Hoping to emulate conservative success, Dem young guns

[a kennedy]

launch journal of ideas:

Reflecting a demand for new ideas in the Democratic Party, two young intellectuals have founded a quarterly periodical modeled after influential conservative journals like Commentary and The National Interest.

Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny, both speechwriters and authors who have worked within the New Democrat movement, will launch Democracy: A Journal of Ideas today at the National Press Club. They will appear on a panel with Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, American Prospect Editor Michael Tomasky and Francis Fukuyama of The American Interest.

“We think that the party is rich in tactics and poor in ideas,” said Baer, who worked as a speechwriter for former Vice President Al Gore. “What we really need for long-term success is deep, serious thinking about how we’re going to apply long-held progressive values to new challenges.”

For months, Baer and Cherny have argued that Democrats were losing the battle of ideas to well-established conservative policy journals.

“I had started thinking about where all of the conservative ideas, for better or worse, had come from,” Cherny said. “Every big idea — Social Security privatization, supply-side economics, preemption, faith-based initiatives — had come out of one of their journals in their intellectual infrastructure.”

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Campaign/062006_journal.html

(edit to clear up topic)

[datasuspect]

1. "conservative success?"

emulate?

hmmm . . .

[Teaser]

2. You think they haven't been successful?

Christ Almighty, they've basically controlled the political discussion since the late eighties.

[datasuspect]

3. i'm more or less talking about the implication

and btw, the democratic party WAS successful in 2000 and 2004.

many of us were illegally disenfranchised.

[Teaser]

4. That's not the kind of success talked about, though

in the generation of *ideas* we've been behind the Repugs for years. Most of our greatest achievements (preserving social security, for example) are rear guard actions designed to defend against Republican ideas (privatizing social security). The last big idea we tried to advance was national health care and that was 13 years ago now.

[Skidmore]

5. I disagree with this statement by Cherny.

“Every big idea — Social Security privatization, supply-side economics, preemption, faith-based initiatives — had come out of one of their journals in their intellectual infrastructure.”

All of those "ideas" came not from their intellectual infrastructure, but from playing on the anger and hatred of groups of people who think that they are owed exclusivity and excess in society--the weathly, the business elite, and the hyper-religious.