out and lie. People want to hear you talk the right talk, but they are also interested in what you say you are going to do, and they have a high aversion to any perceived phoniness. I think the successful candidate will have to combine the right language with some substantive policy proposals that show it's more than a matter of language.

once again, show me the secret cadre of liberals who are our key to electoral success.

the Dems don't offer a set menu of policy options. Its all garbled. Just look at Kerry's campaign, it was a mess of contradictions and half-steps. More importantly, the Dems don't back up the policies they do occasionally trumpet with anything like a coherent philosophy or framework.

UH

Republicans don't believe in nuance and coalitions?

the Dems could find a Tony Blair, and they may well have in Hillary Clinton, or in an age where workers fear for their jobs and an aging population fears the cost of healthcare they could wave the banner of FDR and talk about socialised medicine, globalised employement rights, lowering domestic fuel costs through energy efficiency.

You never know, Hillary may, with a democratic congress, be able to fix medical care in the US but she seems to be too polarising a figure to get that congress, even if she is a bankable centrist.

The distillation is the important bit here, taking the central core that all the various factions on the left grow out of(green folks, union folks, health care folks, sustainable energy folks, public-agencies-should-actually-be-competent folks, etc).

maybe what it has stood for in the past 20 years simply isn't popular. Or, in a more palatable format for liberals to accept, maybe what the left stood for was too easily spun as failure by the right. Since, you know, voters are simply willfully ignorant of reality and all.

We have to change that idea at the level of intutition. I don't care about liberalism and centrism. The Democrats have to capture people's imagination and dominate the national consciousness. Learning how to speak people's language carries more political currency than policy.

I mean, universal health care (not necessarily single payer, but possibly so) could become just as centrist as Social Security.

If Democrats can't find a way to make people feel differently about Democrats, it doesn't matter how radically centrist they become or how well-calculated their policy proposals are.

We already are a centrist party. How do you change that feeling?

yeah, the mass of the voting public immediately saw right thru that "saddam = 9/11" schtick that most of 2002 consisted of..

xpost: exactly, Ed, that's what Lakoff's been talking about for 10 years.