Is Bayh too conservative for the dems in '08?

[Beet]

Let me interject here for a moment. Is the debate we are currently having not similiar to the type of debate that would have gone on in the GOP in the 1930s-70s? What kind of debate is this?

The dichotomy being presented on his board is a one-dimensional affair between liberal-left and moderate-left: the Dean forces of reaction (note: irony) vs an embrace of a sort of populist center. The problem with this dichotomy is that no matter whether you're a moderate or liberal Democrat, there's a trade-off here, and the trade-off is that between breadth and passion.

The problem with Clintonian Democrats is that while Clinton was able to form a broad coalition, he wasn't able to form a very deep one. Anyone who was following politics closely at the height of the Clinton centrism knows that while Democrats partisanly supported Clinton, all the thunder of that era was coming from the right. School reform... social security privatization... new media... religious revivalism... where the conservatives failed, it was their failure to push their agenda fast enough. Where Clinton prevailed, it was a victory at preventing conservative dominance, not a victory at moving in the Democratic direction. In short, Republicans were more passionate than the Democrats... more Republicans identified (and identify) as conservative than Democrats as liberal. Why should Democrats identify as liberal? Their own Democratic president repudiated liberalism, and the only ones who kept the 'banner' of that vocabulary were increasingly not liberals but simply leftists. Some Democrats of that era must have unconsciously felt that they were able to accept the status quo, and were satisfied as long as American politics remained a stalemate.

But to the astute observer, it was apparent that when you have one side that is committed, argumentative, studious, and constant attack against a perceived establishment, and the other that is tied to a passionless holding position, that at some point the barbarians will be at the gate, and when they barbarians are at the gate you know they will break through it. The rise of GOP in electoral politics in the decade of the 2000s should not have been a complete surprise to those who saw the passion of the conservative movement in the late 1990s and the comparative collapse of passionate liberalism. In truth people are malleable to what their leaders, and what evidence reveals, no matter which party of ideology they claim to be from. A party that does not believe in itself cannot win anything. And the msot basic fact is that passion breeds work, and work is what creates platforms, movements, and victories....