The Democrat's ineptness

Bruce Bartlett:

From what I read on the blogs these days, most Democrats believe that their party's single biggest problem is that it is not tough enough. Their solution is to be ever more shrill and hysterical in attacking Republicans. As a Republican, I think this is wonderful. It just makes Democrats look like kooks, and forces moderates to vote Republican.
Actually, I think the Democrats' biggest problem is simple ineptness -- they just aren't very good at coming up with politically attractive ideas and marketing them effectively. I even have a theory about why this is the case.
The fact is that a lot of people who get into politics don't really have any ideology. They could just as easily be Democrats or Republicans, because they don't have anything in particular they want to accomplish in terms of policy. They just like the spotlight, or the thrill of running for office or want a nice line on their resume.
When such people first decide what party to join, they are not concerned about where they would feel most at home philosophically. Rather, their only concern is which party will give them the best chance of winning. Secondarily, they are concerned about which party offers them the best opportunities for advancement once elected.
During the long period from 1932 to 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress almost continuously, these sorts of non-ideological people primarily became Democrats. That's where the action was.
This helped the Democratic Party enormously because those whose only interest is winning tend to be better at it than ideologues. Ideologues generally put principles first, and are often unattractive candidates because they are obsessed with fine points of policy that the vast bulk of voters find boring and off-putting. By contrast, those without any ideological baggage will simply tell voters whatever they want to hear and strive to do so in the most engaging way possible.

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The downfall of the Democratic Party in Congress really began in 1974. That year it won a huge victory in the wake of Watergate. Democrats had a margin of 2-to-1 in both the House and Senate. With such a large majority, the ideologues mounted a purge of conservatives from committee chairmanships and other leadership positions. They thought their control was so secure that they weren't needed.
This began a huge shift of Southern Democrats into the Republican Party at the congressional and state legislature levels. By 1994, this transition was complete and virtually every political conservative had left the Democratic Party for good, giving Republicans control in both the House and Senate.
At this point, the prostitutes switched parties as well. The Republican Party became the place where the action is. It was the place to go for those motivated only by ambition. This helped the Republicans for all the reasons that such people had previously been assets to the Democrats.

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I think he has a good part of the dynamic, but should have addressed how much of the switch was the result of the Democrat's disasterous national security agenday after the Vietnam war that they lost. It was the national security issue that eventually made the Republicans the majority. To the the extent that there was a southern strategy, national security and not race was teh driving factor for the transformation. In fact, Democrat's obsession with blaming the sourthern switch on race has blinded them to their most glaring weakness.