In one sense, this is a political answer to a political question. Having experienced a campaign in which his running mate was battered with charges of inconsistency, Edwards is emphasizing that he, for one, is all about staying the course. But more generally, Edwards is right. After years of being on the defensive in elections, shifting this way and that and trying not to offend voters, the Democrats need to assert their values forcefully. One nagging question remains: What, exactly, do the Democrats stand for?

Articulating an answer — the answer — is what many political observers have argued the Democrats need to do, although none of them seem quite able to express it themselves. It is also the question John Edwards has taken up more directly than any other potential 2008 presidential candidate. “We stand for work and opportunity,” Edwards said earlier this year. At times he has talked of creating an “opportunity society.” At Harvard he spoke of allowing all Americans “the dignity and honor in hard work.” The precise formula is a work in progress, but Edwards envisions a campaign in which the Democrats do not merely list good policy ideas, but emphasize the moral foundations of social justice, and depict the party’s ideas as representing the essential American values.

Thus every time Edwards speaks, there are two talks being given: the one he is delivering, and the one he is crafting over time. When I saw Edwards at the Kennedy School on April 13, he delivered a decent policy speech, but not a superb one. He was warmly received by most of the standing-room crowd — students, campaign workers, local politerati like Mary Beth Cahill and David Gergen — though not everyone was impressed. One Kennedy School student I spoke to shrugged off the talk as political posturing — though he admitted, “I’m a bit cynical” — while an older woman was disappointed because she had hoped to hear a version of the superb “Two Americas” stump speech that vaulted Edwards to prominence a year ago.

But watching Edwards is like following a baseball team: The result may vary on any given night, but what matters is the long haul. In 2008, when George W. Bush will be a semipopular president leaving office for good, the next Democratic candidate will face a new challenge and a new opponent, but will still need a broad, compelling critique of Republican ideas and practices. Edwards may not find it, but then again, he just might.

Of course, during the current phony-war period when Washington etiquette deems it impolite for potential candidates to talk about their White House aspirations, Edwards has resisted saying anything definitive about 2008. Surely Edwards would need his wife, Elizabeth, diagnosed with breast cancer as the votes were still being counted last November, to regain her health before he gives the presidency another shot.

Whether Edwards should also defer to John Kerry’s presidential plans, à la Joe Lieberman and Al Gore, currently fascinates Beltway insiders who have long forgotten the context of the Gore-Lieberman pact: the extraordinary 2000 recount, which, Democrats felt, wrongfully excluded Gore from the White House. At the moment, Edwards is deflecting all queries about Kerry. “I’ll decide what’s the right thing to do based on what’s going on with my own family,” he told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ “This Week” in February.

Nonetheless, so far in 2005, Edwards has found the time to appear at state party dinners in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, picket with striking truck drivers in Iowa, and make appearances in urban centers of Democratic cash and influence from New York to Boston to Los Angeles. His One America political action committee is accepting contributions. Maybe he’ll run and maybe he won’t, but Edwards is laying the campaign groundwork, just in case.

In the meantime, Edwards has taken a position as head of a new institute tailored to his interests: the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received his law degree. Read into this what you want, but Edwards’ position is described by the University as a part-time role, and it has a two-year term.

Still, Edwards only finished a distant second in the 2004 primaries, as the senior senator from North Carolina — and then garnered mixed reviews during the general election, following his uneven convention speech, a stalemate in the vice-presidential debate, and his limited impact in the final months of the campaign. So how can Edwards improve as a candidate in 2008, holding no office and burdened with a losing record in presidential races? Indeed, Edwards is in the most unusual position of all the potential Democratic hopefuls: Outside of the formal structure of his own party, unable to burnish his political resumé by conventional means, and unable to use political office to gain media attention.

On the other hand, Edwards is now free to craft his own message, without senatorial duties or the weight of a long voting record that can be used against him. The king of retail campaigning could have, in effect, four years of retail politics ahead of him.

Edwards’ Kennedy School talk about poverty was shorn of the crescendos of his stump speech. Fighting poverty, Edwards said, is “a moral choice,” adding, “The content of our country’s character is at stake.” At the New School in Manhattan the next night, keynoting a conference on “fairness,” Edwards also talked about economic injustice, but focused on tax policy, saying the Republicans were intent on upending “the very values that built America — rewarding hard work.”

