What’s true for hurricanes is true for the Democratic Party.
After a disaster, it takes a while to regroup, really get a handle on what went wrong. Men and women take some time to absorb new realities.
A few interesting think pieces have come out of the left and center-left, recently, trying to digest what is wrong with the Democrats that they lost so much ground last year — even to someone like Donald Trump. To serious people, the “Russians did it” and “the Deplorables!” are not exactly winners.
Hillary Clinton may be stuck in that mode, but the Democratic Party needn’t be.
The more radical response came from John B. Judis, whose name was big in lefty magazines when I was young. His article “The Socialism America Needs Now,” in his old stomping grounds, The New Republic, tried to make the case for a vague leftism that could be called socialism, if you stretch the term, emphasizing bigger government without seeming too . . . Marxist.
Meanwhile, Mark Lilla has a new book of a somewhat more perceptive nature. Interviewed in Salon, Lilla makes much of the fact that while “smack in the middle” of the GOP’s website “is a list of 11 principles” . . . the Democratic Party could sport “no such statement.” Just a bunch of interest groups.
Interesting. Because, today, I went to GOP.com and saw no such principles list. But I did find a lot of Trump stuff . . . and a bunch of links to “identity groups.”
Talk about regrouping!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
