Burnt Orange Report

The Young and The Restless

By Jim Dallas

No complaints about this here:

They are opining, organizing and running for party chairman. A wave of young Democrats is demanding not just to be heard but to take charge. "This generation is looking for ways to participate because we're tired of losing," says Jamal Simmons, 33, a consultant who has worked for presidential hopeful Wesley Clark and several other Southern candidates.

Simmons and his fellow "Young Turks" worry about the Democratic Party's dependence on interest groups, their relations with minority groups, the stereotypes that they are weak on defense and values, the Republican appropriation of the "reformer" label and the swaths of America that Democrats seem to have written off.

Young Democrats believe that the party is dominated by people who came of age politically in the 1960s, and it's time for them to make room for new ideas and new voices. Theirs.

On the other hand, while I think I agree with the basic thrust of this quote, can't we all just get along?

A former aide to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Gerstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Democrats have "fallen right back into the elitist, weak-kneed, brain-dead trap" they thought they'd escaped with Bill Clinton.

He called for more muscle in foreign policy, more respect for religion and "banishing Bob Shrum and his tone-deaf Chardonnay populism" from future presidential campaigns. Shrum, 61, was nominee John Kerry's top adviser.

The way you get change is by taking the reins away from the dopes driving us off a cliff - not throwing people off the wagon. There's a subtle but palpable difference.

Via Political Wire.