In Europe we are a long way away (in every sense) from American domestic politics. Distance may not be lending enchantment to the view (and nor may ignorance )

Some things , however, seem oddly familiar. It sometimes happens that the party 'in opposition' is being presented daily with gifts in the form of unpopular, incompetent or just plain unlucky behaviour and policies of the party in power. Yet they fail to benefit. They fail to benefit because they themselves seem to be spending more time and effort in fighting among themselves than they do in fighting the side in power. Unusually in American politics the one party is truly 'in power', holding as it does the control of all tiers of government.(This is normal in Britain )

To what extent, if at all, is this the case with the Democrats ? Sitting blinkered in our bunkers we rather get the impression that it is .Now, it may be that in American politics this, if so, is the norm and that nothing odd is to be found in it.Perhaps your parties regularly indulge in internecine squabbles and expect that a united front will be presented to the electorate when the time comes and, amazingly to outsiders,everything is 'all right on the night'. Is not the 'night' almost upon you ? Or are there no elections of significance soon to come ?( I thought there were )

Back here, in similar manner, the principal opposition party, the Conservatives, has spent most of recent years doing just this, even changing its leaders (and its style and content of attack) as though each was going out of style no sooner than chosen. The Labour Party has benefitted much in that time and its poll ratings have been remarkably unchanged in consequence.

So what do you Americans think?

Traditionally, Democrats are more disorganized than Republicans. In my opinion, both parties have their share of extremists, but the Republicans seem to be better at hiding them than the Democrats are. Republicans also seem better at reducing positions to a single phrase, regardless of how accurate or misleading that phrase may be, which is unfortunately how most Americans want their issues presented. I feel that part of the Democrats problem in finding unity is that the party represents a wider spectrum of positions. (Republicans, of course, will no doubt say that it is their party that represents "real Americans.") Still, there always seem to be more Democrats willing to take positions in opposition to their party's official position than Republicans. I think that, in recent memory, there have been much more "break-away" Democrats willing to leave their party for a single issue than Republicans. (The best example is the Dixicrats, former Democrats who would not abide with the party's position on racial issues. In fact, considering the period of time from 1948-1968, the Republican party would have been a small minority party were it not for former Democrats who switched sides in order to continus segregation..

In American politics, it is still early with regard to the very important mid-term election. Right now, both parties are sorting their positions out. Many Republicans are distancing themselves from the administration, yet still want to remain within the party umbrella in case the election returns support the administration's positions. Some Democrats are reluctant to go too far in opposing current policy, especially with regard to Iraq, at least in part, because A) the administration did such a good job of selling the war (Many people still believe the WMD story and the terrorist link story despite even the administration's admissions.) and B) most Democrats themselves bought the story, and reversing a position is deadly in American politics, even when the second position has been proven the more logical or more correct one. (An example of this is Kerry's "Voted for before I voted against" statement, which, if completely understood, is almost exactly how many in the US now feel. He was referring to his own bill, which was almost identical to the one passed, except that Kerry's had "pay as you go" funding rather than the "put it on my tab" funding, which now is rightly seen as deepening the debt we leave to our descendants. This is especially distasteful when you realize that we now find ourselves in the position of the home buyer who went in debt well over his head to buy his dream house only to find that the house is a money pit and he hates every second he has to live in it. We will be stuck paying for this war long after history judges it to have been one of America's biggest mistakes.)

Whereas the Republicans usually capture the Libertarians ala Mr. Galt, the Democrats have to contend with the extreme and uncompromising liberals. It is my opinion that the extreme within the Democratic party wish for a leader that is unelectable by the backbone of the party which is the working class and minorities. The working class is not necessarily the most vocal, nor the most liberal within the party, but without the votes there is no way to win and what happens is the working people just stay home. I think this was likely the case in Ohio. I know a lot of the union guys that I work with were not very interested in Kerry as a person... if they voted it was against GWB.

I see an extreme lack of flexibility and unwillingness to bend. The Republicans have made brilliant political moves to capture the electorate, the Democrats seem to take the high ground and it simply doesn't work. They have to capture more than just states with overwhelming urban populations.

I also believe that the Democrats allow the issues to get muddled where they do not have the edge. The Republicans have made a great effort to know where Americans stand on issues and what the sway issues are for each sector. It's politics and they have done a good job of it - because honestly their candidates are pretty horrendous but yet still win. Issue A will sway group X to vote but will not cause Group Y to stay home of flip. Therefore adopt Issue A as part of platform to capture group X.

To me, it is unfortunate that we have so many single issue voters that can be manipulated this way, but that's the way it is and the Democrats just don't seem to be able to figure it out.

I agree with the above answers. Also, I think Democrats have for a long time been cowed by the administration's successfully framing of the debate as our way or unamerican.... Just today I watched Bush and Blair (I've always admired TB's speaking skills) at their newsconference. Bush, as usually, built the straw man by saying "I understand that some people think parts of the world don't want democracy..." It was never pointed out, of course, that that's not the issue: most people agree that democracy would be a good thing (unless it elects Hamas, Hezbollah, etc, of course...); the question is whether invading Iraq was the way to establish it, or whether, having successfully dethroned the Taliban, turning away from Afganistan was wise. Democrats, unfortunately, don't seem to have the will to hammer away at that. And just hammering, even if they did, wouldn't be enough.

The sad truth is, from my perspective, that there are no Democrats in prominent places who have the character to say what they believe without first polling it to death. The republicans are brilliant, as DG said, at boiling complexities to vacuous but clever bumper-sticker-sized slogans, and to repeat them ad nauseum, with one voice. Pathetic.

Here is an interesting piece on the history of the conservative movement and their early connection to the nuts of the John Birch Society and how that history somewhat parallels the modern Democratic Party, something I've contended for a while.

A few relevant passages:

The American left today is not quite in the position of the American right circa 1960. But it is suffering nonetheless, having been in slow decline for the past quarter-century. Even when it wins the Presidency, it loses the Congress: and even when the President is the inept, uncommunicative George W. Bush, it still cannot make a dent in the ascendancy of its enemies. The end result of this is a group of Americans, identifying as members of the left, that is strikingly similar to the conservative movement of a generation past: inchoate, angry, and prone to "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

. . .

But for all his [average Kos-style leftist] generally good circumstances, he's been on the political and cultural losing side all his adult life. He's tired of it. And he's found a website which, at last, makes him feel empowered. He is, in short, the typical member of the so-called netroots: the left-wing movement, organized around blogs, that seeks to "take back" this country from its usurpers. The netroots is a movement born of desperation and a sense of embattlement at being on the losing side of historical forces. It sees itself as the inheritor and the guarantor of true American tradition and identity, and it seeks to restore those things to their rightful primacy in national life. Critically, it choose to not merely fight its foes, but emulate them. It sees the prime virtue of its enemies as their ability to win, and if they can just crack the code — if it can grasp the very methodology of victory — then they will turn the tables, and victory will be theirs.

Sound familiar? It is — to us [the right]. To the left, it's all very exciting, and all very new. And so we see the self-proclaimed netroots go through a trajectory very much like what the Birchers went through, albeit in highly compressed time. The elements are all there: the resentment, the conspiracy-mindedness, and especially the leaders with stupefyingly poor judgment married to Napoleon complexes.