To be sure, these talks contained plenty of echoes of the “Two Americas” speech, from calling the battle against poverty a moral one, to Edwards’ claim that government policies should reward work, not just wealth: “Our opponents want to shift the tax burden from unearned income straight onto the backs of the working people,” he said at the New School. Seasoned Edwards-ologists will recall the “bright light” he now wants to shine on poverty as the same beam he vowed to aim at lobbyists last year.

But instead of just dubbing certain issues moral causes, as Edwards did last year, he is now basing his claims on some first principles. Work, Edwards claims, is not just an economic abstraction but an inherently social activity. Work is how people provide for their families and, in many cases, define their civic participation. At Harvard, Edwards recounted the story of a Desert Storm veteran working his way back from destitution who told him, “All I want is to be a part of society.” Contrast that with Margaret Thatcher’s favorite piece of warmed-over conservative philosophy: “There is no such thing as society.”

Conservatives, of course, make claims on society’s behalf when it comes to cultural issues, but conveniently ignore the concept when it serves their economic benefit. In this vein, Edwards is trying to chip away at the right-wing notion that taxes somehow represent the government seizure of private money. “The truth is nobody earns his or her money alone,” Edwards said at the New School. “They earn it thanks to America. They earn it because America protects private property, enforces contracts, and yes, punishes torts … So nobody goes it alone, and everybody has a responsibility to help everybody get ahead.” We are, Edwards wants Americans to remember, in this together.

If you don’t accept that point, Edwards claims, you do not understand American history. At the New School talk, Edwards turned the tables on Republicans who respond to criticisms with shopworn claims that their opponents hate America. Abraham Lincoln, Edwards noted, was killed while carrying a clipping of his own pledge to maintain “a vigorous and just system of taxation.” Conclusion? “So if you hate the income tax, blame Abraham Lincoln.” We will hear that line again in the future.

Like Bill Clinton, Edwards wants to make clear he is not advocating a welfare state, but merely bringing everyone to the starting line. “What we want is an opportunity society where everyone who works hard and does right has the chance to get ahead,” Edwards said in a February speech in New Hampshire. Unlike Clinton, Edwards seems eager to combat age-old shibboleths abetting conservative ideology — like the myth that poor people are lazy, and thus not morally worthy of help. At Harvard Edwards described a meeting with poor families where he was struck by “how hard people wanted to work and how much they wanted to take care of their families. I know there’s a stereotype that exists out there, but a lot of people who live in poverty don’t fit that model.”

In 2005, Edwards’ religious references seem to have increased as well. “All of us know the Bible says the poor will always be with us, and some people use that as an excuse to do nothing,” Edwards told the Harvard crowd. He now touts his work with faith-based anti-poverty groups, dating to his pre-Senate days.

Correctly or not, Edwards seems to accept the importance of so-called values voters to the 2004 outcome. And at a minimum, Edwards wants to collapse the distinction some Democrats draw between economic self-interest and moral issues. Puzzled that some voters sacrifice the former for the latter? At Harvard, Edwards asserted that just economic policy is a values question itself: “No one should ever doubt that the president’s budget is a moral judgment.”

How well this approach, which is still evolving, resonates with voters is another matter. It does represent, though, a departure from a recent Democratic habit of targeting voters with a menu of a la carte ideas. “I learned that you can never for a moment forget the big picture,” says Edwards in “Four Trials,” his campaign-year autobiography, describing his time addressing juries. Edwards’ best quality as a political speaker is that he continually discusses policies in terms of their real-world effects and implications.

Indeed, Edwards rarely succumbs to what political analyst and blogger Mark Schmitt calls “policy literalism” — the affliction causing Democrats to drone on about, say, the specific benefits of Social Security, without generally describing why Social Security is a good thing. Edwards justifies Social Security this way: “We believe that people should have the freedom to grow old with dignity without having to depend on their children.”

