Moderately improved from before, taking into account suggestions
from before, this is my new synthesis of bedrock Democratic belief. The original was born a month after the election, when the dKos community was wondering "what should we believe in" and "what should our message be."
Modern Democratic thought has been propelled by the Great Depression and the New Deal, though many people today fail to realise this. The Great Depression, and Pres. Hoover's handling of it, proved a number of things. These things, combined (in the last two points) with our reading of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, make up what most Democrats believe today.
1)Business and the private sector at large cannot be trusted to self-regulate and operate in the public interest. (See Enron)
2)What regulations business can come up with will be self-interested and likely detrimental to the public good. (See California Energy Utilities)
(Rest of the list after the break)
3)Private, non-governmental institutions are, by themselves, unable to meet the needs of the public in any crisis, sudden or prolonged. (See Hoover, Great Depression)
4)Government, especially the Federal Government, is the only entity with the resources, power, and mandate to actively persue the public good, either by providing public services or regulating other entities, especially the private sector. (See Anti-trust, FDR, New Deal)
5)Because of the immense power that Government wields, it must not only protect the right of individual citizens to oppose it, but also be wholly accountable to the citizens in whose interests it wields power. (See First Amendment, Free and Fair Elections)
6)So as to prevent a tyrrany of the majority, the citizenship of said Government must be well-educated and have free and ample access to information. (First Amendment, FOIA, et. al.)
Part of this list embodies the idea that the current state of affairs can always be better, and that Government is a key tool in making such happen. But, more importantly I think, the overriding idea is that people, by and large, should have a mechanism to either protect themselves from the very worst or to mitigate its effects, and that this mechanism is the Government. It seems to me that the inability of the party to communicate these key ideas is what is hobbling it: rather than focusing on this core set of ideas, the Democrats have become very issue-centric. Our platform shouldn't be a list; rather it should be an expression of our thought that government is a source of good.