Here's my latest from the New York Review, on the elections, in which I posit a thesis about the Democrats' real problem that doesn't have anything to do with enthusiasm gaps or the other things you read about. I think the D's real problem has to with the fact that they fail repeatedly to couch their policies in a context of patriotism. You really need to click through to get the whole argument, which starts with the "My own answer" paragraph, but here's a little soupcon:
But now consider the specific problems facing Obama, a mixed-race (but visibly black) man with an exotic name and a highly atypical biography for a president. Add in also the greatest economic crisis in eight decades, and governmental responses to the crisis that, to an energized and organized right wing, seem to smack of socialism. One result is that we have a new faction, the well-financed Tea Party movement that has been able to arrogate to itself practically every symbol of Americanism and to paint the President, his ideas and policies, and his supporters as not merely un-American but actively anti-American. In a Newsweek poll released in late August, nearly a third of Americans actually agreed that it was "definitely" or "probably" true that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."2
In the face of all this, it seems not to have occurred to a single prominent Democrat, from Obama on down, to say something like: We love our country every bit as much as they do, and we believe patriotism means expanding access to health care, protecting the environment, and imposing effective new rules on Wall Street. Democrats have thus crippled themselves by adapting comparatively limited ideas of legitimate political action, and by ceding to Republicans the strong claim of love of one's country.
This is not the sort of thing that is measured by polls, but I believe the Democrats' hesitance to tie their programs to larger beliefs has been demoralizing to liberals and confusing or off-putting to independents. The impression is left with voters that Republicans are fighting for the country, while Democrats are fighting for their special interests. The pre-presidential Obama powerfully made this kind of broad, patriotic appeal, both at his 2004 convention keynote address and in his stirring Jefferson-Jackson Day speech in Iowa in November 2007. But any sense that the Democrats are now making a coherent argument about what kind of country they want has vaporized. Underneath all the Democrats' bickering about such issues as health care and the performance of Tim Geithner, that is their real problem.
Natch, we will endure our regular roster of contributors below who will say that the Democrats don't invoke America because they hate America. Back on planet earth, meanwhile, the rest of us might explore reasons why this is so, if you think my argument has any merit.
It's kind of mystifying to me. As I wrote above, Obama did exactly this well as a candidate. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the one thing that made liberals excited about him in the first place, the one thing above all others, was that he was able to articulate a liberal idea of patriotism (in that 2004 speech in particular, the one that made him a rock star) - love of country suffused with civic faith and belief that there is such a thing as a common good to which we all contribute and from which we all benefit - that just made liberals' hearts widen and swell. That it was a black man with that name doing it was frosting. But what I remember liberals talking about was, to paraphrase: Finally, we have someone who can articulate that we love our country, too!
Where's that framing been since he became president? Pfffft. I really think that if Democrats, led by Obama, had been saying from the start, over and over and over, that saving the auto companies and expanding healthcare and all the rest was about the kind of country we envision, they might not have lost those arguments so badly. Instead they mostly said (there were exceptions, but mostly) that the auto bailouts was about jobs (which could be and was read as special interests, unions) and healthcare was about containing costs (which sounded dubious to most people and suggested a hidden, special-interest agenda).
I remember that Mike Lind, author of The Next American Nation and Up From Conservatism, once wrote that broad appeals to a public for big change pretty much had to be made in the name of either God or country. The Democrats aren't going to invoke God much, because they believe in separation of church and state and come from different faith backgrounds. So they should invoke country aggressively. But they have let the Republicans lay claim to both mantles. It's only the GOP's policy extremism that even keeps Democrats in the game.
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