Of course, many things Edwards says these days have a more prosaic purpose, and indicate his awareness of the intra-party tussle to come. He made an aside at Harvard to talk about the importance of unions — almost every major labor endorsement went elsewhere during the 2004 primaries. Edwards is pointedly trying to use the Internet as a basic part of his activities, not only holding podcasts on his PAC site, but giving shout outs to bloggers who have been covering the Social Security debate, and using a prominent Democratic-friendly blog to explain his position on the bankruptcy bill. And whereas the 2004 Edwards was sometimes criticized for not knowing policy well enough, his work on poverty is now allowing him to discuss key issues with leading policy analysts and professors, and to drop casual references to scholars like “Bill Wilson” — Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, author of “When Work Disappears.”

So what are Edwards’ chances? Plainly, much hinges on the crucial structural aspects of a primary campaign: fundraising, a good staff, fundraising, developing state organizations, fundraising, key endorsements and fundraising. More thematically, Edwards’ decision to concentrate on domestic issues means he will be further identified with the themes he used in 2004, for better or for worse.

After all, when James Carville made a mantra of “It’s the economy, Stupid,” during the 1992 campaign, he was not just claiming Bill Clinton possessed a more popular economic agenda than George H.W. Bush. Carville’s point was that voters were primarily concerned with economic issues. Since then, Democrats have not always grasped this distinction. And in 2004, Bush’s margin of victory was almost certainly provided by his perceived strength on foreign-policy and national-security issues. The Edwards camp has hinted that he will be involved in some foreign-policy projects in the near future, but it’s hard to imagine them being anywhere near as central to his concerns as his anti-poverty efforts.

For all the energy Edwards is capable of putting into a candidacy, his chances of success really depend on the circumstances surrounding the 2008 election. If the next campaign turns out like 1992, with hard economic times at the fore and world events in the background, then Edwards’ well-honed calls to create that opportunity society could resonate long and loud. If the race is more like 2004, however, with foreign-policy concerns paramount, it may require more of him than just plain hard work.

The newspaper account of the debate in The Hill just reinforced the Republican spin, highlighting the Democrats’ decision to make people spend more money on the hated TSA and downplaying the actual existing Republican alternative to the proposal, which was not “spend less on the hated TSA” but rather “raise money for the hated TSA by slashing needed aid to states.” The Democrats won, or “won,” and now they will earn the fruits of that victory: well-deserved scorn from everyone. And Ben Nelson (D-Troll Town) voted with the Republicans. (Though surely having users pay the fees for supposedly necessary security measures is perfectly conservative, isn’t it? Am I missing something here? I mean besides the fact that the two sides in this debate weren’t actually “liberal” and “conservative” but rather “people who want to come up with a way of paying for the oppressive and useless national security state” versus “people who want there to be an oppressive national security state but hate government spending on feeding and sheltering impoverished people.”)

I don’t know of anyone not employed by the TSA or some other arm of Homeland Security that believes the TSA does a good job and deserves its massive budget, but everyone in Washington apparently feels differently (and is terrified of being blamed for “voting to cut TSA funding” if there is another terrifying and deadly underwear bomber, of course). This is why everyone hates politics and Congress and Washington. This and Iraq. And the drug war.

The implications of a Democratic pick-up in Indiana could be huge. The party entered the 2012 campaign cycle in a defensive crouch, nursing a 53-47 edge in the upper chamber and facing a very challenging slate of races. The basic problem: Because of strong years in 2000 and 2006, the class of senators up for reelection in 2012 is dominated by Democrats, many of them representing marginal and Republican-friendly states. With a close presidential contest, the party won’t be benefiting from the national tide that lifted its congressional candidates in ’06, leaving Republicans with a host of pick-up opportunities – and Democrats with very few.

Well, that was the case early in the cycle, at least. Back then, there was only one clear Democratic pick-up opportunity on the board: Nevada, where John Ensign, the one-time rising GOP star, was forced into retirement by scandal. The race to succeed him, between the appointed GOP incumbent, Dean Heller, and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, is a toss-up.

But since those bleak early days, Democrats have caught some breaks.

The first came in Massachusetts, where the state’s biggest Democratic names all begged off from running against Scott Brown, leaving an assortment of B- and C-list options to a vie for a nomination that looked worthless last summer. But then Elizabeth Warren stepped in and proved herself to be a powerful communicator and a prolific fund-raiser. The Massachusetts race is now among the most competitive in the country, giving Democrats a 50/50 chance of knocking off Brown.

