So the Democratic Convention is running this contest on YouTube for people to submit a 2 minute video answering the question "Why are you a Democrat in 2008?"

This contest and the question it asks raise some interesting questions.

First here is the entry we helped make for Congressman Sarbanes'(MD-03):

I think this is a pretty good answer and the theme of leadership is important.

But I think it is interesting that the question doesn't just ask "Why are you are Democrat?" but "Why are you a Democrat in 2008?"

Why? The recent history of the Republican Party and the graphic of Wal-Mart contributions at the bottom of Markus's post yesterday are two examples. We aren't old enough to remember, but back in the day, it was actually an intellectually defensible position to be a member of the Republican Party. It stood for small and good government at a time when the Democratic Party was stocked with bigoted Southern racists and corrupt machine politicians.

This has changed over the last 40 years but many older people who grew up with the old Republican Party. For example, take former Congresswoman Connie Morella, our well meaning but disingenuous Republican guest this spring. Her claim that "I never voted for Delay" because she and three other 3 moderates in the Republican Party meekly offered a sacrificial lamb to get crushed in the Republican caucus' vote for Majority Leeader? Give me a fucking break, Connie, you voted for him every day with the R next to your name. People like Morella stuck with the Republican Party well past the time when it was all too clear that their party was driving the country off a cliff.

Right now, the Democratic Party is the clear choice for us. But as Markus pointed out with his graph, it can always get away from its core values and current status as the pragmatic party. I hope that I will have the balls to jump ship if it ever drifts too far.

It would be sad sight to have a 75 year old Jarrett Zafran hobble into a meeting of the Harvard Republican Club in 2055 and seem as pathetically out of touch with the realities that a hypothetical ideological and corrupt Democratic Party had wrought as Connie Morella seemed when she tried to justify her 4 votes for Tom Delay and her support for the real ideological and corrupt Republican Party to the Harvard Dems in 2008.

So kudos to the DNC for adding "in 2008" to their question in the contest.