The title asks a question, so here is a picture of The Question.

The last few weeks have, with good reason, worried liberals and others.  Once again, we have seen the only political party that even attempts to speak for any of our concerns fail horribly.  The debt ceiling debate was an inherently winnable policy fight on a number of different grounds.  While the ultimate deal (as we noted in its aftermath) is better than we could expect considering how badly the Democratic leadership failed, it still amounts to a loss in terms of the debate.  It legitimizes Republican bad economics.  It legitimizes "austerity".  None of this is particularly good.

Given all that, it's worth taking a moment to figure out how the Democratic Party can recover strategically from this sort of a failure.  It's a good question.  Fortunately, there are answers.

So as some of you might remember, Wisconsin Democrats attempted a number of recalls against Republican members of the state legislature. This was in response to Gov. Scott Walker (R-Jerkville) and his particular brand of 21st Century union-busting, which it turns out, a lot of people didn't like! What a surprise! Anyway, in keeping with the Wisconsin GOP's style, they inserted a bunch of "fake" Democrats to create contested primaries against the initial Democratic choices (Chicago Tribune/AP). This was viewed by experts as "seriously not cool," in technical terms.