Not to be difficult, mind you, but what is it that the Democrats see themselves running on in the next 75 days -- or, for that matter, the next two years? Health-care reform? Since many of its benefits don't kick in until 2014, it exists in the minds of millions of Americans chiefly as a nebulous threat. Financial reform? A major achievement, but largely negated by the public's perception that the Obama administration, like its predecessor, moved heaven and Earth to bail out the banks. The economy? The evidence is overwhelming that the Obama stimulus saved millions of jobs, but the economy is still the worst we've seen since the Depression, and there are almost no signs that it's going to get better.
The Democrats have a doctrinal problem: They (well, many of them) believe, with good reason, that the government must step in where the private sector fears to tread, boosting consumer demand through stimulus, subsidizing health insurance for millions of Americans who otherwise would go without. But the administration's failure to jolt a structurally dysfunctional economy back to health has discredited the very idea of governmental activism with much of the public, and not just the far right. That leaves the Democrats not as the party of government so much as the party of paralyzed government. That the Republicans are largely responsible for the paralysis isn't a big problem for a minority-status GOP so long as the public has concluded that activism per se is a bad idea.
So how do the Democrats defend and improve their brand? Is there a type of governmental activism that still retains public support -- and actually extricates us from the deepest hole we've been in since the '30s?
There is. If the Democrats focused on boosting manufacturing, with a corollary upgrade to our infrastructure, they'd tap into the only area in which the public wants a more activist government.
Let's be honest here: conservatives can support this type of thing because it plays into their nativist bigotry. So what. The various 'free trade' deals that our corporate masters have been pushing down our throats haven't exactly come from a desire to reduce racial prejudice in the world.
It's a sign of how thoroughly corporations own the political process that the Democrats in Congress and the White House, usually so stinking desperate to find something, anything, that they can do to make 'moderates' and conservative happy, never seem to get around to this issue.
Meyerson needs to be read and heavily promoted by every blogger, every person who considers himself or herself a progressive. Anyone interested in social justice and civil liberties needs to understand how necessary a strong, growing middle class is and how getting America making things again is how we bring that middle class back.