Then came Olympia Snowe’s surprise February announcement that she wouldn’t seek a fourth term in Maine. Quickly, the state’s former independent governor, Angus King, announced his candidacy. King, who won by 40 points the last time he was on a Maine ballot, is now the overwhelming favorite to win in November. While he won’t say which party he’ll caucus with, Democrats in the state and nationally are treating him like one of their own. Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the Senate, referred to the Snowe seat this week as “ours.”

Two other races that weren’t supposed to be competitive are also on the radar now. In Arizona, Democrats have recruited a candidate with a compelling biography: Richard Carmona, who served as George W. Bush’s surgeon general only to turn on the administration. A Democratic poll has shown Carmona within striking distance of Republican Jeff Flake, while a recent nonpartisan survey put President Obama only two points behind Mitt Romney in the state. There is hope among Democrats that Arizona, with its growing Hispanic population, is more winnable for them than most assume – and that without favorite son John McCain on the ballot, the state would have been theirs in 2008.

There are subtler clues of an unexpectedly competitive race in North Dakota. When Democrat Kent Conrad announced that he wouldn’t run again, the state was written off as an easy Republican pick-up – and it still might be. But some early developments at least offer a glimmer of hope to Democrats. As Politico reported this week:

With a dearth of public polling, the case for former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp is based on a body of clues.

A Democratic poll showed Heitkamp with a 5-point lead; no Republican data countered the finding. The latest Crossroads GPS air strike included $76,000 to bruise Heitkamp — a sign she’s on the radar of the cycle’s most notorious super PAC. Even Berg blasted an email to supporters recently claiming the state is “Harry Reid’s #1 target.”

Add Indiana to this mix and Democrats have a total of five opportunities (or potential opportunities) for pick-ups that didn’t exist at the start of the cycle. Obviously, they won’t win all of these races, and they may still get routed in a few of them. But when you’re clinging to a 53-47 majority, any seat gained could be the difference between majority and minority status next year.

Why should we care what candidates have on their websites? The truth is that politicians generally try to keep their promises once they are elected. Moreover, the more visible the promise, the more likely it is that the politician will consider herself bound by it – and face consequences if she votes the other way. Ideally, one would want to see what candidates talk about on the stump, and what they advertise in mailers, TV ads and other formats. But websites have some advantages, too. In addition to being easy to access, they also are open-ended. Presumably, candidates will list every issue they believe is important. Or at least, every issue they want to talk about. And those are the issues, again, that they’re likely to act on if they win.

So I looked through the Issues sections of the 10 Democrats who are most likely to be elected – either challengers rated as having a good chance, or open-seat candidates in Democratic or swing states. In Hawaii and New Mexico, that meant both candidates fighting in a contested primary; in six other states, it meant the odds-on favorite for the nomination.

The results should be disappointing for liberals. Two of the 10 candidates, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, don’t even have an Issues section on their websites. For the other eight, I’ll run down the numbers quickly. None of them mentioned support for adding a public option to ACA; indeed, three had no healthcare issues page at all, unless you count a page about protecting Social Security and Medicare, which was quite popular. Two of the eight support marriage equality, both of them in New England (Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Chris Murphy in Connecticut). Only two other candidates mentioned LGBT issues at all, Tim Kaine in Viriginia and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, who featured it in her bio page. Filibuster reform also received only two mentions. For civil liberties and the array of issues related to torture and detention, only Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who opposed renewal of the Patriot Act, had any mention at all.

By contrast, seven of the eight candidates had a whole section of their Issues pages devoted to veterans, usually alone but in two cases bundled with something else. Now, it’s certainly true that most liberals support help for veterans, but as campaign issues go, this is surely one of the most bland.

I was pretty surprised by all of this, but I was most surprised by the candidates in competitive primaries. In Hawaii, Mazie Hirono is attempting to beat Ed Case from the left, and yet Hirono doesn’t hit at any of these issues that might help her with liberal activists in Hawaii and nationally. And it’s not as if either Hawaii or New Mexico, the two states with contested primaries, is exactly Alabama; there are plenty of liberal Democrats who are going to be voting in those primaries, and liberal positions shouldn’t be the kiss of death in the general election.

So what’s going on? It’s possible that the candidates are being overly cautious. I suspect, however, that what’s really happening is that Democratic interest groups, activists and other party actors are not pushing hard on any of these issues.

