It is natural to assume that economic liberalism will bind together a new majority more certainly than any social policy, for the simple reason that even a majority of conservative voters favor the welfare state. Views on a wide range of social issues are more fragmented and diffuse. Economic liberalism has been opposed by elites of both parties over the past thirty-odd years—but not by all of them, as seen, for example, in the mobilization of wealthy opponents of abolishing the estate tax.

The driving, defining force in the historical processes that [Kevin] Phillips describes is fundamentally economic — a restoration of broad equality in sharing the rewards of work. The notion that this is somehow culturally conservative derives from conservative caricatures of the welfare state, defining it in terms of its help for the most downtrodden and dysfunctional. But the vast majority of welfare state spending and benefit (including tax policies, investments in education, health, technology and infrastructure, etc.) has gone to the middle class to make them middle class. This should be our model in shaping new policies for the century ahead. Policies that broadly benefit everyone create conditions in which social and cultural tolerance flourishes.

The realignment [election]s of 1896 and 1932 hold important lessons for us. In the 1880s and 90s, the power of plutocracy was consolidated because the broad mass of people were divided. The rural populists, Jewish and Catholic immigrants and native Protestant working class were all structurally exploited by the Guilded Age plutocracy, but were deeply divided culturally—which is what allowed the realignment of the congressional elections of 1892 and 1894, leading up to the presidential election of 1896. This was not a stable arrangement, however, as seen in the progressive revolt, and the relative strength of the failed Democratic realignment, which nonetheless had a strong ideological component. In contrast, the realignment of 1930-1932 bought together the Catholic and Protestant working class, united the Northern urban working class with the South, and produced a much stronger coalition of forces, as seen in the much weaker failed Republican realignment.

Thus, what’s needed for a new realignment is the bringing together of previously splintered groups with common economic interests (the lesson of 1932), but it’s also helpful to splinter the other side (the lesson of 1896). It’s safe to say that 2006 is primarily a referendum on the Republicans, and is playing out as a substantial splintering of their side. This is the prime significance of the Foley scandal. While it is relatively minor in real-world significance, it is a major disruption of the GOPs conservative discourse, threatening to utterly undo the alliance of convenience between social conservatives and economic conservatives. A successful realignment—not just for the next election cycle or two, but for generations—requires that the 2008 election is about bringing together previously splintered groups. This is what the GOP failed to do following its 1994 success. The failure was hardly surprising, given the nutcase leadership of Newt Gingrich, But we need to work hard not to repeat his mistake.

There will be at least three different versions of how to bring groups together that we are likely to see. One from the Beltway and two from the netroots.

The Beltway’s favored solution is — as always — to “move to the center,” which means that Democrats again must move right. This will be supported by narratives about non-partisanship, blaming “extremism on both sides,” etc. It means further abandoning economic populism, which enjoys the overwhelming support of the American people. It’s the DLC all over again. The most plausible salesman of this approach is Barack Obama, who far too many people still mistake for a progressive. Well, some of his rhetoric surely is progressive. But that’s rhetoric, not reality.

The netroots have two counter-visions. Markos — a former Republican — is the most visible supporter of a libertarian realignment. This is especially meant to appeal to people like him — people who resonate to traditional pre-religious right GOP narratives. Paul Hackett was a classic articulator of this view. Chris Bowers — a pragmatic lefty — supports a government reform agenda. It’s not the New Deal, but it is New Deal 2.0. Government is and should be a much bigger player in this view, compared to the others, but transparency, responsiveness, and participatory democracy are central to this vision. It is very much about growing a deeply democratic culture, much as the union movement was in its pre-bureaucratic heyday.

The two netroots visions can either conflict with each other, or find common ground by concentrating on specific examples. The spirit that Markos is after — of autonomy and enterprise — has historically always required much more government support than people realize, from the building of canals and the Louisiana Purchase to the massive, prolonged government spending on science and technology that gave birth to Silicon Valley and the personal computing revolution. If we look toward specific challenges and how to meet them, we are far more likely to find ways that the two netroot visions can integrate into a coherent, but multifaceted whole.

An important aspect of doing this is looking for specific policy packages that address regional and sub-regional needs. Policies for the West, for example, will involve ways of bringing together environmentalists, ranchers, hunters and others to develop ways of preserving what’s best and most distinctive about the land and its people, while developing new industries, technologies and cultural practices that give people a future as well as a past.

The New Deal had important regional aspects to it that are undeservedly forgotten. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), for example, brought electrical power and economic development to a previous backwater. Regionally-specific policies, generated primarily by the people of those regions, should have an even bigger role to play this time around, both for pragmatic and for political reasons. They are the key to turning different regions blue, and the key to integrating the two netroots visions to provide a unified alternative to the Beltway/DLC vision.

It’s also a hint at where to concentrate our efforts in the waning days of the election: on those races where we see and feel a particular opportunity and capacity for articulating a regional vision that serves to bring a national vision down to human scale.

I'm not certain that I'm totally in sync with the emphasis on regional issues being quite as important, that's something I'm going to have to think about, but I do think that the weaving together of some apparently disparate threads into a new cloth is important. I see progressive populism as the key to winning elections, but whatever the overall program is, it has to include Kos' "democratic libertarianism" (which I still believe is a misnomer, since his version of what "liberalism" is seems heavily influenced by right-wing propaganda -- in short, it's a straw man, not a reflection of what real liberals think and do) and the re-democratization of both government and politics represented by Bowers (and by Kos as well, with his emphasis on "people power").

Populism, though, progressive, socially liberal, enlightened populism is the winner. If we have that and candidates capable of being appreciated for his or her purely superficial characteristics, then we'll win elections, betcha.