a party of citizens

I wrote this comment on a post by the lovely Georgia10:

One could say something like this: the party needs to stand for equal opportunity, a brighter future, etc. Much better would be to issue a call for a new way of being related to society, ultimately a new way of being American. Right now we play the role of manipulated consumers: frightened, pandered to, lied to, etc. The Democratic Party should simply invite Americans to be citizens, in the political rather than the legal sense of the word. We should reclaim the right and the power to pass laws that protect our interests against the corporate-military behemoth. The danger of this approach seems to be that the content is too abstract: what are the policy proposals? In fact, everyone knows what kind of policy changes the country needs and any decent democratic majority in Congress would provide: healthcare reform, civil liberties, better domestic security against terrorism, etc. The fundamental malaise we live under is a sense of impotence before the powers that be. Just as the progressive blogosphere has become a new power on the scene because we have learned to think differently about ourselves and what we can do, so the Democratic party should reconstitute itself by simply declaring that it stands for what it is actually supposed to be: a coalition of empowered citizens who act for themselves. The GOP is fundamentally a top-down, authoritarian party. It does, of course, live off several populist myths. But a party of citizenship doesn't need myths. It simply needs to proclaim itself as the party to which people who really want to be citizens choose to belong. When the GOP says, "we'll protect you from terrorists and Hollywood homos", the Democrats in Washington want to say, "but we'll protect you from pharmaceuticals and hurricanes too!" This is all wrong. The message needs to be that the people are the party, and vice versa. Please, let's do away with the rhetoric of government doing this or that for a passive and stupid populace.