One of the most telling things I've read all day has just been put up over on Josh Marshall's site. It's a report from a Democratic Senate staffer. Here's the money quote:
The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.
As they say, go and read the whole thing. The author has been on the Hill since 1996. The picture he paints of a party scared of its own shadow, utterly unwilling to put its own supposed ideas into practice is infuriating.
Along the way he quotes Bill Clinton:
I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, "people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right." It's not that people are uninterested in who's right or wrong, it's that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.
This seems to me to be absolutely right. For all the talk about left and right, HCR or no HCR, this is probably the single most important message from Massachusetts. And nobody in DC is going to hear it. Indeed, Brown's victory has largely been read as a call to inaction.
I expect this November will be very, very good for the Republicans. Not only because it will be hard for Democrats to do anything to turn around the economy. But because my guess is that they won't even try. A party faced with the biggest economic crisis in three-quarters of a century whose first thought is to look for excuses not to act deserves to lose power.
Here's what I take home from all this: electing more--even "better"--Democrats won't solve this problem. The party is fundamentally off course. The problems have to do with the party's political culture. They could have one hundred votes in the Senate and they'd still come up with ways to avoid passing serious legislation. The Democratic Party needs new leadership from top to bottom.
Of course a lot of us say this around here. But I'm sick of observing the obvious. I want to start a discussion of ways that the people can take back what should be our party. I suspect that this is going to take a lot of organizing at the local level. One model is provided by the Christian Right, which has installed itself within the GOP by slowly but surely capturing the kind of local party offices previously occupied by less ideological hacks. But merely taking over local party apparatuses is not going to change the culture of the US Senate.
If anybody bothers reading any of this, please use this thread for ideas for finally giving America a real shot at the change we need.