Yeah, I know it's late. You don't have to follow the link until tomorrow.
But you must follow the link. Rick Perlstein's How Can the Democrats Win? has an excellent review of the political history of the Democratic Party—what worked when and why it stopped. Detailed enough to help me fill in the blanks in a pattern I'd seen.
But the really interesting part is the parallel drawn between short term investment strategy and the current thrashing about for meaning the Democrats are going through. Rick said the net meaning of the article is, think long-term. In fact, here's the Quote of Note:
Shortly before Halloween of 2003, a very self-satisfied Newt Gingrich gave an interview to Susan Stamberg on the subject of power. She asked him if he missed the perquisites of being Speaker of the House. He answered, “If you’re trying to do big things, petty power isn’t very interesting; it doesn’t really matter very much, if you’re trying to do something historic . . . Remember that I spent from 1978 to 1994—that’s 16 years—to create a majority. So I’m comfortable with long-term projects. . . . I kind of measure things different [than most].”
I just finished the article. There are some interesting replies to the article as well, but I haven't gotten to them yet. The link up there is to the index that includes links to Rick's article and all the replies.
