According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party.  They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda.  In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda.  The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people.  

Voters respond to ideas, and Democrats can stand for an idea: the idea that we're all in this -- post-industrial America, the globalized world, and especially the post-9-11 world in which free peoples have to unite to fight new threats -- together, and that we have to pull together, make some sacrifices, and, just sometimes, look beyond our own interests to solve our problems and create the future.

So Beinart criticizes Obama's alleged fear of GOP attacks and the appearance of softness.  Big deal. Beinart's hardly what I'd call left-wing; he's a New Republic-sorta-liberal.

He may get it right now, but, like the repulsive Andrew Sullivan, he's one of the media agents responsible for our unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
They've both changed their tune as far as how the war was being waged, but not necessarily on the initial invasion.

How can we expect the Democratic Party to stand firm on principles when we the Democratic voters do not? We rail against the Bush and the Republicans on issues we say appall us but how firm do we the voters stand? We state that we are appalled by torture and loss of habeas corpus. Yet, Democratic voters voted to elected two candidates to the Senate who voted to approve torture and against habeas corpus. Did the "D" after their name suddenly made torture and the loss of habeas corpus rights acceptable? We say we supported a timeline to get out of Iraq and are strongly against the loss of 4th Amendment rights and yet, people who voted with Bush and the Republicans on those issues each and every time are being floated as VP candidates. Webb who votes with the Republicans each and every time is a blog hero and is the choice of many for VP. Obama who is more than willing to vote in favor of the Bush Coverup and Elimination of Constitutional Rights bill is still considered the lesser of two evils. Is dismantling the Constitution more acceptable when a Democrat does it?

2nd, the big tent may be so large & so far stretched out that the full range of Democratic Party politicians gives the impression that they don't "stand for anything" because, in fact, they seem to stand for almost everything.

The party literally has visible pols who support every aspect of the Iraq War & torture & others who would pull the troops out of Iraq tomorrow at 0900 hours & then begin impeachment proceeding at 0930 for those who authorized the torture.

So the question "what do Democrats stand for" can have a contradictory range of answers.

But now in Obama adoration mode, they forget their original raison d'etre.

that they had one, other than obama adoration. the truth is that most have been in full-bore "golden child" mode since day one; that is their reason for being. they've brainwashed themselves, beaten silly on the rocks of the river fantasy. attempting to change would cause their collective heads to explode.