Reply #66: That's too easy, Will

[Lexingtonian]

I agree that it's going to be a long and serious internal argument. But if you want this Party to overcome the internal obstacles that are fatal to its success in the present, this election is the (somewhat coincidental) center and event in which all the stumbling blocks were made obvious.

In some sense the advice you're giving here seems counterproductive to me. Activist Democratic selfrighteousness and activist Democratic entitlement to or neediness for power absent coherent principle are, to me, the most important subjects of it all.

You may be right, maybe that's not where to focus on for the time being. In any case, Kerry is off somewhere dealing with the swing voter Republican bias on foreign policy, it's nonetheless the innards of the Party and its activists that have to cast off the Old Democrat and New Left methodological limitations.

(Btw, there's a great book to be written in the next year or two about what that 'new' coherent Democratic central principle is and explaining fully how it applies.)