A little over a week ago, I wrote a series of suggested position statements for Democratic hawks.

Kevin Drum and I agreed to have an interblog discussion, which I hope will widen to other blogs; we’ll have a back-and-forth on these and see where we agree, where we disagree, and possibly lay out some ground to all stand on together.

Here’s what I wrote:

First, we’re not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we’re done. Afghanistan will not turn into Vermont any time soon, but we will make sure that the power of the warlords is checked, and that it doesn’t collapse again. Iraq could be the leader of the Middle east, and we intend to help build it into that;

Second, we’re too dependent on ME oil. We’re going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration. We’re going to build the damn windmills off of Cape Cod;

Third, we’re going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones;

Fourth, we’re going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military by adding at least one division to the Army, and looking carefully at the allocation of all our assets to make sure that we have the resources to deal with the kind of wars that we are going to realistically face;

Fifth, we’re going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support. We will also talk about what kinds of support would be forthcoming if they did stop;

Sixth, we’re going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions;

He suggested – and I completely agree – that we add “internationalism” to the list.

So I’ll add a seventh position as soon as I can come up with one. I’ve been thinking about this issue for about a month and I just keep getting a headache; I’m trying to contain two beliefs that appear contradictory.

First, that we really do need help on a number of levels – intelligence and law enforcement data needs to be pooled; we need explicit cooperation in monitoring the international traffic in weapons and cash; and, bluntly, we don’t have and won’t soon have the manpower to deal with all the issues that we’re facing.

Second, our traditional allies don’t necessarily have parallel interests with us in this (or, more accurately, they don’t perceive that they have parallel interests). This means it won’t be easy to both do the things which we believe we need to do and to get help from other countries in doing it.

So then here’s the question – how do we re-align our interests? In part, I think we don’t, and that some of our alliances forged in the Cold War are dead letters today, and that we simply need to politely acknowledge that and then make new alliances to replace them. And in part, I think that we have to work very damn hard to get what support we can in this arena.

I do think that what I hear from the mainstream Democratic candidates on this is largely piffle and wishful thinking (and yes, I know I need to explain this).

The ShrinkLits version is this: To hand Iraqi reconstruction and the conduct of the war over to NATO, or god-forbid, the U.N. is going to be a disaster. The leading NATO countries didn’t want to go, and they certainly won’t want to stay long enough to effect the kind of change we’re discussing. The U.N. … well, just forget the U.N. for now. I’m working on a post about it in my odd moments.

So on one hand, we need help, and on the other, we’re unlikely to get it. Like I said, I keep getting a headache. But now that I’m publicly committed to taking some kind of position, I’ll just get a big bottle of Excedrin and some tea, sit down, and think it through.

And meanwhile, I’ll get something up tomorrow on Point One above.

Arthur Silber is a Los Angeles-area blogger who is hitting some hard times because of the transit strike. While I don’t see eye-to-eye with him on many things, I know that I’ve had hard times in my life, and people have stepped up and helped me through. I can’t do less.

He says he needs a thousand or so (more like two, from reading it) to get his car running again, so along with a number of other bloggers, I’m running his PayPal button, and asking my regular readers to click through and donate a few bucks (or more). A number of L.A. based bloggers and I may also use this as an excuse to get together and in so doing raise some more funds for him, if they’re needed.

…over at Armed Liberal. Here’s what I wrote in ‘I Started To Write About Veteran’s Day…‘:

…and to thank the veterans alive and dead for protecting me and mine.

And worried that what I wrote kept coming out sounding either too qualified or would be interpreted as being too nationalistic.

And I realized something about my own thinking, a basic principle I’ll set out as a guiding point for the Democrats and the Left in general as they try and figure out the next act in this drama we are in.

First, you have to love America.

This isn’t a perfect country. I think it’s the best county; I’ve debated this with commenters before, and I’ll point out that while people worldwide tend to vote with their feet, there may be other (economic) attractions that pull them. But there are virtues here which far outweigh any sins. And I’ll start with the virtue of hope.

The hope of the immigrants, abandoning their farms and security for a new place here.

The hope of the settlers, walking across Death Valley, burying their dead as they went.

The hope of the ‘folks’ who moved to California after the war.

The hope of the two Latino kids doing their Computer Science homework at Starbucks.

I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her…from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants… better watch out.

