I think there’s an important difference between vision as a candidate’s appeal to an electorate and vision as a motivating drive that informs the action of governance. American journalists, with their horse-race obsessions, focus on vision as part of the candidate’s electoral strategy, and evaluate it more or less as successful or failed marketing. But the reason I’m saying that the lack of vision in governance is the problem the Democrats have (which does manifest in the uncharismatic character of their leadership) is that I think that’s a structural condition, not an individual failure. When elected leaders have a vision of governance, it’s usually because the party or movement they represent has a vision. When a movement has a vision, it’s usually because the movement has roots in a wider population, group or community who recognize and respond to that vision—or defend what it does to and with governance.

God help us, but the GOP after 1998 and arguably since 1976 has had that sort of vision. So merely having a vision is not in and of itself a good thing, but they do demonstrate how powerful the political outcomes can be, often controlling the overall character of the political system even when they lose elections or lose votes or ostensibly fail at pursuing their aims.

I suppose to be completely clear about this, I am saying that the Democrats DO have a vision of that kind—it’s just uncharismatic, technocratic, managerial, incremental, in a historic conjuncture where that’s plainly inadequate to the circumstances they (and we) find themselves in.