Where did the democrats go wrong?

Short answer: moral values

The Democrats have gotten side tracked by the issues surrounding victimhood. It provides an easy if unappealing morality to say that the exercise of power to create suffering is bad and victims are therefore good. If you are a victim, your job is to lie there bleeding on the railroad tracks of life. While being a victim is the professional occupation of many morose 13 year olds, it is an unappealing way to view yourself as an adult. To put it bluntly, there's no percentage in this view of morality.

Republicans have come up with a Christian/hedonist cocktail that appeals to the mass of American voters. In the Republican world view believing in God is good, families are good, and taxes are bad. It is no great sacrifice to believe that you don't really die and to believe that your close personal relationships are a substitute for caring for strangers. It is certainly no sacrifice to believe that you should be paying lower taxes. In this version, Jesus was nailed up on the cross so that we could all be comfortable. It's a little far from the actual Bible, but what the heck.

Americans being Americans, a strictly victim based philosophy will never work. The Democrats will be better off appealing to our sense of ourselves as powerful and free. A powerful and free people has certain responsibilities. The Republicans need to be painted as selfish and petty and hedonistic. Their ideas certainly are. And that means the Democrats need to stop being so selfish themselves. ...