Time Magazine picked the President as its Man of the Year because he reshaped "the rules of politics." True, he did not run to the center, but stayed on the right.
Meanwhile, as the Democrats stumble around, trying to figure out what hit them, the conventional wisdom is that they must move to the center. On yesterday's "Meet the Press," for example, there was an almost off-hand exchange in which the moderator and his guests agreed the party's must pick a national chairman whose name is not Howard Dean.
The Establishment is telling us that the Democrats can only win by "me, too-ing" the GOP. As if they did not just lose with a candidate so clueless he promised to fight "a smarter war on terrorism." As if you can beat a sitting President who is running on his war leadership by saying you can do it better. As if Sen. Kerry ran a liberal campaign. Is it liberal to espouse eight positions on the war? To duck rather than attack the Republicans on tort reform?
It is true that the Democrats still don't understand the new rules of the political game; you do not counter outrageous lies with rational arguments. But their problem now is not tactical. It is fundamental.
Specifically, the question today for Democrats is what do you believe, if anything?
In this, they will not be helped by the press. John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas is pretty narrow these days. On TV, it ranges from the far right to the middle-of-the-road. Newspapers cast a wider net; they publish several liberals. No matter. The Democrats' immediate task is to look inward where they just may find a reason for being.