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I havent seen much evidence that the party and its crop of potential presidential candidates are up for it. I was disappointed, for example, that after the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., while Democrats duly denounced President Trumps reaction and the rallys white supremacism and the rights defense of Confederate statuary (tough calls!), no one who purports to want to lead the party and country out of this darkness stepped forward to offer broader reflections on that grim episode.

Bah! Its too early for that, some will say. The Democrats are an opposition party right now, and their main job is to oppose. And under the leadership of Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, theyre doing that quite well. But I dont think Democratic reluctance here is just a matter of timing.

The Democrats are undergoing a historic transformation, from being the party that embraced neoliberalism in the early 1990s to one that is rejecting that centrist posture and moving left. Theres plenty about this to cheer the neoliberal Democratic Party didnt do nearly enough to try to arrest growing income inequality, among other shortcomings.

There will be necessary internecine fights, and they boil down to loyalty tests on particular positions demanded by the vanguard. Consider the debate within the party on Senator Bernie Sanderss Medicare for All bill, which most (though not all) 2020 contenders rushed to attach themselves to. To fail to sign on to that legislation is to open oneself to criticism, even abuse, although its less a piece of legislation than a goal.

Forget about whos right and wrong in these debates. Time will sort that out. My point is that they tend to consume a party experiencing a shift. The Democratic Party, because it is an amalgam of interest groups in a way the Republican Party is not, has always had a tendency to elevate the candidate who can check the most boxes. The current internal dynamics exacerbate that. Its also worth remembering that no one besides party activists cares.

So when the partys leaders tussle over this or that policy, they also need to take a step back, to see the direction the country the West itself is heading, and take a stand on it. This isnt just a matter of high-minded idealism; its what separates great politicians from merely good ones.

History tells us that the transformative politicians, the ones who can change the countrys direction and will really matter in the history books, are the ones who can do both. I think there have been four of them in the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Why Roosevelt and Reagan should be obvious. I know some would dispute my choice of Mr. Clinton, but he rescued a party that had lost three presidential elections in a row and was being read last rites by some pundits in 1991 (the extent to which he changed the countrys fundamental direction is debatable). Mr. Obama made history and redrew the electoral map. All four were able to speak both to their base and beyond it by identifying the challenge of the moment and persuading majorities that they had some answers.

The future of the Western democratic project is the fundamental issue of our era. Its under attack from Vladimir Putin and Steve Bannon and many people in between (and to the extent that he backs Mr. Bannons purge of the Republican Party, from the president himself; think about that).

Democrats cant duck this question and expect the broader electorate to see them as prepared to lead. To his credit, Mr. Sanders did talk a bit about all this in a foreign-policy speech in late September at the same Missouri college where Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech, noting an international order that is under great strain.

The Democrats were the party that created this order after World War II. They must now be the party that fixes and saves it.

See the rest here:
The Silence of the Democrats - The New York Times