So basically they pulled a Vichy or a Quisling and became a junior partner of their enemy apparatus instead going underground. Quite frankly the logic of that strategy does not make much sense to me, because historically speaking, the Quislings are usually despised by both sides while the deGaulles become national heroes.
As you know, I am far from blaming Democrats as "traitors" as the more populist contributors to this list do. In fact, time and again I said that Democrats are the best what we now have and I always supported working with them. In fact my wife and I gave or raised more than $1,500 for Kerry and mobilized a dozen or so volunteers (including ourselves). These numbers might not be that great in the great scheme of life, but they are certainly above those contributed by most of this country's population.
However, I believe that their capitulation on the judicial nominations was plainly a very bad strategy that showed their weakness and handed a major victory to GOP. The Democrats would have been much better off if they did not pick up that fight at all. It would have looked like they picked their battles wisely and passed the ones that offered them little gain. However, picking up a battle than then waving a white flag revealed their two fold weakness: the weakness of their troops and the weakness of their strategists. They show not only that they do not have enough force to prevail over their enemy, but also that they do not have good strategists telling them when to engage in a battle and when to lie low.
But their tactical or strategic blunders aside, I think that the weakness of the Democratic party is structural i.e. due to major shifts to the right in the US society - or rather its return to its natural right wing self after the New Deal/World War 2/ Cold war interlude. The US has always been a reactionary society due to the following structural factors: - its economy (slavocracy), - immigration, which generally reinforces conservative sentiments in both receiving and arriving populations, - relative lack of stable geographical communities that foster social solidarity, - relative lack of political institutions grounded in the labor movement, - ethnic fractionalization and conflicts, - relatively low urbanization (or more precisely the cultural dominance of small towns over big cities); - geographic isolation and isolationism.
The progressive influences were brought in mainly by successive wave of immigrants - which almost certainly guaranteed their low acceptance by the mainstream population as the ideas of the low status new-comers. In Europe, by contrast, progressive ideas were spread mainly by the intelligentsia which generally had higher status there, but it was also local rather than an "alien" (i.e. immigrant) force.
The only real push toward progressive ideals came during the New Deal and WW2 (aided by anti-fascist sentiments) and then during the Cold War to counterbalance the ideological influence of the USSR. The weak progressive forces in the US received a significant boost from the elites which saw that pushing the home-grown reactionary, racist and Christ-fascist elements was in the best interest of the empire at the moment. Consequently, progressive activists and intellectuals enjoyed a much greater salience and influence that was warranted by the popular support of their ideas. Human losses in the Vietnam war helped to win some temporary popular acceptance (if not support) for the progressive ideals.
However, th elite support of progressive ideals started to quickly disappear under Reagan, and GOP started to mobilize reactionary elements again to gain support. Their astonishing success is due not just to their own clever strategy and strategic blunders of Democrats, but also - or perhaps above all, the reactionary sentiments, or perhaps receptiveness for such sentiments, harbored by the majority of the US population. Again, that receptiveness developed as a result of the structural elements that I listed above, and it is not an expression of "inner psyche" genetics or some other metaphysical nonsense. If the same folk grew up in Europe, they would be more receptive to progressive ideals because such ideals are much more firmly institutionalized in European societies.
So the bottom line is that Democrats seems to be a spent force that can only operate as a junior GOP partner and at best as an occasional weak opposition. This is partly because of their own blunders, but mainly because the major shift to the right in the US population (middle class, not just the working poor). If they drift further to the right they may prolong their existence as Quislings, but they will be reduced to insignificance.
I do not see this trend being reversed any time soon, unless the US experiences a major shock that will force it to change its course, which will happen sooner or later. That is why I d not think that the Quisling strategy is very good for Democrats in the long run. If they stand up and fight and lose they will have a much better chance of re-claiming their credentials later, after the shock, not ot mention the added benefit of wrecking a political institution that in the past benefited mostly their enemies. By pulling a Quisling, however, they lose their credibility now, and they will lose it later.
Wojtek