I think the American Democratic Party has a serious ideology deficit. Without a coherent ideology, it is much more difficult to market our party. Unlike Republicans, this deficit make it difficult for Democrats to package our message into a brand that is attractive to voters.
There have been various attempts to create more ideological focus, either by forming subgroups within the party or external groups affiliated with the party. However, most of these groups have only a vague ideology and in any case, tend to be divisive rather than unifying for the party as a whole.
I think that we lost the battle for coherency of our ideology early in the 20th Century, and I do not see any way that we will be able to recover from this loss in the foreseeable future.
To me, the battle was lost when socialism and communism became dirty words in America. In fact, I think that most social/political advances that Democrats like to claim, like Social Security, Medicare, strong labor unions, the progressive income tax, and so on, are outgrowths of socialist ideology. Furthermore, there was a time, mostly lost from living memory today, when there was a socialist tide sweeping across the world, including the United States. It was exciting to be swept up in that tide, similar to the excitement now felt by Tea Baggers and by those in the nihilistic millennialist movement(s) of conservative religion. Strong socialist political groups exist in countries around the world, all tied to the long tradition of socialism that we no longer feel connected to. I believe that if we were to codify our Democratic ideology, we would find it difficult to ignore our historic connections to socialism, because socialist ideas really are, in a certain sense, our intellectual and ideological roots. (But few have tried and none succeeded to do any such codification.)
However, don't mistake my meaning: there is no way that the modern Democratic Party can use this connection. It would mean the end of the party as a major force in our politics. Both before and especially during the Cold War, the natural enemies of socialism (capitalists, a.k.a. large corporations) were very successful in demonizing all flavors of socialism. Democratic politicians played right along with this. Even FDR never framed his programs as socialism, and he probably wouldn't have succeeded if he had done so. Democrats have, at time, been even more foolishly anti-communist and anti-socialist than their Republican counterparts. The habit of condemning socialism is well-entrenched in the Democratic Party today. Not only would Republicans and independent voters turn away in disgust from a Democratic Party that embraced and capitalized on its socialist roots to clarify their ideology and goals, but most Democrats would as well.
Well, there you have it: we find ourselves chronically incapable of producing a coherent ideology that would allow us to compete successfully against the extremely coherent branding of the GOP. So we only win elections when the Republicans screw up so badly that they lose. Personally, I'd love to be able to win elections because the people strongly support our ideological goals, not just to “try something different” for the umpteenth time.
One final point: modern socialism is extremely variable and is quite different from old-school socialism. Just about everywhere you find it today (with a few appalling exceptions), it is also very different from what happened in the Soviet Union. The most important differences are: it shuns violence as a means to reach its goals; it seeks compromise and cooperation with non-socialists; it takes no position whatsoever regarding religious beliefs except that religion should have no role in the government; it can reject robotic adherence even to its own ideology (that is, it can respond dynamically to actual circumstances). Many of these differences with Soviet-style totalitarian communism actually occurred before the Russian Revolution and are very long-standing. If you haven't looked into the history of socialism, it might be difficult for you to accept that building an ideology on socialist principles really would have almost nothing to do with the Cold War era American idea of what socialism or communism is.
In other words, based solely on the logic (not the emotion) of socialism as it exists today, we could embrace an American version of this thought tradition as a base for every one of our current Democratic beliefs and goals. The difference is that we could construct ideologically consistent explanations of those goals, and tie them together into a coherent program that would be more easily described and understood, and more importantly, marketed. (That is, we could do that in a different universe, where it was still possible for anything like a majority of Americans to support a socialist-aligned politician or political party.)
Well, those are just some random thoughts I had, strictly my own ideas, for what they're worth. As I said above, I don't think any of this has any practical utility.
Greg Shenaut