I have been reading many diaries, blogs, and columns the last few days, and I think I see a consensus starting to form. Democrats have great policy ideas and are focused on the issues that face "average Americans", but Americans don't know what Democrats stand for.
We have allowed the Republicans to define us. As ANDREI CHERNY writes in his Op/ed piece "Why We Lost", President Clinton declared the "era of big governemnt is over". So what replaces it?
The
New Donkey blog says:
To those of you who think of the DLC as an organization that wants to engage in intra-party warfare, and that perennially advises Democrats to "move to the right," I suggest you give today's New Dem Daily* a thorough and dispassionate read. We do not think this is a good time for a "struggle for the soul" of the Democratic Party; the unity we achieved in this campaign is a precious asset that it would be stupid to throw away, and moreover, we are all complicit in the mistakes our party keeps making.
Moreover, and I will say this personally, you won't get any argument from New Democrats that the Dean/MoveOn legacy of this campaign--the ability to build passionate grassroots organizations, and to raise money from small donors--should be thrown away, either. But in the end, the problem we had this year was not a shortage of money, volunteers, organization, excitement, or candidate charisma: it was a shortage of message. An electorate poised to fire Bush and his Republican allies was never convinced it understood exactly what Democrats would do with the power they sought, and that was the killer.
So the work on message needs to begin. I see a lot of diaries on re-framing issues. this is great and needs to be done. But I think we still need to step back, to go one level of abstraction higher, and articulate "What does it mean to be a Democrat". I don't think we will be able to really frame any issue unless, and until, we can re-frame what it means to be a Democrat.
Now I don't have any easy answers, as I am just starting to think this through myself. But I hope others will use this diary as a brainstorming session, and we will try to tease this out together.
*New Dem Daily