And that’s a serious mistake. It’s almost certainly the case that the best time for partisans to influence legislators is while they are running for election to some office for the first time. After all, that’s when they need party support the most – especially for those who have tough primaries, but really for all of them. Once elected, they begin to build personal connections with their constituents, based on bringing home pork or on other personal relationships. Party becomes relatively less important. Certainly, that’s what politicians have an incentive to do – to increase support based on who they are, rather than being constrained by specific policy commitments that, odds are, will make someone unhappy.

Now, it’s true, of course, that it’s still early in the cycle, so some of this could change going forward. And as I mentioned, websites are only one form of candidate advertising. It’s certainly possible that some of these Issues sections were put together exactly how I suggested – by volunteers who didn’t have the authority to commit the candidate to potentially controversial positions – and that as the year goes on things will change.

But what they’re showing right now certainly isn’t what most liberals would like to see. If activists want change on these issues after November, they need to start targeting these candidates now, before it’s too late.

The fact is, working and middle class whites have supported too many Republicans who’ve dismantled the opportunity structure that created the vast (white) middle class from the 1930s through the 1960s – but that’s at least partly because too many Democrats turned their backs on those policies, too. The larger point of the piece, if a 4,000-plus word article can be said to have a single point, was this:

The emerging multiracial Obama coalition has the potential to transform the way we all think about race and politics as we invent the next America — but only if we can all forgo petty racial score-setting and 20^th century conceptions about identity. And only if more white people wake up to what they’ve let the Republican Party do to the country in the last 40 years, in the name of holding on to what they think they have.

I was making two related arguments: that whites must begin to face up to economic and political reality – that the party most of them support now stands for destroying not only the social programs they (incorrectly) believe benefit “other people,” but also programs they support, like Social Security and Medicare, food stamps and unemployment, as well as protections for workers who have jobs. My second point was just as important and less commonly heard: I asked that the multiracial left have more empathy for working class whites, and stop stereotyping them and dismissing their political choices, when we disagree, as merely “racist.” Interestingly, I got little or no push back on that point from anyone on the multiracial left, although I have been criticized for that argument many times, going back to the fractious 2008 Democratic primary. Maybe we’re making progress.

The criticism of my “White People” argument came almost exclusively from the right, and there were at least a few points worth engaging.

….

Of course, more than a few people reacted to the headline without thinking (or reading the piece), and I heard a lot of what I predicted I would in the article: I am a racist! How dare I generalize about white people? I would never talk about black people that way!

The best response along those lines came from Newsbusters, the fan club Brent Bozell runs especially to promote me. It featured a typically outraged harangue from Noel Sheppard: “Actual Joan Walsh Salon Headline: ‘What’s the Matter with White People?”  and included this: “Maybe Walsh should check her own racist leanings given her hatred of white people.” Noel, I love white people! Some of my best friends are white. As I even revealed in the piece, that includes some of my own family. You can do better, Noel. Try again.

The reply from the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was a little bit more substantive – although he kicked it off on Twitter by shrieking at Charles Murray that I’d accused Murray of “attacking white people!”

I didn’t accuse Murray of “attacking” all white people. I’d made the point that Murray now blames poor and working class whites for their economic struggles, much the way he has always blamed the black poor. Their poverty rate is climbing while their wages and family incomes are falling not because of huge shifts in the economy that favor the wealthy, but because they’re lazy and promiscuous and not terribly bright, and they just don’t follow the rules the way the poor are supposed to. This is the oldest argument around, of course, when it comes to explaining away social inequity and defending the economic status quo. You can find it in the Gospels, in clashes between that bleeding heart liberal Jesus Christ, and those who believed poverty was God’s punishment.  In every age, the struggle for justice turns on how successfully the privileged can justify their wealth as the natural result of their hard work and superior talent and/or the innate shortcomings of their lessers.

