MORE COMMON GOOD! Over at TAP Online, we�ve posted the first portion of a major study by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress Action Fund (and other affiliations, in Ruy�s case) called �The Politics of Definition.�
The authors have written this paper as a sort of 2006 version of the famous �The Politics of Evasion� by Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck, the 1989 study that helped lay the groundwork for the Clintonian centrism of 1992. Except that Halpin�s and Teixeira�s goals for progressives and Democrats are a little different. Their conclusions -- totally by coincidence, really! -- are very similar to Tomasky�s in the current cover essay.
The paper is 18,000 words long, so we�re going to be rolling it out in four parts over the next few days. Part I gives a general lay-of-the-land discussion, and presents a close parsing of electoral and demographic data showing progressive electoral strengths. Part II will come next Monday, and the rest over the course of next week. Be sure to check out what will surely become a much-discussed study that, along with our piece, attempts to chart a new course that goes deeper than �framing.�
--The Editors
