I've been a bit puzzled by the relative absence of the worsening economic news is from the presidential primary campaign. If you'd dropped by Iowa a year ago and listened to some rhetoric and dropped by Nevada today to hear some rhetoric, you wouldn't necessarily assume anything had changed in-between. A bit more talk of stimulus now, a bit more talk of Iraq then, but the level of urgency has held basically constant. But much has change. The stock market has tanked. The job numbers are rough. Much of Wall Street is in turmoil. So I think Bob Kuttner is right to wonder why the Democrats seem so remote from these developments. His four, non-exclusive hypotheses -- that they're too unused to thinking ideologically, too in hock to large donors, too hemmed in by the rhetoric of deficit reduction, and too conscious and respectful of PAYGO's limiting effects -- all seem like significant pieces of the puzzle. But, in general, I think there's another side, too: They lack a template. The Democrats haven't run with a sense of urgency since, at the least, 1992, and I'd suggest far before that. And their main emotional reaction to the moment has to do with the end of Bush rather than any of the underlying circumstances. Edwards, of the three, has certainly come closest to making his campaign about the state of the country, but Clinton's running on her ability to manage government effectively (in contrast to Bush) and Obama is running on his ability to bring people together (in contrast to Bush) and neither message is all that adaptable, at least in tone, to the demands of the moment, though I think Clinton is increasingly finding hers to be pretty adaptable in substance.
