You Have to Offer "Change" To Actually Make "Change" & Win

I honestly can't tell whether to applaud or shake my head in disgust when I see a comment like this from Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D) about the 2006 elections: "[Republicans] represent the status quo, and we are change."

Here's the thing - Emanuel is supposed to be saying stuff like that. He's the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) - the organization whose only goal is to elect more Democrats. So Emanuel is just doing his job.

But the idea that Democrats have offered "change" is, on many of the most critical issues, laughable (somewhere deep down, a guy as smart as Emanuel knows this). As I have written before, Democrats right now have no official position on Iraq, energy, bankruptcy, trade, repealing Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the Supreme Court...and the list goes on.

Does that thumb-in-the-wind positioning really represent a party interested in "change" from the "status quo?" No - it represents a party that doesn't seem yet to have the guts to actually be for the kind of "change" they know they need to be for in order to win the 2006 elections.

Matt Yglesias notes that if the Democrats can't pull out big wins in the current election climate, it means the GOP's hold on power is "impregnable." I see it a slightly different way - I believe Democrats losing in 2006 would be less of a commentary on the GOP's power, and more of a referendum on how Democrats' unwillingness to take concrete, sometimes controversial positions on the major issues of the day has relegated the party to permanent minority status.

Right now is when the party has to choose whether its seriously interested in seizing power, or whether it is too comfortable in the minority to actually take risks. Emanuel seems to know that the party needs the "change" vs. "status quo" contrast to solidify in the public's mind in order for Democrats to succeed in the next election - let's hope he knows that means his party needs to actually solidify itself first.

COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry