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Maybe, but it is an historic opportunity going begging.

This example may be a bit of a stretch, but I think it has merit. Think back four years and recall how the democrats hailed Obama as a new messiah. Something funny was going on at a deeply emotional level, and just because it left conservatives cold doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Stop to think about what it means to be a modern democrat. On any issue touching race, you will have spent the last two decades kowtowing to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the other race hustlers. Now along comes Obama. Joe Biden perhaps put it best, in a line that would have driven any Republican out of public life, when he referred to Obama as clean and articulate. But he had a point. For democrats, Obama meant that you don't have to grovel to Al Sharpton anymore. It was liberation, to the point of euphoria.

On my optimistic days, I have to believe there is still a political market within the democratic party for a politician who is willing to be honest about fiscal and social issues, including entitlements. There must also be pragmatic democrats who understand that the current leadership of the party systematically drives away anyone who is both honest and informed. Dishonesty, ignorance, and stupidity are not good places for the party to be, long term, but that pretty much sums up the current democrat strategic posture. The paralyzing factor on the democrat side is the special interest issues veto, which is ruthlessly applied. But if the dam breaks, big changes are possible.

I have long thought school choice was likely to be the wedge issue that would allow a reform democrat to emerge. In most major cities, poor black parents are the biggest constituency for real school choice. They know perfectly well that their kids are being sacrificed to union greed, and they have abundant examples of private and parochial schools to demonstrate what is possible if they could afford it. Nor have I given up on Social Security reform; 401(k)'s are not a foreign concept to the younger generation of liberals. Healthcare ... well, let's see if Wyden can get some traction, especially amoung younger, well-educated liberals who may not be attracted to third-rate, bureaucratic, rationed medicine, but whose tribal indoctrination makes it difficult to accept anything proposed by a Republican.

The opening is there. Whether anyone will step through is another question.