Straw man alert. Noam starts with a characterization of the Sam's Club thesis that implies a roughly equal footing for government interventionism in economics and social conservatism. Commenter JSmith then gives your straw man a pair of legs and runs with the social conservatism riff.

Now, maybe I'm missing something here, and perhaps Douthat and ex-TNRnik Reihan Salam have had a road-to-Damascus conversion since while writing their book, but everything I've ever read by Ross Douthat online indicates that the agenda they're touting is almost entirely about economics. Read this precis of their agenda contained in this Douthat article in Weekly Standard and tell me how much attention Douthat gives to social conservative themes. In this article's summation (www.weeklystandard.com/.../312korit.asp), Douthat focuses on alleviating the impact of  global market volatility on working families with specific proposals organized under these sub headers:

-- Health Care First (sever the link btn employment and health insurance)

-- Beyond Welfare Reform (ie stop importing a second underclass / restore sanity to our immigration policy)

-- Rethinking Taxes (help the puppies, not the yuppies)

In fact, the ONLY time Douthat even mentions culture is to demonstrate the impact that divorce has on family ... economics.

Could you guys please cease with the straw men and start engaging with these sensible arguments about a core problem afflicting the most crucial voter demographic of all?

You know, those core problems that neither party is addressing with any real seriousness or coherence?

As opposed to snark, tribalism, and cheap, facile arguments about irrelevant kulturkampf BS.

thanks in advance,

t

Another clue for you: it's  "Sam's Club", not "700 Club." Sam's Club is another Costco. Its value proposition and appeal to its customers are 100% economic. In the customer's eyes, there is no social or ideological or religious aspect whatsoever to this retail proposition.

I await a serious engagement with a serious thesis put forth by Douthat and your former colleague. And not one or two drive-by snarky blog posts but an article that explores what a truly pro-family economic agenda would look like, with some research into the success the French and scandinavians have had with their targeted interventions and tax breaks for working families.

An engagement with difficult problems like this one-- specifically, how to alleviate the extraordinary pressure on working families, who are not mobile, in an age dominated by hyper-mobile capital and hyper-volatile markets of every kind-- might actually bring us closer to the new bipartisan political dialogue that your golden boy coyly talks up but never actually delivers.

Hey, the Repubs are down but not out. Let us not make silly asses of ourselves - as wingers like Coulter and a few others - by starting to predict the Whiggish doom of the GOP. My life experience suggests that in another 6-8 years, when the nation wearies of Obama - and believe it or not, it most likely will - the GOP will find new life, new leadership, and become competitive again.

The geriatric demographic of the GOP is a bad sign and let's face it, the near white out of that fool party is another bad sign (take a good look at all the old white coots in the audience of a typical McCain town hall...they look like some of those mean old white grade school teachers I had who liked to beat an education into my brown street rat ass)

"An engagement with difficult problems like this one-- specifically, how to alleviate the extraordinary pressure on working families, who are not mobile, in an age dominated by hyper-mobile capital and hyper-volatile markets of every kind-- might actually bring us closer to the new bipartisan political dialogue that your golden boy coyly talks up but never actually delivers."

First off, tep, I'll ask you to name me a single remotely viable candidate for the Democratic nomination this year who'd manage to be more thoroughly and authentically engaged with the porblem of how to alleviate the extraordinary economic pressure on working families than Barack Obama.  I'm all ears.  Thanks in advance for the deafening silence.

Now, with that unpleasant bit of reality dispensed with, let's address the reasons no candidate of either party has taken up your puppies-not-yuppies slogan with the requisite gusto.  IMHO it all goes back to the Reagan Revolution, or really probably all the way back to 1968, with Reagan's elevation in 1980 being the final hammer blow to the stake through the heart of the Great Society.  After 40 years marked by Nixon's corrupt power plays, Carter's ineffectuality, Reaganism, Clinton's triangulation, and Bush's essential unwillingness to govern in any capacity other than COC of the Armed Forces, an entire generation of working people, the majority of the surviving population, has come of age divorced from any awareness that government and therefore politics can (and in fact does all the time) affect their economic status and wellbeing meaningfully except possibly through another tax break or rebate.  Politics has become like reality television, like American Idol, something that happens elsewhere--in Washington not Hollywood but what's the diff?--a grand entertainment about which viewers (not participants) might hold passionate opinions, but which ultimately has no bearing or, rather, is not SEEN to have any bearing on their lives.  An entire generation has internalized the canard that politicians are all the same, that choice between candidates and, perhaps more importantly, between policies, is essentially nonexistent.  

So what does this mean for the parties?  And for the candidates?  Well, it means they need to tread carefully when talking about "how to alleviate the extraordinary pressure on working families."  While most of those working families are aware that they're under stress, few of them are conscious that many of those stresses arise from structural conditions that are contingent, not absolute, and even fewer are primed to recognize that politics has or can have anything to do with relieving this pressure.  If any pol comes on two strong in this line, he risks being perceived by the majority as being out of touch with reality--for no other reason than that he has the temerity to suggest, against the evidence of 40 years of non-governing government, that government can take an active, not just a passive, role in improving peoples' lives.

You think Obama is just blowing smoke, and well may he be.  But I submit that at this stage of political history in the US, blowing smoke and gently at that is all that we can really expect of a candidate.  We're too far removed from the New Deal and trade unionism.  Too few people alive have seen the benefits of collective action.  No one remembers.  The embers are cold.  Let's just hope that with Obama's smoke, there's a little fire too.  Is there?  Way too early to tell.  And it's still probably a long shot.  But I'm as happy with him as anyone else I can think of, and I wouldn't expect any other to be any less airy than he is and still survive.

"too strong" not "two strong"  

Sometimes I amaze even myself.