OMFH.
One can argue about why the Democratic Party no longer seems to have a reason for being. I believe the reason is this: They have achieved what they set out to achieve in 1932, when the modern Democratic Party began. They got what they asked for, achieved what they fought for. They got a big government that offers a wide array of benefits and assistance; they got a powerful federal establishment that collects and dispenses treasure, that assumes societal guidance. They got Social Security and Medicare. They got civil rights (much murky history there, the Southern Democratic lions of the U.S. Senate having retarded the modern civil rights movement from 1940 through 1964; still, by the late '60s Democrats came to seem to own the issue, and that hasn't changed). They got what they stood for. They went on, in the 1970s and '80s, to stand for things about which Americans showed they had doubts and ambivalence: abortion, the modernist social agenda. By the time the Democrats ran out that string, they got tagged for the cost of their dreams. Big government is expensive, and the American people didn't enjoy being forced to pay, through high taxes, for the pleasure of being pushed around.1
This from party that wants to legislate decisions about life and death for Americans. This from the party who wants to use the Constitution as a club instead of the protection it was designed to be. This from the party that wishes my sex life was still a criminal act. This from the party who has run up a record breaking deficit. Who's going to get tagged for the cost of those dreams?
Unreal. I agree that Democrats have no vision, no philosophy and that it is hurting them to be merely an opposition party. (Would someone at the DNC finally get a clue? You can start by not hiding from religion. Jesus was a leftist radical for crying out loud! "Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor" (Mark 10:21). Does that sound like a Republican to you?) But, please, spare me Republican delusions of grandeur. Republicans are in power because they've managed to scare the public into thinking the American way of life is in imminent danger, not because their "philosophy" has anything more meaningful to offer the U.S. over the Democrats.