And so does this

Another repost from TPM, but this time I'll agree to simply excerpt:

National Democratic politicians, and modern Democratic Presidents in particular, have been acutely conscious of the dominance of organized interests within the party. This, I think, is why Carter, Clinton and now Obama have so often come off as men trying to tip-toe their way through complex situations without making anyone important to them really unhappy. The majority of Americans who are outside Democratic Party politics and "the groups" look at this and see weakness, even fecklessness. They also see an unwillingness to listen to them, which is only partly wrong. National Democrats do listen, but lack confidence that acting on what they hear from the public rather than "the groups" will produce victory.

...

George W. Bush's unpopularity was Barack Obama's greatest political asset during the 2008 campaign, and nothing else was even close. No one wanted to be known as a Bush Republican; even today, Republicans do not accuse Obama of wrecking the great work Bush did as President. They know no one would believe that. Obama hasn't used this asset at all, not really. As far as he and his team have been concerned, there is no such thing as a Bush Republican. Opposition to health care reform is not the Bush Republican position; support for bonuses on Wall Street is not what Bush would do. There are no references to Bush incompetence, none to Bush corruption. If Bush had left office with 70% approval, or 50% approval, or even 40%, the silence of Obama and the Democrats about Bush would be sound politics. Then again, if any of these things had been true, John McCain would be President now.

The Brown victory, and the performance of the Democratic Party more generally, has me more and more convinced that there not be any opposition to Republican politics until either a new leftist party emerges or, and this requires fewer parts blue moon, a new wave of Democrats replace the older defeatists who are rotated in and out of power now. And I don't mean new like Obama. I had no faith in him from the beginning because it was clear that the swollen, Wagnerian rhetoric we were bludgeoned with was employed purposefully to distract from the fact that he was a non-entity, a compromiser who was skilled at verbal artifice--he was a lawyer, after all--and little else. No, a new generation of Democrats has to be hard-line: it has to start from the assumption that it will win and pursue with unyielding aggression the leftist policies that the United States requires in order to continue being a functioning democratic state.

I will also go ahead and say that I still wish McCain had won in 2008. If that had been the case, it would've been the Republicans who were tasked with explaining the deterioration of the economy that their politics precipitated. The Democrats could've wiped the floor with them in 2012 on a much stronger basis and maybe with a more substantive candidate, though who, from the sorry ranks of the modern party, that would be, I haven't the foggiest. And it isn't as if we would be missing any glorious Democratic legislative triumphs. We largely have a moderate Republican administration as it is.