Backseat strategists: do the Democratic Party's harshest internal critics finally have a plan for building a political majority?

• Author: Schmitt, Mark
• Position: On Political Books - Take It Back: Our Country, Our Party, Our Future - Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics - Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What Democrats Must Do To Run 'Em Out - Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government -

Take it Back: Our Country, Our Party, Our Future By James Carville a n d Paul Begala Simon & Schuster, $24.00

Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics By Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga Chelsea Green Publishing, $25.00

Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What Democrats Must DoTo Run 'Em Out By Steve Jardin and Dave"Mudcat"Saunders Touchstone, $24.00

HostileTakeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Can Take It Back By David Sirota Crown, $24.00

What's most provocative in this year's crop of books about renewing the Democratic Party is what's missing. The old sectarian fights about ideology, between the Democratic Leadership Council and labor-left factions, seem to have disappeared. None of the four books reviewed here makes the argument that the Democratic Party is in a substantive way out of line ideologically. None argues that the party needs to move as a bloc to the left, right, or center. The prevailing tone, particularly in James Carville and Paul Begala's Take It Back, is more along the lines of, "Pick something and stand for it!"

Even for the most outspokenly liberal author represented here, David Sirota, it is the passion, clarity, and narrative coherence of a liberal message that makes it appealing, more than its content. One suspects that if a moderately conservative message didn't sound so damn wishy-washy, it would be unobjectionable.

In fact, that seems to be the case with regard to a figure who stands in all of these volumes as a one-man Mount Rushmore for Democratic revival: Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. A gun-toting, straight-talking, populist; innovative and smart, Schweitzer's 2004 electoral victory--the first for a Democrat running for the Helena statehouse since 1988--was chronicled in these pages by Sirota ("Top Billings," December 2004). Schweitzer has had a wildly successful first year in office, making him emblematic of the tough, fearless, joyful political warrior that all these authors are searching for without regard to ideology. Schweitzer stands in tall Western contrast to another figure who haunts all these books, a group of never-named characters known as "John Kerry's advisors," whose instinct when attacked is always to say, "We mustn't justify it with a response"

But what's odd about the veneration of Schweitzer is that he is hardly the only example of Democratic success, even in states that supported Bush. Indeed, he isn't even the only example in Montana, where Democratic Sen. Max Bancus, whose style has more in common with the scared-of-his-own-shadow "John Kerry advisor" than with Schweitzer, has nonetheless won five times as many statewide elections as Schweitzer. And what about governors Dave Freudenthal in Wyoming, Janet Napolitano in Arizona, Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas, or Brad Henry in Oklahoma? Are their Schweitzerian levels of popularity attributable to the same formula?

Indeed, the swath of popular Democratic governors in these and other states is a reminder of an important truth made most strongly by Steve Jarding and Dave "Mudcat" Saunders in Foxes in the Henhouse: Democrats can win anywhere and should act like they can win anywhere. Of the 30 states Bush carried, two-thirds have either a Democratic governor or a Democratic senator, and the two biggest Republican-monopoly states besides Texas--Ohio and Missouri--are full of fed-up voters and will have highly competitive races for both governor and senator this fall.

But if Democrats can win anywhere, do they do it as Democrats, or as individuals who separate themselves from the damaged brand of the national Democratic Party? And if...