B E B E R E

"How can you call yourself a political party?"

Ann Althouse is on a roll today. I found the relation of this particular interchange to be very enlightening. It's sort of what I've been hashing around with my 'move on' counterparts since before the election. I'd say that, beyond not being able to name leaders of their party or movement, they have no message aside from "everything the current administration is doing is bad." Sorry, that doesn't cut it for me (well, and for a bigger than they'll admit swath of the population, too.) We ain't as dumb as we look. We may be "anti intellectual" (as one of the guy's relatives said), but we understand the difference between substance and the lack thereof. You may disagree with the current administration, but they're out there and they've been more or less coherent in their communications. The Democrats haven't, and I resent (just as many others do) their faulting the electorate for their lack of vision, direction, leadership, content, introspection.

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Opinionjournal is featuring a good analysis on the Democratic Party's (and modern liberalism's) message (or lack thereof) since the first half of the last century.

The "no message" interpretation of the 2004 election claims that this gap has now closed, finally and completely: Liberalism cannot become politically strong again until it stops being so theoretically weak. But Democrats need to recognize how far back, and how far down, liberalism's confusion goes. The notion that liberalism is fundamentally indecipherable was voiced frequently during the 1930s, when liberals absolutely dominated American politics.

It's some cold comfort to learn that the problem's a recent one, and that it's not just a few but many who have wondered on it and asked for some clarification.