In my lifetime, that argument has been racialized. As the nation struggled to right the wrongs of racism, some people began to argue that the problems of poor African Americans had more to do with their own personal and cultural shortcomings than society’s, and that our efforts to use government to help made the problem worse.  But I was raised knowing that virtually every awful thing said about black people had once been said about Irish Catholics, and so I’ve spent a lot of my life refuting that racialized scapegoating, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Lately, though, I’ve felt that we’re getting some help with that task from Republicans, as they scapegoat working class whites in terms they used to only use against blacks — their economic problems are due to the fact that they’re lazy, too many don’t get married and they want government to take care of them (Charles Murray’s argument). Taranto misunderstands the point I’m making about the new GOP line:

When Walsh accuses Murray of “attacking white people,” she seems to be hoping that persons of pallor will be open to a similar appeal–that they will finally wake up and start voting what the left considers to be their “interests.” Essentially that means embracing government dependency: “Today, many white folks who are voting Republican don’t seem to know one important fact: they are, in fact, the ‘takers.’ ” Once they figure that out, Walsh thinks, they’ll join the blacks and the Hispanics and the professional elite, and the Democratic hold on the electorate will be secure.

That’s not what I was saying, at all. I’m not someone who makes the simplistic case that the working class is voting against its interests by backing Republicans. This is a debate in which I think the right has the better side. Claiming that working class Republicans – or black and Latino Republicans, for that matter — are “voting against their interests” is hugely condescending, a vestigial Marxism that assumes the only thing that matters is material conditions. It can also sound like we’re saying: “How dare you presume you have anything in common with the wealthy, peon?”

The Republican allegiance of some working class people may well be aspirational, as conservatives argue. Liberals like John Rawls’ famous theory of justice, which held that most people would want to design a society in which, should they find themselves at the bottom, they would be protected. It turns out that a lot of people prefer social policies that would protect them if they make it to the top, however unlikely that kind of economic mobility is turning out to be in the U.S. today. Voting Republican may also reflect genuine cultural and religious values. Growing up Irish Catholic, I can’t pretend that my relatives who vote Republican over the issue of abortion are dupes suffering from some kind of “false consciousness.” They care about that issue passionately. We can disagree with conservative working class white people, we can wish they had different priorities, but when we “assume” they’re voting against their own interests, as though we, not they, know their interests, our condescension shows.

….

On the other hand, I do not mean to disrespect working class whites, but I have to say: it would be great if their politics reckoned with reality. As I pointed out in the piece, red-state Republican areas enjoy the highest levels of federal spending. That’s an inconsistency that can’t be totally explained by culture war politics. White working class Republicans are simply wrong about the way government has worked, in their own lives and in the lives of others, and Democrats need to talk about that, respectfully.

Taranto hints at the case other Republicans make more forcefully – that the more Americans become dependent on government, the more they’ll vote Democratic, and that’s Barack Obama’s not-so-secret plan. “Republican supporters will continue to decrease every year as more Americans become dependent on the government,” Tea Party Sen. Jim DeMint wrote in his last book. “Dependent voters will naturally elect even big-government progressives who will continue to smother economic growth and spend America deeper into debt.” I think DeMint’s notion is alarmist GOP propaganda. But I’d be happy to have a political debate about the role of government in our lives – one that’s untainted by racism, fears of a lazy, parasitic “other” or charges that Democrats are “socialists” seeking to impose some Soviet-style or lefty-European system on America. I think it should be clear that Democrats love capitalism, because twice in the last 75 years, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then under President Obama, we saved capitalism from itself.

Finally, Taranto (and a lot of letter writers who didn’t seem to read my piece), claimed that the “demographic doomsday” scenario, in which a declining white population leads to the gradual extinction of the GOP, is “overblown.”  I agree – and I said so in the article. I regularly quarrel with liberals who insist that a magical “people of color” alliance is going to move the country to the left, permanently. It’s not going to happen. In the 80s and 90s, it was easy to imagine that Latinos and Asians might be receptive to Republican messaging around family, small business, religion, as well as hostility to big government, given that immigrants often came from countries ruled by oppressive governments (whether of the left or the right). Certainly Karl Rove once believed that. Republicans chased many Latinos, Asians and even conservative African Americans into the arms of Democrats by allowing racism and xenophobia to flourish in their party unchecked. As the GOP gets beaten in coming election cycles, it’s going to have to figure out a way to appeal to more than just white people — or perish as a party.

