History and Change

What I believe we are seeing is a dramatic shift in the course of history in this country.  The previous era, when Democrats ruled unchallenged is over.  That era was based in part on a memory of WWII, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War.  That time is rapidly fading into history.  

Those calamities and triumphs served as a warning and a guide for what could go wrong and how to set things right.  Those events provided a backdrop to support the Democratic party, they made our issues relevant.  Those things happened in the last century, in the last millenium.  We need try harder to remember those times.  But aside from the Civil Rights Movement, where we have unfinished business, these events no longer serve as a basis on which we can build our party because they are no longer potent symbols within our politics.  Sept. 11 is a new symbol, it frames the new political landscape of this century.

We need to adjust, and not the kind of adjustment you get from focus groups.  We need real and substantial rethinking of what is important, who is in charge and why, who can lead us and how we can rebuild our party from the ground up.  We can't continue doing things the way we used to do them.  The alliances that formed our base have shifted dramatically, the issues we care about are different and the philosophy we once took for granted is under assault from all sides.  We have been in decline for over a decade, we must change now or perish.