Welcome back, DLC

Your intrepid prestidigitator told you the Bill Clinton era Democratic Leadership Council would return and they have. Andrei Cherny, author of "The Next Deal" (a book effusively praised by Newt Gingrich), writes in the NYT about why the Dems lost the last two big elections. He's not settling for the easy stuff like a sighing Al Gore, either. Check this out:

"Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What we don't have, and what we sorely need, is what President George H. W. Bush so famously derided as "the vision thing" - a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.

"For most of the 20th century, Democrats had a bold vision: we would use government programs to make Americans' lives more stable and secure. In 1996, President Clinton told us this age had passed, that "the era of big government is over." He was right - the world had changed. But the party has not answered the basic question: What comes next?"

Cherny is right about the question of vision and thematic argument. The Democratic party has been in need of a good soul search ever since McGovern won the nomination in 1972. The social issues cost them a large part of their natural constituency. If they turn right, even halfway, on abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public square, and national defense, they'll prove extraordinarily difficult to defeat.