I don’t get a clear sense that my fellow liberals feel the same way. And if so, why should ‘the folks’ follow them? Why are we worthy of the support of a nation that we don’t support? So let me suggest an axiom for the New Model Democrats:

America is a great goddamn country, and we’re going to both defend it from those who attack it and fight to make it better.

And for everyone who is going to comment and remind me that ‘all liberals already do that’ … no they don’t. Not when the chancellor has to intervene at U.C. Berkeley to get ‘permission’ for American flags to be flown and red-white-and-blue ribbons to be worn. Not when the strongest voices in liberalism give only lip service to responding to an attack on our own soil.

Loving this country isn’t the same thing as jingoism; it isn’t the same thing as imperialism; it isn’t the same thing as blind support of the worst traits of our government or our people.

It starts with recognizing the best traits, and there are a hell of a lot of them. They were worth defending in my father’s time, and they are worth defending today.

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

It’s been a year since I wrote that, and a lot has happened, close to me and far away. We’ve gone to war, and are facing a difficult, bloody, and uncertain time, brought even closer to me by the fact that my oldest son has committed to join the military.

Many of my liberal friends took me to task for writing the piece above, feeling that I had ignored their real and deeply felt patriotism. I think in many cases it’s true, but I also think that in the cosmopolitanism at the core of contemporary liberal thought is the germ of something that finds patriotism atavistic, that sees it as of a piece with extreme nationalism, and that hopes that it can gently be put out to pasture.

I’ve talked a bit about what patriotism isn’t:

I’ll define patriotism as “love of country”. Both the parents above (all three of them, actually) claim to “love” their children. But to blindly smile and clean up when your child smashes plates on the floor is not an act of love. And blindly smiling and waving flags when your country does something wrong is not an act of patriotism.

But…there is a point where criticism, even offered in the guise of love, moves past the point of correction and to the point of destruction. It’s a subtle line, but it exists. And my friend (who is less of a friend because I can’t begin to deal with her fundamentally abusive parenting) is destroying her child. And there are liberals who have adopted an uncritically critical view of America. Who believe it to have been founded in genocide and theft, made wealthy on slave labor and mercantilist expropriation, to be a destroyer of minorities, women, the environment and ultimately they argue, itself.

I’m sorry but their profession of love for America is as hollow to me as that mother’s profession of love for her son. Are those things true? As facts, they are an incomplete account of this country’s history. As a worldview, they are destructive and self-consuming.

I believe that a clear rediscovery of liberal patriotism – the reconnection between progressive politics and a love of the American ideal – is the key to rebuilding a liberalism that can both serve American interests and compete effectively with corporate conservatism.

I’ve referenced my old professor John Schaar’s great essay ‘The Case for Patriotism’ before. It’s available (excerpted) here, and I want to use it to talk a bit about what I mean by patriotism. When I knew him, Schaar was a true New Leftie; he stood far to my left on a number of issues. But he was also a true patriot, and he had a unique and useful vision of American patriotism that I want to talk about here:

“Patriotism is unwelcome in many quarters of the land today, and unknown in many others. There is virtually no thoughtful discussion of the subject, for the word has settled, in most people’s minds, deep into a brackish pond of sentiment where thought cannot reach. Politicians and members of patriotic associations praise it, of course, but official and professional patriotism too often sounds like nationalism, patriotism’s bloody brother. On the other hand, patriotism has a bad name among many thoughtful people, who see it as a horror at worst, a vestigial passion largely confined to the thoughtless at best: as enlightenment advances, patriotism recedes. The intellectuals are virtually required to repudiate it as a condition of class membership. The radical and dropout young loathe it. Most troublesome of all, for one who would make the argument I intend to make, is the face that both the groups that hate and those that glorify patriotism largely agree that it and nationalism are the same thing. I hope to show that they are different things–related, but separable.

Opponents of patriotism might agree that if the two could be separated then patriotism would look fairly attractive. But the opinion is widespread, almost atmospheric, that the separation is impossible, that with the triumph of the nation-state nation. Nationalism has indelibly stained patriotism: the two are warp and woof. The argument against patriotism goes on to say that, psychologically considered, patriot and nationalist are the same: both are characterized by exaggerated love for one’s own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders. In addition, advanced political opinion holds that positive, new ideas and forces–e.g., internationalism, universalism; humanism, economic interdependence, socialist solidarity–are healthier bonds of unity, and more to be encouraged than the ties of patriotism. These are genuine objections, and they are held by many thoughtful people.”

