A Game Plan for Democrats

For those who read my piece, Moral Persuasion , which proposes five major areas of concentration for the Democratic Party, I want to add the voice of George Packer from The New Yorker to the mix.

In his piece entitled "Game Plan", he enumerates the faults and sins of the Republican rule of the last five years and then proposes his own game plan for the Democrats. In many ways, it overlaps mine.

Here is what he proposes:

Energy: The Republicans have made America more dependent on foreign oil while gas prices are skyrocketing; the Democrats will push for energy independence.

Health care: The Republicans have allowed private companies to eliminate choice while costs go up and millions of Americans lack insurance; the Democrats will enact national coverage that restores choice and holds down costs.

Taxes: The Republicans have shifted the burden from the top to the middle; the Democrats will reverse that trend, and will end the Administration’s ruinous fiscal policies.

National security: Republican incompetence has squandered our power abroad and failed to make us more secure at home, as the country learned after Katrina; the Democrats will rebuild the armed forces—making it at least possible for the Iraq insurgency to be defeated—and bring competence to homeland security.

But Packer goes a step further in suggesting that the Democrats need to overcome their self-esteem problems. The leaders of the Party need to start acting as if what they do and say matters, that the incumbent Republican failures can be swept out of office, and that they need to do it in a language that is moral and righteous.

I agree. No doubt many others are urging a concentration on key issues. Nevertheless, we can have five or four or six of the best issues to campaign on, but if we don't have the moral will and the moral confidence, it won't resonate with the voters.

Just who are the leaders of the Democratic Party who can project this will and confidence?