HERE IN WASHINGTON, Democrats are engaged in a frenzy of rethinking. Two new magazines have been unveiled this week (in one of which - full disclosure here - I wrote a piece on the nonexistence of Democratic policy toward offshoring in the age of globalization). Major conferences abound. Think tanks are adding staff. To be sure, much of the rethinking amounts to reaffirming support for old ideas that are still good and necessary (such as raising the minimum wage) or to stating a problem for which Democrats don't yet have a solution (such as offshoring in the age of globalization, for which, in fairness, no political tendency in the world has a solution). But even if all this activity amounts to no more than what Kant would have called a Prolegomenon To All Future Democratic Rethinking, it has, at least, reached fever pitch.
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
