In all the soul-searching I have read since the election, only one Democrat has demonstrated the insight to move on with the rebuilding of his party. That is Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who told a New York Times reporter: "We need to be a party that stands for more than the sum of our resentments. In the heartland, where I am from, there are doubts. Too often, we're caricatured as a bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."
Yes, the good senator said "condescending" and "contemptuous." He also talks as though the citizenry in the heartland has legitimate values. Those are basically the values of moral accountability, hard work, personal freedom, limited government and equality before the law, and then you can throw in many of the so-called liberal values: tolerance, compassion, some sort of egalitarianism. Those values are not unique to liberals, though liberals think they are
It is when one gets off into "gay marriage," affirmative action and the campaign against religion, and in favor of whatever it is that liberals now say they want to do with the United Nations that liberals lose touch with the American people. Of liberalism it can be said that when it does take up a good principle or fine value, it eventually takes it to an extreme that is at first preposterous then repellent.
What will Bayh and his more sensible Democrats have to do to make the Democratic Party competitive with the Republicans? First, they will have to recognize the legitimacy of the Republicans. They will have to identify the legitimacy of the Republicans' values.
Then, the Democrats will have to adopt those values with their own twist, be it populist or statist or whatever. But first I suggest that the well-intentioned Democrat take a Republican to dinner. Try to comprehend that your dinner companion is neither a bigot nor a dolt.