What we Democrats need is our own political brand of evangelism. The conservatives have a well-wrought message, but no works. We have the substantive works, but no message, and certainly no overarching vision. We are the ones with the easier task before us, but we can't rely on the elite activists in the party to do the job of conversion; these people simply don't speak the language. Religious Democrats do. But we shouldn't use them in a Democratic-Republican game of keeping up with the Joneses; we should embrace them for a much better reason -- because they, ironically enough, are the only ones in the Democratic universe who won't simply preach to the choir. But they need a vision to preach, and they need support from the party they believe in, despite mounting evidence that their party doesn't believe in them. We can't leave them out there, alone and alienated in the red states we're now so fond of bashing, or else we'll lose them as well

posted by Andy | link | | |