I think that Schaar exactly targets the weaknesses of patriotism that I criticize above; on one hand, those who embrace it would use it as a basis for blind love of one’s collectivity combined with equally blind contempt for others’. On the other, having ‘moved past’ patriotism is almost a core requirement for inclusion in the modern, NPR-driven thinking class here in the U.S. as well as abroad. The EU, for instance, is explicitly trying to break down old patriotisms into a new, unified, one.

Why is patriotism important? Is it because a love of place matters? Schaar talks about love of one’s home or one’s city as the two forms of traditional patriotism, and he also talks about why patriotism matters to me:

“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot, defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life, the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The conscious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts, grateful to the people and places through which they come, and determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it unspoiled to those who will come after.

But such primary experiences are nearly inaccessible to us. We are not taught to define our lives by our debts and legacies, but by our rights and opportunities. Robert Frost’s stark line, “This land was ours, before we were the land’s.” condenses the whole story of American patriotism. We do not and cannot love the land the way the Greek and Navaho loved theirs. The graves of some of our ancestors are here, to be sure, but most of us would be hard pressed to find them: name and locate the graves of your great-grandparents.”

Despite our disconnection from our ancestry and ancestral places, Schaar and I believe that we can be ‘reverent’ as Americans. How? He tells us:

“But if instinctive patriotism and the patriotism of the city cannot be ours, what can be? Is there a type of patriotism peculiarly American: if so, is it anything more than patriotism’s violent relative nationalism?

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.” [emphasis added]

We are American patriots because we have consciously decided to share the principles that make America – the principles most essentially set out in our founding documents, and over time spread within America to those who had been excluded at the founding. It is our devotion to liberty and our self-conception as citizens that makes us Americans, not an accident of birth or race.

My neighbors to the south are a couple born in Iran. My neighbors to the north were born in Mexico. And each of them is absolutely and completely American.

Our patriotism is an inclusive one, which does not define us as a ‘people’ by where we live or the ancestral symbols that we worship (that’s part of why I can be tolerant of those who fly the Confederate Flag), but by the principles to which we adhere.

Our patriotism is hopeful, because it is tied to the future – but it must also be reverent in tying us to our past. That is a patriotism we can define, and defend. Schaar talks about what Lincoln once said:

“One more statement, this time from the young Lincoln. Again the occasion is significant. Lincoln had just been elected to the Illinois legislature, and he accepted an invitation to address the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield: an occasion of beginning, then, like the speech in Independence Hall. Lincoln chose as his theme, “the perpetuation of our political institutions.”

He opened the discourse by reminding his listeners that the men of the Revolution had fought to found a polity dedicated to liberty and self-government. Those principles were safe while the founders lived for they knew the price that had been paid for them. The scenes and memories of the struggle were visible to their eyes and lively to their memories. Many individuals and families treasured and retold the stories of sacrifice and danger. But now these scenes are distant. We who came after the struggle and had no part in it cannot see it in the scars on our bodies, cannot even relive it through the eyes and voices of the actors. Being distant, we easily forget why those others fought and died, and we cannot justly value the gift they gave to us. Our forgetting opens the path to talented persons of great ambition who, if they cannot gain fame by preserving the principles of the founding, will gain fame by wrecking them. Only if the founding principles are kept alive and pure in the minds and hearts of the citizenry shall we be safe from perverted ambition–or, indeed, safe from ourselves. We must, then, see as the chief task of political life the task of political education: inculcate respect or valid laws as a “political religion”; retell on every possible occasion the story of the struggle; teach tirelessly the principles of the founding. The only guardian of the compact is an informed citizenry, and the first task of leadership is the formation of such a citizenry.

This is a conception of patriotic devotion that fits a nation large and heterogeneous as our own. It sets a mission and provides a standard of judgment. It tells us when we are acting just- and it does not confuse martial fervor with dedication to country. Lincoln also reminded us that the covenant is not a static legacy, a gift outright, but a burden and a promise. The nation consists only in repeated acts of remembrance and renewal of the covenant through changing circumstances. Patriotism here is more than a frame of mind. It is also activity guided by and directed toward the mission established in the founding covenant. This conception of political membership also decisively transcends the parochial and primitive fraternities of blood and race, for it calls kin all who accept the authority of the covenant. And finally, this covenanted patriotism assigns America a teaching mission among the nations, rather than a superiority over a hostility toward them. This patriotism is compatible with the most generous humanism.”

Defined. Defended. As it should be.

