This is something I think many people worry about and rightly criticize the Democratic Party for. Today, The New York Times has a front-page piece entitled, “For Democrats, Many Verses, but No Chorus.” I don’t generally think much of Adam Nagourney as a reporter–can you say “conventional wisdom?”–but this piece does expose what I think will be the continued failure of the party and its meek showing in 2006, despite how badly the Republicans seem to be stumbling.

The piece picks up on various themes being sounded by Democrats around the country:

These scattershot messages reflect what officials in both parties say are vulnerabilities among Republicans on Capitol Hill, as well as President Bush’s weakened political condition in this election year.

But they also reflect splits within the party about what it means to be a Democrat — and what a winning Democratic formula will be — after years in which conservative ideas have dominated the national policy debate and helped win elections.

And they complicate the basic strategy being pursued by Democratic leaders in Washington to capture control of Congress: to turn this election into a national referendum on the party in power, much the way Republicans did against Democrats in 1994.

A party that has no vision for America will not succeed if it’s entire strategy is to sit by and watch while the opposition fails. And leave it to Rahm Emanuel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to show how lost the party is:

While Democrats including Ms. Madrid of New Mexico want to set a timetable for pulling out of Iraq, others say that would be politically and militarily disastrous.

Mr. Emanuel, though, said he was not worried. “What divide?” he said.

“We agree on Social Security,” he continued. “We also agree on the war, which is, not more of the same.”

“Skelton has a position. Murtha has a position. Levin has a position,” he said of Congressional Democrats who have raised questions about the war. “But all of them have one thing in common: Staying the course is a fool’s errand. O.K.? I’m happy that our party has a lot of different ideas about how to solve a problem.”

Now, that is pretty dumb: “not more of the same.” Clever, brilliant. As I grasp my head in my hands…

The rest of the article is here.