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the natural majority in the US.

Thank you for linking to this priceless article! :D

That is more BS that I have read in a long time. Let me make the point why I think this guy gets it all wrong.

First of all, this article was written right after Bush won in 2004. It is understandable that a few conservatives got carried away a little bit - but even seen in that context it´s still all wrong. This article is so full of wrong observations and wrong conclusions that I don´t quite know where to start. His biggest mistake is to equate the 50% who actually vote with the 100% who could. If we speak of "natural" majorities it´s obvious we have to include the half who doesn´t vote.

The fact that many don´t vote is no coincidence:
- The election is always on Tuesdays, when people have to go to work.
- If you want to vote, you have to register first. If you live in your own house you don´t move very often (possibly never) so you only have to register once. If you have moved since the last election, you actually have to show up somewhere twice on a weekday to vote. I don´t know American figures, but in Germany homeowners vote very conservative while tenants don´t.
- People get purged from the registry without knowing it. We all remember the chaos of the last two elections where many, many people couldn´t vote because their name wasn´t on the list. Coincidentally, this only seemed to happen in areas where Democrats get lots of votes.

I could go on about how the electoral college system favors Rebublicans and how the necessity to raise huge campaign funds favors candidates who are nice to people who have lots of money to donate. There are not a lot of "natural" reasons Bush won, but a favorable voting system, bended rules and outright fraud. Only 25% of Americans voted for him.

Finally, there is a Democrat who gets it right. Obama manages to mobilize the natural democratic majority! From the beginning of his campaign, the most important part of his strategy was to bring big parts of that never-voting half to the polling place. That is how he defeated Hillary, and that is how he will humiliate McCain. Never mind all the money he spends - I am quite sure he would even win with a smaller budget than McCain´s.

I only found one good point in the entire article, and that´s not a genuine own thought, but a quote.

Dunham points out the inability of the Democrats to come up with a lasting post New Deal ideology.

So true, but you can say the same about most Social Democrats in Europe - especially those in Germany and the UK.
Again, his conclusion is totally wrong:

Their new celebrity Senator, Barak Obama (D, Illinois) is their leading spokesman of the new fad spin. One example of this spin is, "Health insurance for the poor is one of our moral values." This fuzzy statement is pure obscurantism in order to neutralize the culture war debate. The universal moral law deals with marriage and sexual behavior, among other things. It does not deal with public policy about health insurance. One might have the "value" of compassion, and care about health insurance for the poor. But this is very far from the universal moral law and principles of good and evil. The Obama obfuscation is nothing new. Marxist philosophers used to say that an unequal distribution of income is "unjust" and that we ought to define all our principles of justice accordingly. If this is what Obama believes let him say so. If not, let it be clear that he is adding to the intellectual confusion of the Democrats and making it harder for them find a post-New Deal ideology to unite them.

That is such an unbelievably stupid thing to say. There is no such thing as a "universal moral law" and even if it would exist, I can´t see why it should deal with "marriage and sexual behavior", of all things.
So let´s leave moral aside. Health insurance is in the best interest not only of "the poor" but of the overwhelming majority! How many people in Europe would rather have the American health system? I´m sure not more that 5% in any country.
If Democrats (or European Social Democrats, for that matter) are going to find their "post-New Deal ideology to unite them", things like universal health care will certainly be essential parts of it.