Presumptuous empty suits.

Defeat defeat in '08. Vote Republican.

Last time the country was broke, FDR put people to work building Hoover Dam and electrifying the Tennessee Valley. Today's Democrats are too busy kissing the butts of the flat-earth lobby to put any of those tax dollars to work actually building the infrastructure we need to get the nation out of debt and back into competition with Asia.

While Lind may be correct about the politics of the matter, he is *way* off on the morality.

What's the point of greater economic equality if it doesn't lead to a better and more just society?

That's what made the 1960s so special and why the Democratic party transformed from the party of Roosevelt to the party of McGovern.

Once people had enough money in their pockets, they started looking around to see how to they could make the world better. Ending a pointless war in Southeast Asia and ending the oppression of racial minorities were obvious ways of doing that.

Of course, the power structure couldn't have that, so the 40-year-long War on The Middle Class was enacted so that the common folk would be too busy worrying about their economic security to have the energy to sustain social change.

Perhaps if the American people are so stupid and/or prejudiced that they can be distracted from the things Lind says 80% of us want because "Goddam it, I don't want them gays getting married"...maybe we get what we deserve.

I do agree with the notion that the Democratic party is castrating itself by listening to the Netroot-Daily Kos "ideological purity" standard. The idea of whistling past dixie>/i> is a noxious notion. Unfortunatly, the disrespect of traditional values voters is a platform that the left is unable to budge on.

I'd also disagree with the characterization of contemporary party identity that urban professional whites in the south lean Democratic. The white collar south (aside from the economic self-interested trial lawyers cohort - thank you very much John Edwards!) strongly identifies with the economic and values issues associated with the GOP in the larger metro areas

Some response:

But there is no doubt that at some point between 2004 and 2008 American politics changed.

Yes, but that is true of any four year period. Remember the axiom "change is the only constant."

It is clear to everyone, not least conservatives, that the era of right-wing hegemony that began with Richard Nixon's election in 1968 has come to an end.

Wow, then I must be incredibly stupid, because that is not clear to me at all. The "Grand Old Party" still controls the financial nervous system of our country, not to mention the vote-counting apparatus.

Two years of slim Democratic majority control and you are ready to make sweeping pantemporaneous pronouncements about full-scale political realignment, without the benefit of even a year's hindsight?

That's balls.

Between 1932 and 1964, the Roosevelt Party won seven of nine presidential elections, losing only in 1952 and 1956. Between 1968 and 2004, the Nixon Party won seven out of 10 presidential elections, losing only three times, to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Was this because red-state Rooseveltians were won over to supply-side economics, while blue-state blue-bloods suddenly became enamored of abortion rights and separation of church and state? No. Today's red-state Republican children of New Deal Democrats still like Social Security, and the Republican grandparents of today's blue-state Protestant Democrats were in favor of birth control -- for the Catholics, in particular. The values of these voting blocs didn't change. The issues that defined national politics changed.

Not mention the death and birth of more than three generations of American society.

"The issues that defined national politics" have not changed--what has changed is the way the average citizen relates to politics in the first place.

Then again, maybe things like the invention of television and radio have only been incidental to changing social mores.

Beginning with its namesake, George McGovern, in 1972, the McGovern Party has been trounced repeatedly by the Nixon Party, not because of its economic agenda, which the public actually prefers to the alternative, but because of its unpopular stands on issues like race-based affirmative action, illegal immigration, crime and punishment, and national security.

You forgot abortion and the so-called "War on Drugs."

Note that almost all of the policy proposals that excite the American public are exactly the sort of old-fashioned, "paleoliberal" spending programs or systems of government regulation that are supposed to be obsolete in this era of privatization, deregulation and free-market globalization, according to neoliberals and libertarians. Bill Clinton to the contrary, the public clearly does not think that "the era of big government is over." Nor does the public show any interest in the laundry lists of teeny-weeny tax credits for this and that that neoliberals love to propose, to appear compassionate without spending real money. The public wants the middle-class welfare state to be rounded out by a few major additions -- chiefly, healthcare and childcare -- and the public also wants the government to grow the economy by investing in public works and favoring companies that locate their production facilities inside the U.S. There, in a sentence, is a program for a neo-Rooseveltian party that could effect an epochal realignment in American politics.

This is spot-on and I agree emphatically. Thank you for writing this.

Anyway, the Democrats have already tried "liberaltarianism." That's what was promoted by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only two presidents elected by the McGovern Party. Both Carter and Clinton ran as New Deal-style liberal populists, then, once in office, reneged on their campaign rhetoric and promoted a mix of economic conservatism -- deregulation, balanced budgets -- and social liberalism.

Aside from a tacit "endorsement" of affirmative action by Clinton, I fail to see a single example of "social liberalism" by Carter or Clinton in your synopsis.

Did Carter or Clinton ever talk about ending drug prohibtion? I'm not asking if they did it--did they even talk about it, on the campaign trail or elsewhere?

Did they advocate for the right of American citizens to own guns?

Social libertarianism opposes government "supervision" in all areas of life--from seatbelt and helmet laws to drugs and prostitution. There is not a single serious Democratic candidate or president who has publicly MENTIONED any of these ideas, let alone endorsed them.

If Democrats don't create a new Roosevelt Party, the Republicans over time just might. In their recent insightful manifesto "Grand New Party," Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat call for the GOP to adopt activist government on behalf of the working class, while remaining a socially traditional party. That formula -- more Gaullist than Thatcherite -- has worked recently in Germany, France and Italy. It might work here, unless Democrats forestall the possibility by reaching out to Sam's Club Republicans.

Maybe, but I'm more inclined to agree with Brink Lindsey, whom you have yet to disprove, incidentally.

Most Americans do indeed yearn for "liberaltarianism," that is, economic welfare statism coupled with social values de-regulation.

If the Republicans jettisoned the religious right now and focused on building their secular libertarian base, they could easily keep the Democrats from retaining their slim majority.