We don’t need to battle the forces of the Islamists because they are Muslim, or because they are foreign. We need to battle them because they explicitly intend to attack the foundation of what makes us Americans, and because they mean to take the things which others in the world want to learn from America – liberty, justice, equality – and smash them. We need to battle them in the arena of politics and ideas most of all. But the space for that battle must be created on the ground, through a contest of will and weapons.

Which brings me back to Veteran’s Day this Tuesday, and my appreciation for the men and women who have, are, and will defend our covenant, our American ideal. I said it last year, and I’ll say it every year from now on:

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

— UPDATES —

* Guest blogger Rob Lyman follows up with The Moral Duty of Tribal Patriotism, exploring the meaning and scope of the duty we have as citizens to ensure each other’s safety and security.

* Armed Liberal’s Selectve Service post picks up on one of the responses to Rob’s essay, and on a blog post on Crooked Timber. He sees them as excellent examples of an ‘opt-out’ mentality that seeks the benefits of modern liberal society without getting its hands dirty, and values moral purity and self-satisfaction above all.

There’s a great discussion on Democratic politics and strategy started by Chris Bowers going on over at the Daily Kos. I don’t at all agree with his prescription, and will get a post together on it, but I think he’s asking all the right questions.

Read this article on CNN or this one at the Charleston Post and Courier (intrusive registration required) about a weapons-drawn sweep by local police looking for drug dealers at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, S.C., in which children in a hallway were arrested (sorry, when you’re detained by a LEO(Law Enforcement Officer), it meets the standards of an arrest) without probable cause while the police searched them and their possessions for drugs with a dog.

My primary response is to project my reaction had it been my son’s high school, and had my son faced officers with weapons in low-ready who told him to sit with his back to the wall and put his hands on his head.

It wouldn’t be pretty. it would probably start with a lawsuit against the school, the department, and the local government, and end with a movement to recall any and all of the local officials to whom the police chief of that agency reports. They could fire him, and maybe then I’d back off…
As someone who shoots, I’ve learned a healthy respect for what it means to have a loaded weapon out and in my hand. I have trained with enough LEO’s and military to have heard the horror stories – a SWAT officer in Ventura County mistakenly shot and killed by his partner in the course of a raid; a young actor at a Halloween party shot and killed by an officer who saw him holding an all-too-real prop gun.

I’ve heard about accidents in which Negligent Discharges (there are no Accidental Discharges) put rounds into handcuffed suspects, and accidents in training where experienced officers accidentally shoot into the ground, sending lethal spall and ricochet fragments scattering through a room.

And that’s only on the partial issue of the decision by the officers to draw their weapons.

The notion that they could cordon off a part of a school, detain everyone there, and on unsubstantiated rumor, search each of them is outrageous. It violates everything I know about our relation as citizens – not suspects – to the power of the state.

Fortunately, others are unhappy as well.

As police struggled to calm a growing firestorm over their drug raid at Stratford High School, state investigators Friday began probing why officers charged into a crowded hallway with guns drawn while students cowered in fear.

After watching a surveillance videotape of the Wednesday raid, Solicitor Ralph Hoisington asked the State Law Enforcement Division to look into possible police misconduct in the operation. He called for the probe after consulting with Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with law enforcement addressing a problem in a high school, but I have serious concerns about the need for restraining students and drawing weapons,” Hoisington said. “I don’t want to send my child to a school and find out guns are drawn on them. I certainly don’t want them hog-tied as part of a sweeping investigation.”

Of course, some don’t see the problem:

Others, however, say the community needs to trust the police to take whatever action is necessary to address a drug problem that clearly exists in the schools.

“I’m sure students were frightened, but the harm they’re in with drug dealers is far greater than the police coming in,” said Goose Creek resident Judy Watkins. “I trust them to do what’s right. I appreciate what they did.”

Hope she waves at the Stasi as they drive by.

Personally, I hope someone sues. I’ll even try and stir up some folks in the tactical shooting community to testify as expert witnesses on their behalf.

And maybe we can do something about the insane proliferation of aggressive overuse by police of tactics appropriate in confronting an armed or dangerous suspect when they are pulling over a family in a station wagon.

[Update: Instapundit has a good roundup on this as well.]

When Yglesias, Reynolds, and I agree, is the world in danger? I sure hope not…

Matthew Yglesias (who links approvingly to my post on the ebbing of downballot Democrats, and who wrote a thoughtful and polite email concerning our recent contremps) has a post in which he points to a column by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and links it to the following theory:

To make a long story short, the president is trying to cover his right flank with tough talk (i.e., the National Endowment for Democracy speech) while, in fact, withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, Democrats who do not agree with this strategy are being unfairly castigated as cut-and-runners.

