Odd, I could swear I've read that article before, but it says it was published today.
Anyway, there is no hope for the Democrat party, because the only people who see clearly what their problem is are Republicans. The Democrats, as is their nature, will assume the truth is 100% the opposite of what the Republicans think, and thus head in exactly the wrong direction.
Need proof? "Chairman Dean"
I had to cut this article to meet FR rules. At the bottom of the article at the OpinionJournal site, they say the article previously appeared in the Claremont Review of Books.
Ruy Teixeira says that after 2004, "the bigger question is: What do the Democrats stand for?" Here's a better and bigger question still: What do the Democrats stand against? Tell us, if indeed it's true, that Democrats don't want to do for America what social democrats have done for France or Sweden. Tell us that the stacking of one government program on top of the other is going to stop, if indeed it will, well short of a public sector that absorbs half the nation's income and extensively regulates what we do with the other half. Explain how the spirit of live-and-let-live applies, if indeed it does, to everyone equally--to people who take family, piety and patriotism seriously, not merely to people whose lives and outlooks are predicated on regarding them ironically.Unfortunately, I think I can answer the question about what they're for and against: they're for election victories and the endless accumulation of power. They crave power more than a midas wants money, more than a glutton wants food. Liberalism is just a smoke screen that's supposed to be vague enough to sound good to a majority of voters.Until those questions are answered, until Americans have confidence about the limits liberalism will establish and observe, it's hard to see when the Democratic narrative will again have a happy ending.
Unfortunately, those who crave power aren't all on the left -- we need to watch all sides of the political spectrum.