The left used to have a Big Idea: The free market doesn't work, so the government will fix it. The social democrats disagreed with the Socialists and the Scoop Jackson democrats about how much fixing was necessary, but they all agreed on a basic premise, and could sell that simple message to the public. Then, after fifty years or so, people noticed that the government didn't seem to work any better than the free market . . . worse, actually, in a lot of cases . . . and it was awfully expensive and surly. Conservatives stepped in with their Big Idea: the government screws things up, so let's leave more stuff up to individuals, which, if nothing else, will be a lot cheaper. Obviously, liberals disagree with this . . . but they have not come up with a Big, Easily Sellable, Idea With Obvious Policy Prescriptions to replace it. Some of them have just kept repeating the old Big Idea, which it seems to me that fewer and fewer people believe, as the US continues to pull ahead of its economic peers. Others have focused on coming up with lots of little ideas . . . but those take up too much time and energy to attract voters. Gore tried to whang up anger against pharmaceutical companies, and Kerry tried to stoke anger against Bush, as replacement. But in politics, there's just no replacement for the Big Idea.
I think we're misserved by the American thinking that the political spectrum is a line - left and right with one party for each side. When in reality the political spectrum is more of a square with with an X-axis of social liberty and y-axis of economic liberty and there should be a party that represents each of the quadrants. Much of Europe has a party for each quadrant and they have to work together to form coalitions. As Penn Jillette has said "two parties is just one more than an authoritarian government". With a Democratic party that doesn't win elections and doesn't have any sellable ideas, we're not that much different than an authoritarian government now.
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