Now this is my personal nightmare – one of the ones where you’re in the room, invisible and unhearable as something horrible goes down.

Instapundit shares my concern:

[Megan McArdle] But there are actually rumors that the White House is contemplating accelerating our departure, which seems lunatic to even discuss when the country doesn’t appear to have a functioning anything.

[Instapundit] I hope those rumors are false. Because if the White House — by which, in this case, I mean George W. Bush — decides to drop the ball on this, I’ll probably vote Democratic, even if Kucinich is the nominee. A half-hearted war is the very, very worst kind. I think that Bush understands that. He’d better.

Look, for me it’s simple. I’m willing to overlook a lot of what I don’t like about the Bush Administration because I believe that he’s the only candidate whom I believe (today) is resolute about this whole war thing.

The second it looks like he’s planning to ‘declare victory and leave,’ I can promise you that Atrios will look like Karl Rove in comparison to me.

That’s because I’m convinced that decision leads almost certainly to nukes in the U.S. and then the real possibility of a genocidal war abroad.

So let’s start with this:

Howard Dean says “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks…”

Then in the debate, he’s challenged to apologize:

My question is for Governor Dean.

I recently read a comment that you made where you said that you wanted to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. When I read that comment, I was extremely offended.

Could you explain to me how you plan on being sensitive to needs and issues regarding slavery and African-Americans, after making a comment of that nature?

(APPLAUSE)

…and doesn’t.
Then, he says that

…southerners have to quit basing their votes on “race, guns, God and gays.”

Then, today, he apologizes for the Dixie Flag remark:

One day after his Democratic presidential rivals demanded that he apologize for his remarks, which they called offensive to blacks and southern whites, Dean for the first time expressed remorse. “I regret the pain that I may have caused either to African American or southern white voters,” he said in New York. What he had hoped to do, Dean said, was provoke a “painful” dialogue about race among all voters, including those displaying Confederate flags. But, he said, “I started this discussion in a clumsy way.”

Now, personally, as noted in a comment, I’m no fan of the Confederate Battle Flag. As I noted, “Now personally, I detest the Stars and Bars as a symbol of the most treasonous act in our nation’s history.” (note that Clayton Cramer has a longer post on the Stars and Bars). And here I have to split my argument and try and touch on two not completely unrelated points.

The first one is about the practice of electioneering, and the way that and natural human impulses seem to get smoothed out – by handlers, staff, and reporters, I’d imagine. Dean said something controversial – but arguably not untrue – was publicly pounded by his opponents, doubtless counseled by his horrified pollsters and staff – and backed away from his statement like a teenager from a sink full of dirty dishes.

Now what that says about him – that he’s sadly no more ‘genuine’ than the balance of the machined products of the electoral process, and that his vaunted backbone is, in fact quite flexible when key interest groups are involved – is of moderate interest in deciding who one might support in the election.

And what it says about our electoral process – that we boil the flavor and individuality – and backbone out of our candidates, and then wonder why they’re made of mush – is probably the most serious issue.

Much like movie sequels, where the energy and imagination of the creators is slowly leached out by the legions of ‘supporters,’ we get a vapid echo of the strong person the candidate once must have been.

The second one is about the social balance of the Democratic Party specifically. I’ve felt for a while that the Democrats have lost the pickup-driving blue- and pink-collar workers in their pursuit of the Skybox crowd, organized (typically public) labor, and identity politicians. Max Sawicky has a insanely great post (as in really smart until he insanely steps up for Kucinich):

As public policy, we can criticize hanging the Stars and Bars on the Courthouse without futile attempts to marginalize individuals for their own choices in this vein.

What’s at stake is whether we are going to have class politics in the U.S. Cultural conservatism, which in the South can include some type of sentimentality for the Lost Cause, or resentment of what is perceived as excess in the name of civil rights, should not be treated as an enemy ideology. I am not talking about adherence to segregation in public accommodations, denial of the right to vote, or other obvious breaches of democracy that nobody in good faith could endorse.

