Chatterbox

Timothy Noah, primary author of Slate's "Chatterbox" column has an interesting reaction to the Democratic Party's response to its alienation from power:

I never thought I'd see the day when preservation of the filibuster became a grass-roots liberal cause, but that day seems to have arrived. College students are staging mock filibusters at universities across the country. Once upon a time, student activists decried the immorality of the Vietnam War and U.S. investment in the apartheid regime in South Africa. Their protests helped change the world. Today student activists are defending a parliamentary rule that enabled southern bigots to block civil rights legislation for nearly a century! They're defending demosclerosis! They're defending the right of the minority to thwart the will of the majority! Oh sure, it all has something to do with bad judicial nominations, too. But the street theater isn't about bad judges. It's about Robert's Rules of Order.

Count me out.

The soundness of the Democratic Party's defeat in 2004 was bound to lead to recriminations and a redirection of the party. But it does seem that they are staggering deeper into the thicket, rather than feeling their way back to the high road.

Is the platform of the Democratic Party fundamentally flawed? Is it revising its sense of purpose and agenda within the new political order? Or is it redoubling its efforts to drive away central components of its constituency? In its frustration with democracy's results, is the Democratic Party abandoning its democratic values?

Maybe...