The Art of Politics

Bring Out Your Dead

Does the Democrat party qualify?

It's a moot question perhaps - any time someone performs an election post-mortem, the very word intonates the presence of a dead body. Martin Peretz has a lengthy examination of the American Left, here (subscription only, blech), that postulates that if the left isn't dead, it's closing in on room temperature.

Peretz sees the death as a sort of atrophying of the mind - there are no big ideas or thinkers on the left. This is true, somewhat, but it's also a function of the Democrat party having held establishment power so long - you grow accustomed to defending it against new ideas. Having assembled a powerful lobby from civil rights to abortion rights, it's hard to see any argument without those lenses. So yes, new ideas have come from the right - neccessity was the mother of invention.

It is in this light that this kind of melancholy should be examined - change will occur within the Democrat party, just as it did in the Republican party. The patient isn't dead - just in need of a transplant.

Posted by MEC2 at February 18, 2005 11:38 PM