I wonder about this. There are two issues that affect each other.

First, there's participation in the political process. There are the people who don't vote that we want to bring in to the party. There are those who identify but don't participate. Those who help a little and those that engage for hours every week, even in off years. It all stems from believing that every vote counts, every hour counts, every letter, every conversation, every dollar counts. Most Americans still don't believe this, even millions who bother to vote. Red meat policies typically attract just a few people. DFA only managed to sign up 1% of the 50 million we need to win an election.

So we either need to find more flavors of red meat, or find attractions that are more social and cultural and routine to bring people into the process.

Then there's policy. Should policy flow from the participants? Or should you lead the participants to the policy? If you believe in the first, then it's a case of listening well and creating virtuous feedback cycles on issues and solutions. They may tend toward the mean, including ideas far from the traditional left.

But what if you have a better policy set? Objectively better? Then we need leaders to persuade and advocate for those ideas, and need tools of evangelism and memetic engineering to help unusual ideas become the norm, become mainstream, become the common wisdom.

In both cases, bringing people in and fostering value-based policies, we suck.

- The Democrats don't have infrastructure for bringing more people in to the political process.
- Don't have much of a political process for people to participate in, often reserved for an elite of local insiders.
- Don't have the think tanks and university research for identifying policies which work and which reflect Democratic values.
- Don't have the communications engines to bring those policies to the public in a way that works.

Lots to do. But it's a good path.

It's very simple - do Al and Bruce want people to
vote for the Democratic candidate? Or not?
I am a 67-year old retiree with a history of voting straight Democrat. I feel the party has moved so far right that it no longer represents my views - it has left me behind. Howard Dean represents my views - if he was the nominee I would vote for him. My vote belongs to me, not the DLC. ABB is not sufficent reason to vote for some candidate the DLC is trying to shove down my throat. I'm gone! Staying home!

This is a thought provoking post, but perhaps not surprisingly, this centrist agrees with Al From.

I don't accept the equation of visionary with the left, and stasis with centrist. This can certainly be true in some cases, but as I see it, there are valid aspects to both right and left--for instance social versus personal responsibility--and these have to be kept in balance.

A common model of political development is that change is always to the left, and the right serves as a brake. This model is increasingly outdated. Instead, there are different visions, and visionaries all all sides.

Obviously, it depends on what your view of "progress" is. If you assume that there is only one way to solve a problem or set of problems (e.g., more state involvement)then people advocating other kinds of policies (e.g., market-based solutions)will seem static and "unprogressive." If, on the other hand, you think there are different ways to accomplish similar goals, then you might consider people unwilling to compromise to be the barriers to progress. In any event, in a democracy policy shouldn't be simply a war between right and left and whoever best mobilizes the population wins it all. The poster talks about the Revolutionaries and what would have happened if they had been marginalized. In fact, the Declaration of Independence and the post-revolutionary period and certainly the Constitution were products of compromise. The founders, in fact, were suspcious of ideologies (which they called factions). I'm not saying that we should eliminate ideologies, but the distaste simply ignores the fact that, while there is room for visionaries, actual political progress will always require people willing to do the nitty-gritty work of pounding out real policies--and, yes, compromising.

Central problem here, Elissa, is that you equate visionaries and activists. Yet, you state no basis for accepting this. How and why is one who is an activist also a visionary? I work on local campaigns every weekend. This qualifies me as an activist. But I'm an ardent, unapologetic DLC-style Democrat. I work with people far to the left of myself. Suffice it to say, they're not all visionaries. I challenge you to flesh out the equation that you ask us to take as an article of faith.

All it requires is one passing glance of the DLC/PPI site to see that there's an abundance of imagination and creativity on a host of issues. That said, you may not agree with them all ... and I may not even agree with them all. Suffice it to say, the definitions you set forth are more than a little lacking.

The DLC piece is weaving its own illusion and I think trying to address their false dichotomy is missing the point. When they say,
"Clinton understood what too many others are prone to forget: most Democrats are doers, not ideologues. They don't vote to make a statement; they vote in hopes of getting things done. They want social progress, but they're not on a social crusade. Most Democrats aren't elitists who think they know better than everyone else; they are everyone else."
... they're describing Dean much more than Clinton. Dean is one of the least ideology-driven politicians ever to run for the presidency in my memory. He's all about pragmatism, getting things done rather than making statements, and social progress without crusades.

The DLC's view of reality is a mirage with little connection to the politics we need to work with in the actual world. They think Clinton's victories proved everything they've been saying, but that's an illusion too. Clinton was just a personally successful politician - smart, articulate, great orator, able to connect with people, hard worker - he would have won two terms with or without the DLC or its centrism. Imagine a Clinton that had some more "left" positions, say he'd opposed NAFTA and the death penalty for example, add a few of your own... he'd still have won two terms.