Please check out Kevin Baker's article "Trivial Pursuit: The Fake Quest for an 'Authentic Democrat'" in the October 2006 issue of Harpers. He teases out the disastrous consequences of centrist Democrats' unacknowledged desperation to be politically viable more clearly than I've probably seen anyone else do. (They acknowledge a desire to win, of course, but don't see their desperation or incoherence. Baker does.) I couldn't find this piece online, so write it down and get to a bookstore or library. Baker wrote the well-received Stabbed in the Back in the June issue, which I blogged about some time back.