Last week on "On Point" on NPR, Donna Brazille and Markos discussed the future of the Democratic Party. The host asked what the Democrats were about, what our party was for. Donna Brazile gave a long convoluted answer; and Kos noted that Democrats don't have the machinery (Think Tanks, for example) to generate our ideas and message the way Republicans do, and so we are still challenged to say what we are for.
Someone--a Republican doof--called in and noted that the answer was wishy-washy, and asked how the heck anyone could vote for a party that couldn't say what its ideology is.
At home, I listened. I fumed.
Don't we all know what Democratic ideology is!?
Hmmmmmm.
The Republican doof--someone I'd probably detest in "real" life--was right. Donna Brazille's answer was convoluted and sounded more like platitudes than a governing ideology. Her answer sounded evasive, insubstantial, and I was listening with the intention of supporting her. I can only imagine how it would have sounded to anyone undecided about party affiliation.
And I was especially frustrated because I thought, mere fool me could have satisfactorily answered that caller.
Don't we know what we are for? Is the problem that it is too unfashionable to say it right now, and so we withdraw from the language?
We are the party of: "big government" in Republican speak. And though the connotations of that phrase are problematic in today's political discourse, in essence, that is what we are for, isn't it?
I would have put it this way:
We are the party of using the federal government to strengthen the social safety net, assure workers rights, protect the environment, and provide advancement opportunities to all Americans. Democrats believe that we are stronger as a country when we work together, and that the medium of that collective work is the federal government.
Have we, too, accepted the meme that the government is corrupt and awful and can only do ill? And if so, aren't we conceding the debate to the Repubs right there? How can the government provide a social safety net, regulate business, etc., if it is definitionally corrupt, wasteful, and parasitic.
I'd like to see Democrats and progressives find a new way to communicate "big government" without all of the baggage, and to say it proudly.