Jonathan Chait has a good article talking about whether the Democrats really lack ideas and whether the Republicans have truly won the battle of ideas. His conclusion is that neither statement is true and that the primary reasons for this perceptions are ones we’ve seen before… The party in power generally gets to be the party of ideas. It’s full of interesting tidbits. One thing that is clear is that the Democrats aren’t the party of good slogans. Bush did a good job in both elections of coming up with bullshit little phrases that mean nothing but sound good. They also have good mantras that people generally associate with the party.

I’d like to make a few suggestions for the Democrats. Let me know what you think:

• No New Deficits
• No New Massive Clusterf**cks

I’m still working on tweaking those, but I think they’re a good start.

At some point, I think the Democrats have to play toward pulling in fiscal conservatives that are at least socially moderate. Concerted sloganeering and policy proposals should be able to bring this group over to the Democratic side. I suspect that most Democrats, including the more fiscally liberal members, are on the same page with the deficits: it’s bad and it needs to go away. It also needs to go away faster than the plans that Bush has suggested (though he actually hasn’t passed a budget that actually tracks to those goals, but that’s a different post).