Reviving the “L” Word

Few of us will forget November 2004. I remember driving myself to the point of pneumonia, having spent the previous two months making “persuasion” calls to my fellow Ohioans during the evenings and doing weekend “lit drops” in tiny rural towns, consistently chased away from houses by snarling dogs. Then the results came in. Most liberals and leftists turned morose; some thought the country had lost its mind. Friends told me they planned to move to Canada (they never did). The journalist Marc Cooper argued that it became easy for a progressive in 2004 to “fancy” oneself “a member of a persecuted minority, bravely shielding the flickering flame of enlightenment from the increasing Christo-Republican darkness.”

Then came November 2006, and progressives sighed with relief. But the sigh barely covered up a wince. After all, Democrats had won by playing a strange mix of pro-gun libertarianism and wild-eyed populism. One of the most articulate Democratic Party candid...