Status quoism is bad for Democrats and bad for America

A friend noted today that Democrats increasingly find themselves defending the status quo on issues like Medicare, Social Security, overtime pay, etc., but we shouldn't let ourselves be stuck in that position. After all, if the status quo was so great, we wouldn't have 45 million people without health insurance, seniors forced to choose between food and medicine, parents unable to read to their own children, either because they're illiterate or working double time just to put food on the table, etc. Republicans won Congress in 1994 with a radical reform agenda, the Contract With America. Whether or not you agree with the agenda, they were able to cast themselves as the insurgent party of fresh ideas standing up to entrenched, bureaucratic, power mongering Democrats. Today we find Republicans increasingly acting out their own pre-1994 critique of Democrats. E.J. Dionne's column today notes the ironic flip flop on House ethics standards; they just voted again to increase the debt limit -- a far cry from the enforced fiscal discipline called for in the Contract With America; and they're hinting at changing the rules in the Senate to give themselves even more power when it comes to federal judges (the so-called "nuclear option.") If they have become the entrenched, bureaucratic, power mongering party of fiscal irresponsibility, then we should recast ourselves as the party of fresh ideas and radical reform. Several notable Dems are already arguing in that direction, and I think they're right, not only because it will help us win, but because the nation actually needs radical reform. That doesn't mean scrapping or privatizing Social Security (which amounts to scrapping it). But there are interesting ideas out there, some quite radical, that we ought to take a hard look at. After all, Social Security was a radical idea in its day.