The New York Times > Magazine > The New Boss

"The big conversation going on in Democratic Washington at the moment, at dinner parties and luncheons and think-tank symposia, revolves around how to save the party. The participants generally fall into two camps of unequal size. On one side, there is the majority of Democrats, who believe that the party's failure has primarily been one of communication and tactics. By this thinking, the Democratic agenda itself (no to tax cuts and school vouchers and Social Security privatization; yes to national health care and affirmative action) remains as relevant as ever to modern workers. The real problem, goes this line of thinking, is that the party has allowed ruthless Republicans to control the debate and has failed to sufficiently mobilize its voters. A much smaller group of prominent Democrats argues that the party's problems run deeper -- that it suffers, in fact, from a lack of imagination, and that its core ideas are more an echo of government as it was than government as it ought to be."

I'm not sure that the second group is that much smaller. They did get the last two Democratic Presidents elected. The big ideas have been done in many ways. Where to next? The GOP only offer reforms of Democratic programs of the past. The last big idea from Washington may have been the Civil Rights legislation. If you put the 100 smartest people in a room, what would they say the next big idea should be? Globalization? Environmental damage? Healthcare crisis? Where's the moral issue in this whole thing?