Coalitions are about reaching understandings through dialogue and/or compromise with people of different views. The Democratic Party needs to be a coalition of working people. It needs to ease up on cultural and social liberalism. I mean fetishes about gun control and tobacco. It needs to stop pretending that Southern whites are more racist than other people. It needs to welcome the “seamless web” Catholics who oppose both abortion and the death penalty. It needs to stop overselling rehabilitation and underselling punishment. It needs to find ways of establishing reasonable environmental regulation other than on the backs of workers. What it endorses as a party is ideally the outcome of a rational debate and compromise on these issues. For some, one or another such compromise could be a ‘deal-breaker.’ So be it. That’s the process we need. The constant and lodestar should be an unwavering commitment to the living standards of working people, and opposition to the corporativist, war-mongering ways of the Republican Party.

Without class politics, the Democratic Party becomes cats-paw of the big donors, a party of well-to-do white liberals lording it over second-class minorities organized by race and ethnicity. The economic policy of such a party boils is neo-liberalism (balanced budgets, free trade, smaller government, and Federal Reserve supremacy in monetary policy), with tokenism and crumbs for the minorities.

I’m not sure I’m buying his exact prescription, but I do think he has the disease diagnosed exactly correctly.

I think the title says it all.

Middle Guy, TG and I saw it.

People laughed – at parts that weren’t supposed to be funny.

Lawrence Fishburne, who I respect beyond all belief, had that anxious Michael Caine “I’m just here getting a paycheck” look in his eyes for the whole film.

Believe me, any movie you imagined this to be is much, much better than this.

It’s almost as bad as ‘Signs.’

OK, I’m missing something here.

My party, the Democrats, just lost three statehouses in the last 60 days, and are on track to possibly lose another in a bit over a week.

The smart Democratic blogs … Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Daily KOS … not a peep about this or what, if anything it means.

My reaction is twofold:

First, I think that the Democrats may have suddenly taken a page from hapless L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who has believed for years that if he can only buy one great player, he can have a contending team.
Maybe it is all about “Beat Bush.” The problem is that you get there by growing and winnowing candidates at the lower levels…mayors, Congressmembers, Senators, Governors – and my sense is that the national Party isn’t doing a good job there. Look one level down from the current crop of Democratic contenders – ignoring how strong or weak you may believe them to be – and where are the contenders for the next cycle? I’m not an expert, but I don’t see a lot of interestng candidates until I get down to the mayoral level, and that’s bad. Politics is a team sport, and you have to play more than one position.

For the Democrats (who admittedly won some statehouses last time around, while losing the Senate and House), I wonder if it’s entirely too concentrated at the top.

Second, I’m inclined to ask “What has to happen, exactly, in order for us to panic?” In the polls, each of the plausible Democratic candidates is running behind the numbers of plain old “don’t like Bush”. We lost the Senate and House. We lost California, because the party wouldn’t stand up to a corrupt and barely competent incumbent and challenge him, either in the election or in the recall. A strong Democrat – a Feinstein, Panetta, or even an Angiledes – would be Governor now. We lost Kentucky and Mississippi, and the Republicans in Louisiana have to be smelling blood this morning.

And no one on the left is willing to sit down and go “Huh. Wonder what we’re doing wrong.”

Can I make some suggestions?

Well, my part of the presentation got done this morning at 3:00, and I’m up and don’t have much to do until this afternoon, so a bit of blogging and then back to reading documents.

Kevin Drum and I have agreed to do a cross-blog discussion, which I hope will widen, starting on the policy positions I took in my piece chastening the Democrats. We’ll work out some structure for it over the next day or so and maybe start it next week (if that works for him).

Tristero and I have also been having a damn civil email dialog, and have cooked up something which I then proposed to Kevin, and which he reasonably shot down as impossibly burdensome. But…I’m thinking we might try to make it into a collective project, and so a feasible one. And if nothing else if it fails, it will fail spectacularly.

Here’s what I’m thinking about as a start.

An encyclopedia of information on the policies of each of the major candidates in a specific set of areas. Pulling together position papers, speeches, news clips, etc., in one place so that people can step up to meet Tristero’s Challenge and actually read primary sources.

Now, I’ll point out that position papers do not policy make, and policy does not action determine. But it’s a start…

What I’d like to do is invite partisan supporters of each candidate to email me, and we’ll pick one person who will in essence be a ‘librarian’ for each of the major candidates (Clark, Dean, Gephart, Kerry, and Bush) who will receive information from reader or other sources, and then will forward links to Joe & me. We’ll then create an updated-weekly post around several areas that we think are interesting so that readers can link directly to all the current position papers and speeches of each candidate around a topic.

Call it ‘open source’ journalism.

Let’s start with the basic question: Stupid or Useful? Answer below in the comments.