Anchors in Tumultous Times
In a recent Rolling Stone roundtable, David Gergen said something very interesting:

GERGEN: To the degree that the Republican Party is discovering that you can reach out to lower-income working people, whose lives are in huge flux. As Peter was pointing out, those voters are looking for something beyond an economic boost. They don't have much faith in government producing for them anymore, and they're looking for security. And they find it in a wartime president, and in their cultural beliefs. They're looking for anchors. The Republicans have learned how to reach out to those people and offer them some anchors -- while Democrats find it harder to talk to them in those terms than they did in the past.

The New Deal coalition was built on people believing that government could provide an economic anchor in times of severe, and then not so severe, economic times. Eventually, its compelling power was eroded by the right associating it with failed socialism.

Our job over the next four years, as we again face severe economic times (whether it is a depression, stagflation or a continued middle-class squeeze) is to convince voters that government can again play a role as anchor in tough economic times. It will play that role in a different way, after all, we have learned something over the past fifty years, but it will play it effectively.

This is not a case that a presidential candidate can make during a campaign. The frame of "big government liberal" has already been built. It is a case that we, the writers, talkers, organizers and other grass roots believers, have to make.