Reinvention
Well, at least some people in the Democratic party are beginning to realize that they have no real message. Aside from hating George Bush, their idea well is pretty dry. And as much as the netroots like to claim they are the future, cooler heads realize that a hard left, anti-war, socialist agenda will not work in this country with the vast majority. So someone is trying to find a new direction and a new message.
On Monday, three veteran party strategists — William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira — launched a Web site ( http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ ) with the goal of generating fact-based, empirically tested theories that might help Democrats resolve their policy differences and win more elections.
Yesterday saw another launch party, this time for Democracy, a quarterly journal that also will be available online ( http://www.democracyjournal.org/ ). The magazine will be edited by Andrei Cherny and Kenneth Baer, two younger veterans of recent party wars. Their goal is do for the Democrats what journals such as Public Interest did for conservatives and Republicans decades ago, which is to bring forward big ideas to challenge what they regard as the tired thinking that grips Democratic politicians.
On Thursday, NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network) will convene its annual conference. NDN, founded by Simon Rosenberg, has recently been in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists, liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists, all with an eye toward tipping the political balance back in a Democratic direction.
Well, it will be interesting. The old guard, as represented by the likes of Ted "Fossilized Liver" Kennedy will not relinquish power easily. The newest of the new Kozite-backed people have not shown they can be elected (0 for 20 and counting).
Now while the Democrats obviously welcome many diverse opinions just from John Kerry alone**, it remains to be seen if they can re-formulate a message that will actually get them elected.
** Shamelessly stolen line from commenter Santay – thanks for the great line!
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » This Is Rather Funny — June 22, 2006 @ 8:14 am
By Santay, June 22, 2006 @ 6:37 am
No problem. Thanks for the great blog!