The Democrats and “New Ideas”

Three assumptions of popular political wisdom often heard since the November 1980 debacle do rob one of patience: (1) the Democratic party must learn to forgo the temptations of “ideological politics”; (2) the Democratic party and liberalism in general have run out of ideas and must come up with new ones; (3) the Republican party, like conservatism in general, is now the party of new ideas. The first is simply bad and confused counsel, conflicting insanely with the second, which i...