William Burton writes:

Now, making economic issues the focus of the Democratic Party won’t be easy, but it’s doable. The Republicans will try to make elections about the social policies that win them votes, not about the economic policies that even most of their supporters don’t agree with (*), but that won’t be the biggest problem. The biggest problem will be untangling Democratic policies from the web of donors who keep the party funded.
Right now, the economic polices that would win the most support for the Democratic Party also happen to be the ones that their donors agree with least. As long as the banks, insurance companies, and drug companies can buy themselves influence from Democratic politicians, they will (even if they’d really prefer Republicans to win). As long as they continue to buy influence, the Democrats will be unable to take the economic positions that will win them electoral majorities. Of course, the Democrats also need money to win elections, and they get this money from their donors. There’s a kinda chicken-and-the-egg dynamic going. That’s why I said this would be tougher than fighting off the Republicans’ efforts to make every election about Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion (with their modern sidekicks Guns, God, and Gays).
The most obvious change would be to the positions Democratic candidates take on economic issues. No longer can they try to be marginally better than Republicans while trying mightily not offend anyone who might write them a check. Playing it safe and refusing to take a stand allows the opponents to pick the issues to do battle with. This is how we’ve allowed the Republicans to position themselves as the Lower Taxes Party when they’re really the Lower Taxes for Corporations and Rich Folks Party. The Democrats haven’t put forth any realistic proposals other than opposition to tax cuts (never a winner electorally). Instead, they should’ve put forth their own proposal that dramatically lowered the tax burden on the middle and working classes while doing next to nothing for the top end. Unfortunately, plans like that don’t get pushed by people trying to keep their donors happy above all else.
I’d also suggest a change in image for the Democrats, but not anything superficial. The Republicans have gotten a lot of mileage out of kicking the so-called “liberal elites” who are supposedly trying to make life hell for white male heterosexuals like myself. Now, a lot of that is pure bullshit and a bunch more is due to the confusion of the academic left (which is virtually powerless in real life, but tends to make itself a good target) and the political left as typified by unions and other power brokers within the Democratic Party. There’s not much that anyone can do about leftist intellectuals pontificating and right-wing talking heads making it seem as if they represent the Democratic Party. We can, however, craft an alternate image for the party that revolves around family and community. That’s the kind of thing that appeals to people regardless of their race or religion (and it’ll make the talking heads look like the idiots they are when they try to say that Democrats are against families).

Now he’s dead-on-target on his analysis here and in the balance of the post that I’ve clipped. The New Deal Democratic alliance was shattered by George Wallace and Jane Fonda, and while the ex-partners eye each other with a mixture of melancholy and anger … kind of like ex-husbands and wives … the reality is that the issues which once held them together don’t any more.
So the Democrats are left looking for a core constituency. But they have three: Rich liberals, who value their self-image as ‘just’, African-Americans who know that many of the programs designed for social redress have become giant patronage machines, and the public unions, as noted here by Rob Lyman.
The Democratic ‘investors’ (donors), invest to secure their own positions. The bigger voter audiences in the middle have interests that often conflict with the Democratic ‘investors’, and sadly, when put to the choice, the Party goes with the ‘investors’ almost every time.
Now I think there’s a big constituency out there…the single moms making $30K and barely getting by, the two-income families who realize that they’ll never make more than $25K together, all the way up to the middle-class families making $100K and happy to own a home, but who realize that they can save for retirement or send the kids to college, but not both.
Social and economic policies aren’t aimed at these people. And yet, they are the ones who the ‘invisible hand’ of globalization is hitting the hardest – by limiting opportunity, by exporting jobs, by capping salaries.
I’m not an isolationist. King Canute’s lesson to his advisors has sunk in. But we have to look at how we will manage the changes in the economy, if in no other way than by cushioning the impacts on those who can least afford it.
The problems of the very poor are equally real, and in many ways, more wrenching. But they don’t have far to fall, and the mere ability to get and hold a job gets them through their worst problems.
And, cynically, they don’t vote.
The working classes do. And they are righteously afraid of falling down a level, with all the reason in the world.
That’s the face of the New Model Democratic Party. When we figure out how to make the lives of working Americans better…by getting out of the way and letting entrepreneurs create jobs, while keeping the scam artists from looting the banks and corporations…by designing tax policy that is simple, fair, and tilted toward those who work rather than those who invest (yeah, this is going to be an issue…)….and by figuring out how to provide the public goods and how to get out of the way and let the market provide the private goods these people need to have decent lives.
A long time ago, I became convinced that what most people want…whether they grew up in Oxaca, Compton, or Brentwood…is a decent house to raise their kids in, a meaningful and reasonable secure job, and some sense that their children’s lives had a shot at being better than theirs.
Deliver that, Democrats, and win.