Trying to Understand My Lessons

This is just a brief note before I take a hammer to George Will later in the afternoon.

Ed Kilgore has an insightful post on his blog New Donkey in which he lays out what the Democrats should learn from their failures in 2004. His first three conclusions are spot on: Democrats need a persuasion strategy as well as a mobilization strategy, we need to adapt to our role as an opposition party, and our campaigns need to be oriented around a few key themes rather than a laundry list of proposals.

Where I am somewhat hesitant is Kilgore's fourth suggestion:

that message must, for the foreseeable future, address the perceived weakness and incoherence of Democrats on national security issues; the perceived elitism and relativism of Democrats in terms of their understanding of the direction of American society and culture; and the perceived obsession of Democrats with a program-heavy, values-lite approach to economic and other domestic issues.

The Democrats suffer from a framing problem on national security, not a substance problem. The Democratic approach to foreign policy is so sensible as to be noncontroversial: relying on international cooperation and negotiation to pursue the war on terror, rather a ridiculous attempt at democratic imperialism. But we do need to explain this position. I think in the last election the Iraq fiasco and the Democrats' initial support of the war complicated our problem. I'm not convinced that lightning will strike twice.

I am glad that Kilgore uses the phrase "perceived" when he notes the elitism and relativism of Democrats on cultural issues. But again, his suggestion gives us very little indication of where we are supposed to go. I am still waiting for a concrete proposal from the DLC wing of the party on how to deal with cultural valence issues.

I am really not sure what Kilgore means by "program-heavy, values-lite" approaches to domestic and economic policy. Is he just reiterating the point that Democrats need to frame their positions in moral rather than programmatic terms? Fine then. But if he is saying that we need to embrace faith-based initiatives, he can take a walk. Or is he just arguing that we need to abandon the poor and working class? In any event, I await the promised Part II, where I hope he gets into more specifics.

Merry christmas. Talk to you later.