WARNING TO DEMOCRATS - AT 10:05 P.M. ET:  When the Daley family talks, Democrats listen, or at least they should.  William Daley, of Chicago, who was Bill Clinton's secretary of commerce, gives a firm warning to his party, a good part of which is out of control.  From the Washington Post:

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party -- my lifelong political home -- has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.

Spot on.  Daley makes the point that Dem gains in 2006 and 2008 came mostly by attracting independents and even some Republicans, and by electing "moderate" Democrats to Congress, or at least those who were less to the left.

But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, "true" Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters.

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year's off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents -- many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

True.  The Dem decline among independents has been dramatic, and that can sink them.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama's approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower -- 41 percent -- among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup's generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

That is the best expression of the Democratic dilemma that I've seen.

All that is required for the Democratic Party to recover its political footing is to acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans -- and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan.

The problem, of course, is that the left wing of the Democratic Party is fanatical.  (And we have our share of nut cases as well.)  Fanatics see nothing.  They have more contempt for their party's moderates than they do for the opposition.

The party's moment of choosing is drawing close. While it may be too late to avoid some losses in 2010, it is not too late to avoid the kind of rout that redraws the political map. The leaders of the Democratic Party need to move back toward the center -- and in doing so, set the stage for the many years' worth of leadership necessary to produce the sort of pragmatic change the American people actually want.

COMMENT:  That is excellent advice for either party.  American politics is played between the 40-yard lines, and no one understood that better than Ronald Reagan.  A devoted conservative, he understood that governing had to be practical, not ideological.  He was the author of the Republican Party's "11th Commandment" - "Thou shalt not speak ill of any other Republican."

Today there are attempts in both parties to purge the impure.  They are wrong.  It is true that a party cannot be an infinite tent.  It must have basic principles.  But those principles must be general, and presented in such a way as to avoid alienating the great center, where elections are won.

Daley's column is a great lesson in American politics.

December 24, 2009