John Heilemann has a good piece in this week's New York Magazine. Heilemann quotes DLC guru Bruce Reed as saying that no one in the Democratic party understands the need to formulate a concrete agenda more than Rahm Emmanuel, Illinois Congressman and Chairman of the DCCC.  "He totally gets it," Reed says.

But when Heilemann went to Emmanuel and asked him what the plan is, Rahm responded: “We’re going to talk about cronyism, corruption, and abuse of power and how it ties to everything that’s gone wrong.”  Heilemann writes than when he pressed Rahm for details on the positive aspects of the Democrats' agenda, Emmanuel's vision got "a good deal less vivid and precise."

Howard Dean was even less convincing on Meet the Press yesterday when Tim Russert pressed him on the specifics of the Democrats' agenda. Dean said:

Right now it's not our job to give out specifics.  We have no control in the House.  We have no control in the Senate.  It's our job is to stop this administration, this corrupt and incompetent administration, from doing more damage to America.  And that's what we're going to do.  We're doing our best.

As I said in my post the other day about the Democrats' new "wedgie strategy," there is only so much mileage that can be gotten out of going negative on the Bush administration. Democrats need to present a plan of concise, specific proposals drawn from an overarching set of principles.  Obviously, that is turning out to be harder than it looks for Emmanuel and his party because they seem unable to reach a consensus on "the vision thing." As Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Heilemann:

Today, you can’t tell me what the Democratic Party stands for. I go to House Democrats and ask them, ‘What is your philosophy?’ And they can’t tell me, either.”