The Democrats Reasssess--WaPo

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/20/AR2006062001350.html

Effort to Win Battle of Ideas Includes New Web Site and Journal

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; A19



This is idea week for the Democratic Party.

On Monday, three veteran party strategists -- William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira -- launched a Web site ( http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org ) with the goal of generating fact-based, empirically tested theories that might help Democrats resolve their policy differences and win more elections.

Yesterday saw another launch party, this time for Democracy, a quarterly journal that also will be available online ( http://www.democracyjournal.org ). The magazine will be edited by Andrei Cherny and Kenneth Baer, two younger veterans of recent party wars. Their goal is do for the Democrats what journals such as Public Interest did for conservatives and Republicans decades ago, which is to bring forward big ideas to challenge what they regard as the tired thinking that grips Democratic politicians.

On Thursday, NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network) will convene its annual conference. NDN, founded by Simon Rosenberg, has recently been in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists, liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists, all with an eye toward tipping the political balance back in a Democratic direction.




Doug Hattaway, a Democratic communications consultant who worked for Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, recalled a moment of epiphany during a focus group of Democratic operatives and marketing professionals he attended last year. The participants were asked to say what Democratic accomplishments they were most proud of. Their responses filled several pages on a flip chart set up in the focus group facility. "We all realized there was nothing there within the past 30 years," Hattaway said.

Dems are for

- increase in minimum wage
- stem cell research
- increased funding for vets benefits
- do away with tax cuts for millionaires
- Pro choice
- balanced budget
- still a mixed message about iraq but they are striving for a solution to bush's calculated fuck up

For me they do not need to reassess

tax cuts, privatization, and deregulation are all forms of corruption and cronyism--rewarding their rich friends at the expense of the rest of us.

And it makes us less safe when we impose those things on other countries as our foreign policy.