Hidden Meanings

The Winds of Change has a long and very readable series of posts about why the Democrats are in trouble in 2004, and while they bring up many points (some good, some not so good), I think this comment by Kevin Drum goes farther to illustrate why Democrats are in trouble more than anything described by the folks at the Winds of Change. While discussing FCC Deregulation, Kevin states:

Heh, heh, just kidding. See, the problem is that I’m not sure I’m actually opposed to deregulation. There, I said it.

Roughly speaking, here’s where I stand: despite my liberal leanings, my conservative readers will be either surprised or amused (depending on temperament) to hear me say that I’m not especially in favor of government regulation of industry without a compelling reason.

I don’t recall the party of JFK (and that is Kennedy, not Kerry, thank you) beig culturally and politically defined as the anti-business party, yet that is where the Democrats find themselves today, at least rhetorically. All the years of faux-populism, railing against business, and using the class warfare rhetoric has placed the Democrats in a position where even Kevin has to excuse himself and explain- “Hey- even though I am a liberal- I am not overtly and instinctively anti-business.” When a proud member of the supposedly liberal party has to excuse himself for choosing the primacy of the individual over government, of the primacy of private enterprise over heavy-handed government involvement and regulation, it goes a long way to explain some of the problems the Democrats currently have to overcome.