Let's probe deeper into Howard Dean's argument yesterday that it is not right or left, but deep conviction that matters to voters. I will address the connection to Clinton at the bottom.

First, a definition. I am not sure who coined "consultocracy," but I think it is a deeper term than simply a synonym for "Washington insider." The suffix -ocracy is perfect here, because it invokes a system, not simply a class of people. A consultocracy is a form of government, an organization of power and rule, a culture of values. To say that the Democratic party is ruled by a consultocracy is to imply that all of these things come into play in the culture of the party.

And it couldn't be a more apt term for the state of the left today.

The Democratic Party has become a party ruled by an ethos of political consulting from the top to the bottom. It is well and good to criticize Washington consultants for bringing down candidates of deep conviction, but they could not have done it this year nor in previous years without having a vast majority of Democrats subscribe to their way of looking at elections.

Think about this for a second.

To argue, as the Lieberman, Kerry wing of the party did, that electability is the prevailing consideration for Democrats is to let voters into a giant, cynical smoke-filled room. It rhetorically endows them with the expertise of a calculating political operative, a cautious political consultant. In such an environment, we do not view candidates as leaders with positions and arguments capable of moving us in a new direction or amplifying our concerns but as simple conduits for the Democratic Party label, as packaging for our interests and interest groups.

The consultocracy is rule by both the consultants and the values of consultants. In a consultocracy, for example, it does not matter to liberals that the Dean scream was essentially a fabrication of a bored media and Republicans scared stiff. What matters is that it made Dean "look bad" and "could potentially alienate centrist voters by making him appear too angry" and since media is king and consultants are media savvy unlike we citizens and since we are looking for electable candidates, we cannot possibly be smart and vote for him to lead the party. It would satisfy us as citizens if he could win, but in our consultocracy he cannot. Whether I like it or not, being a good consultocrat and Democrat I have to equip my party for the general election.

Do you see what is at work here? On the left, we constantly engage in scheming as if we are political consultants. We have completely lost our pride as citizens. Citizens, true, are not as powerful as consultants, who have the ear of the country's most powerful people. On top of that, accepting a subordinate role as a citizen certainly does not seem that inviting when our party culture says that we must look at all aspects of the election. Our payoff: we get a window in, we are invited by the powerful to participate as informed insiders, capable of running a national campaign. Every Democrat is invited to brood over whether Edwards is charming or whether Kerry "looks presidential" or whether Gephardt can win by appealing to his labor base, etc!

What a load of...

Regular people are not insiders. They have jobs. They have families. They have projects and goals. I am not a political operative. So why do I think about politics as if I am an insider, a political marketing mastermind?

Well I am fed up. Regime change starts at home. Since the election, I have decided to be realistic about what I am at this point, right now. I am a citizen. I do not have expansive political power, but I know what my values are. I know what I care about. I know what I want people in office to care about. It is time to overthrow the consultocracy in our minds and then we can get to overthrowing it in Washington, if it is even necessary by the time our mind revolution has spread. We (voters) must vote our values and stop calculating the votes of other people, otherwise all of our candidates will continue to address people as if cold calculation is the depth of our political conviction.

This brings me to Clinton. The more I think about this, the more I see that Clinton's triumph had nothing to do with his positioning on the issues. It had to do with his power to inspire hope and optimism in people. We would be wise to learn from his desire to find workable solutions that help ordinary people.

But, his Achilles heel was that he was so open about poll watching. His victories reinforced this nasty habit and set an ethical standard in our party that said that we should do it too, and vote according to what we find. That just makes us tools of power, however, strips away our fundamental values and reduces us to just one measly vote among millions. Nobody is inspired by that. And no one should be.

We are not consultants. We are citizens. And citizens are people of limited immediate power but great responsibility nonetheless. Civic pride! For in numbers, united, citizens are the most formidable force in our democracy. Citizens stripped of this fundamental role are cautious, powerless, and undemanding. And look at what the unraveling of citizen consciousness has done to our country...

Regime change begins at home. Overthrow the consultocracy in your mind.