They continue to blindly romanticize their commitment to truth, which may contribute to their fall from power



Lamenting the fact-free illogic of Republican extremists that's driven the debt ceiling talks, among other domestic debates, (and run over a passive president) Democrats take sorrowful pride in relying on reason: The trouble is, we focus on policy, Democratic leaders routinely confide in their supporters, while Republicans focus on politics; we care about the country, while they care about regaining power.

Your opinion about the merits of this perspective will likely reflect your own political allegiances, but, for now, for the sake of argument, imagine that it's at least partly true and consider its consequences for Democrats. If their self-assessment is accurate, then Democrats suffer from what George Soros calls the "enlightenment fallacy," a "lingering attachment to the pursuit of truth" and the belief that democratic discourse aims for "a better understanding of reality." Republican operatives "knew better ... Karl Rove reportedly claimed that he didn't have to study reality; he could create it."

The temptation to boast of their presumed commitment to truth is hard to resist, but the pride Democrats take in it hastens their fall. Clinging to a belief in their superiority as reasonable beings, Democrats risk romanticizing their political ineptness and advancing their own irrelevance, until the policy goals of this stubbornly reality-based community are as divorced from reality as Michele Bachmann's understanding of history. Winning, after all, is everything.