A few months ago Robert Reich wrote in TNR that the real problem may be deeper than mere rhetoric. Unfortunately, even Reich stopped short of giving credit to the GOP for beating the Democrats at building coalitions through positive action and better ideas (opting instead to credit "narrative" for the Republican advances). In fact, Reich argues--and I suspect he has some support for this notion--that "people don't think in terms of isolated policies or issues. If they're to be understandable, policies and issues must fit into larger narratives." So the real problem is not that the policies or issues have caused voters to form new coalitions--it's that the Democratic narrative is screwey and the Republican narrative has wooed sheepish voters.

I think Reich is right to emphasize the importance of narrative that voters can wrap themselves around. But, he takes it for granted that the Democrats have good ideas around which to wrap a narrative. To a greater extent, I think folks like Martín Peretz, Victor Davis Hanson, and Jonah Goldberg are right when they characterize the Democratic Party as a reactionary party struggling to come up with ideas. Hanson recently articulated several reasons that the Democratic Party is out of touch. His argument can be summed up in a few words: Democrats have not had an update in several decades. Dean and others bow to the meme that the heart of the Democratic Party is found in class warfare. Hanson does an excellent job of briefly explaining how class distinctions are much more amorphous than they were in past decades. Using the rhetoric that worked when unemployment was 20% might not work as well when unemployment is 5%. Hanson seems like a genius for pointing out something relatively un-revolutionary.

Similarly, in the print edition of National Review (sorry, no link) Jonah Goldberg argues that the fact that liberals rarely, if ever, invoke liberal icons like John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, or TNR founder Herbert Croly, demonstrates that liberalism is "dead." Goldberg is right. Democratic apologists have resorted to pointing to a hodge podge of favorable results even if those results happened forty years ago or look nothing like Liberalism. You're much more likely to hear a Democratic leader summon some piece of New Deal legislation in defense of today's Democratic Party than you are a strong argument that John Dewey's views on progressive education would produce favorable results if applied to today's challenges. Goldberg argues, and I think succinctly but accurately, that the Democratic Party has tried to build victories on the underlying policy of "we like good things" rather than resting on a real philosophical foundation that can be tracked. This might not necessarily be a bad thing if they were winning, but they aren't.

The world has changed since the days of Democratic dominance. So has the United States. It is nothing more than self-serving to believe that the same ideas that yielded Democratic dominance in the past necessarily support dominance today. Sure, there are some ideas that will survive, but even those need the repackaging that Reich et al. believe to be the whole problem. The unwillingness to face voters and buy into the program that they want--instead, insisting that they must buy the Democratic program--will lead to success if avoiding a strong dose of self-evaluation is the goal. (It's a-lot easier to blame a thromping on the other team's all-star than on your own teams lack of winning ideas.) However, if the Democratic Party wants anything to change, they must be willing to address something other than their rhetoric. As Bull Moose put it recently:

The Democrats have figured how to oppose the Republicans, but have yet to benefit from their role as an opposition party. Innovative reform ideas will help make the Democrats an effective governing party. So, go ahead, structure is fine, but persuasive ideas are divine.

Even if he didn't mean toJoe Trippi indicated some familiarity with the heart of the problem when he endorsed Simon Rosenburg for DNC Chair:

The question for the next Democratic Party chairman is not, and should not be "How do we reshape our message?" The role of our next chair must be to build a competitive apparatus, and organization that can win elections and defeat the Republicans.

I think the last two quotes portray part of the reason Bill Clinton was able to "triangulate" his way to eight years in the White House. The New Democrats were willing to put the old package on a new--or borrowed--set of ideas, even as critics claimed it would ruin the Party. Whether it was liberalism or not that reigned during the Clinton years, it won elections. Don't expect Howard Dean to learn this lesson before he loses his job.