Also: most scenarios in which the white majority “disappears” in the next couple of decades ignore the fact that about 50 percent of the fastest-growing “minority” – Hispanics or Latinos – consider themselves white. (That’s why the Census has a category for “non-Hispanic whites.”)  So do most mixed-race Americans in many studies. Besides, the definition of “whiteness” has regularly shifted throughout American history – Irish, Italians, Jews and other non-Nordic, Anglo immigrants all took turns in the “non-white” category in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It’s quite possible that our notion of whiteness – or let’s just say “the American mainstream” or “real Americans,” in Sarah Palin’s language – will expand to include some categories of Latinos, Asians and mixed-race folks, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Condoleezza Rice.

To build a better, more inclusive country – to invent the next America – both parties are going to have to forgo identity politics and appeal to voters around principle and policy, not fear and contempt. Democrats are getting there; Republicans still have a ways to go before facing up to the fact that the identity politics practiced by the Tea Party represents a divisive dead end.

Part of it is that the lessons of the Great Depression belong to history, and, as such, are infinitely malleable. Arguments your grandfather would have dismissed — such as Mitt Romney’s plans to assure prosperity by topping off Scrooge McDuck’s bullion tank — are given credence today. Granddad may not have grasped Keynesian economic theory, but he remembered “Hoovervilles” and bread lines. Scrooge McDuck wasn’t a cartoon figure for nothing.

Professor Krugman acknowledges that some kinds of economic thinking seem counterintuitive. “Thus,” he writes, “it’s normal to think of the economy as a whole as being like a family, which must tighten its belt in hard times; it’s also completely wrong.” Yet it makes him crazy that even President Obama has used the belt-tightening analogy.

While deeply misleading, the family metaphor works politically because it sounds like common sense. Sometimes I wonder if Grandpa didn’t also have an advantage in living closer to the farm. Though innately conservative, rural people do understand that if you skimp on fertilizer in April, you’ll have a poor hay crop come September and a hard time getting your livestock through the winter.

But nobody ever puts it to people like that. Even somebody like Krugman can be brilliant at argumentation, less gifted at storytelling. Democrats generally have lost the knack.

The key is to stress government investment. In Arkansas, where I live, nothing could be clearer than the relationship between public investment and economic prosperity. It’s practically written on the landscape, yet many need reminding.

I recently read a beautifully written memoir called “A Straw in the Sun,” by Charlie May Simon, an Arkansas writer who homesteaded in Perry County (where I live) during the 1930s. Back then, rural Arkansans basically lived in the Third World. Simon and her neighbors grew their own food, made their own clothes, music and home brew. They had no electrical power, telephones, indoor plumbing or paved roads. Few in Perry County did. They walked to town, or hitched rides on mule-drawn wagons.

Enchanting as Simon makes it sound, the world she evokes feels not 75 years distant, but 175. After World War II, what brought Perry County into the 20th century was government investment. My 65-year-old neighbor was in high school when the main highway through the county was first paved after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bridged the Arkansas River at Conway.

So it came as something of a surprise to read that my ambitious state representative, a genial former neighbor now living over in Conway, has conceived a plan to return us to the bad old days. Supposedly by eliminating income taxes from 40 of the state’s less prosperous counties — along with concomitant cuts in public spending — GOP visionaries envision that nothing less than an economic miracle will take place.

Never mind why no such thing happened during Arkansas’s first 150 years or so of statehood. Thankfully, the proposal got nowhere. What’s amazing to me, however, is that otherwise intelligent people could be so blinded by ideology as to entertain so preposterous a scheme. Believe me; these fellows are rapt with sincerity. What’s more, their ideological brethren are taking over state governments from sea to shining sea.

That Conway, a pleasant town of approximately 60,000, should serve as the epicenter of this backward revolution strikes me as comically ironic. Although filled with Republicans, there are few cities of like size whose prosperity depends more obviously upon public largess. Located along Interstate 40, it’s also home to three state agencies and the University of Central Arkansas, a rapidly growing public institution. Trim UCA’s budget 20 percent, and Conway’s economy would go into a tailspin.

The city’s two private colleges are greatly dependent upon state-sponsored tuition scholarships, just as its nonprofit medical center relies upon Medicaid and Medicare. I could go on. Even Conway’s two newest large private employers are Internet- (hence government) dependent.

Around these parts, alas, Democrats have lost control of the story line.