Democrats seem to be learning the wrong lessons from 2004.

Some of my students have been arguing that “we didn’t have a candidate liberal enough to mobilize the base! We need to nominate Hillary in 2008 and sweep back into power!”

Other Democrats bemoan the “death of democracy.”

Um, no.

The base was mobilized. But so was the base of the other side.

The Republican base outnumbers the Democratic base.

That is, by definition, democracy.

democracy doesn’t mean “a result I like.” It means that the majority rules.

And hopefully the majority rules while respecting the rights of the minority (if I remember my Federalist papers correctly).

I know a huge number of democrats who desperately want Hillary to be president. It boggles my mind. Listen closely, my friends. Hillary. Is. Not. Electable.

Democrats failed in 2004 to win the middle. So the plan for 2008, as far as I can tell, is to mover further left.

Republicans are going to get awful comfortable in the White House. Are the Democrats positioning themselves to become a permanent minority?

Could we be entering another Era of Good Feelings*?

I really don’t think so. The modern party system is too durable. But the historian in me wants to find a pattern matching the decline of the Democrats with that of the Federalists. Eventually the Democratic-Republicans split apart as the ruling faction forgot the principles on which it was elected. Could the Republicans attain majority status only to be rent asunder by tensions between the neo-cons, social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives? Hmmm…

* The bad, hateful feelings of some vocal social conservatives aside