While I believe you make some excellent points, one cannot ignore tactics and strategy as they ultimately impact the numbers...and we all know elections are decided by the numbers.

The argument you make that many are "obsessively" focused on "strategy talk" has an offset within the blogosphere...a focus on sentiment. I certainly can't predict which will have more impact on the actual numbers but they both warrant attention.

Read more analysis here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Good point.  I think too many people forget to make the argument that conservative policies are failures.  Bush and the Republicans are not necessarily incompetent because they are getting what they have always wanted (though it is fairly obvious that figures such as Rumsfeld and Rice are incompetent because of how their pet projects have become fubar).  Allowing Republicans to hide behind the incompetence tag will allow conservative ideas to extend their shelf-life and await reimplementation by new Republican candidates who may run on the competence issue.  

Wow!

what I'm seeing right now in Connecticut is that voters want progressive governance

Now - what do CT voters understand by progressive governance, I wonder?

You mention a laundry list of items - I don't know whether these have been polled in CT or just nationally - which expose conspicuous holes in the Dem 06 policy presentation.

Social security: Dems propose stasis.

Iraq: Dems propose - what, exactly? Real Security said nothing; are they still letting a hundred flowers bloom?

[F]ailed conservative policies that are bankrupting the country: how, exactly, do the Dems propose curbing the runaway deficit? Have they costed proposals? Who (fatcats excepted) is going to have to pay the bill?

[G]iving away the store to big oil: like the Pombo deep sea oil drilling bill that passed the House only because of Dem votes, you mean?

And - skipping to the end - They will even pay more in taxes for a real health care system: and what do the Dems promise them in New Direction?

Fix the prescription drug program by putting people ahead of drug companies and HMOs, eliminating wasteful subsidies, negotiating lower drug prices and ensuring the program works for all seniors; invest in stem cell and  other medical research.

If the voters are really craving for progressive governance, why isn't the Dem leadership capitalizing on the fact, rather than producing penny ante proposals like those in New Direction?

Are they terrified by twelve years in the minority that they'll up their big chance? Or are they quite happy to keep things ticking along as they have been, only with Dems rather than GOP in the committee chairmen's offices and getting the juicier end of the contributions bone?

Apart from the odd histrionic display by Uncle Harry, which soon fizzle, I've seen little evidence so far that the current outfit are keen on playing hardball, except against their own supporters and candidates.

I'd rather be right on a single issue than wrong on a multitude of them.

Excellent post.

It was also really refreshing to hear Matt use the phrase "failed conservative policies" while discussing the CT race on NPR yesterday. There needs to be more of this.

Even in opposition, the insider mentality causes the Dems slip into believing the right-wing talking points instead of looking to the public or (gasp) trying to lead. Their tactical approach implicitly accepts the Republican control of the dialogue.

An example: Here in Colorado the Repubs put together a xenophobic anti-immigrant ballot issue, that was thrown off the ballot by the Courts. The Republicans demanded a special session of the legislature (Colorado only has a 5 month session) demanding that the legislature revive the ballot issue "so the people can decide".

This was a transparent wedge GOTV strategy by the Republicans. Although the Dems are in a majority, they got suckered into calling for the session, and passed anti-immigrant legislation targeting employers. The marginally beneficial trade off? No referendum on the ballot.

The Dems are afraid to stand for anything in the face of Republican dominance of the public discourse.

This is getting absurd.  Joe Lieberman is not a conservative.  He votes with the AFL-CIO over 80% of the time and last year voted with Americans for Democratic Action 80% of the time.  I am stunned that clown Lamont is even pulling 20%.  

It's hardly surprising that all those commentators at CQPolitics ignored governance.  They were asked to comment on a political race, and for a very, very long time now, governance has taken a back seat to campaign strategy and tactics--not on the campaign trail, but inside the Beltway 24/7, 365 days a year.

James Fallows highlighted the press side of this in his 1996 book, Breaking the News.  The simple fact is, governing is hard, it's got lots of details that are relatively boring (especially compared to [A] sex, [B] blowing things up, and [C] accusing people of treason.)

So, as I see it, they were simply responding to a larger system of discourse, playing their part, and meeting the expectations that were clearly set out for them.

But, the deeper question is, do they have any clue about governance at all?  Not that they would expect to be asked about it, but does it have any impact on their thought processes?  Or is it just something that they saw on The West Wing from time to time before it went off the air?  And this is where I think the real failure lies.

Two of the five start off by parroting Lieberman's ludicrous "single-issue candidate" spin, and Susan A. MacManus makes an impressive pitch for a prime-time slot at Faux News:

Sen. Lieberman has launched a very effective preemptive strike against the single-issue (war in Iraq), far-left voters of his party.

Now, the point here is not just that I think they're wrong.  Rather, it's that they don't even see it as part of their jobs to try to distance themselves from the candidates talking points.  As for example: "Lieberman portray's Lamont as a single-issue candidate, pointing to a wide range of issues where he claims he solidly represents his Democratic constituents. Lamont says blah, blah, blah.  I think Lieberman's right because yadda, yadda, yadda."

Now, of course, one need not have any awareness or concern about governance to take such an approach.  But the converse is not true.  Anyone who does take governance seriously--even if they don't get asked to talk about it much--simply cannot comment on a race by simply regurgitating one side's talking points.  It's the kind of behavior that's simply too far removed from serious substantive thought of the sort that governance questions require.

And that's what I find so telling in these commentaries.  That, and the fact that they are entirely typical of everything you hear coming out of Versailles.