Opinion: Democrats' strategy must be developed further

This past weekend, Democrats released the preliminary findings from the Democratic Victory Task Force, a committee designed to analyze the source of the party’s recent troubles and formulate a solution to solve them.

Given the party’s lackluster results in November’s midterms, the very creation of this task force should be seen as a step in the right direction. But Democrats should hope the task force presents something more substantive than the rhetoric on display in the preliminary findings.

The document is filled with morally sound but realistically meaningless lines like, “As Democrats, we believe in an economy where hard work is rewarded, where everyone pays his or her fair share and plays by the rules.”

That’s fantastic, except, of course, for the fact that most Republicans would probably say the same things about themselves.

While there are certain objectives that both Republicans and Democrats purportedly wish to achieve — bolstering the middle class, for example — the policies each party would prescribe are usually dissimilar.

And Democrats must not be reticent to delineate these differences.

If they are, then they simply shouldn’t be running in the Democratic Party, for they are confounding the party’s already incoherent message.

Instead, Democrats must be more explicit in stating what policies they will enact, how their policies will help voters and why each policy is superior to alternatives.

Intriguingly, the task force recommends a “values-based narrative” and a “common set of core values.”

Though it is true that the Democratic Party would benefit from the unification of its various sects, such a solution should not compromise the interests of the constituencies that have called the party home for at least the past few decades.

If these interests are compromised, the disarray present within the Democratic Party will transform into a deepening schism.

But perhaps its most overlooked problem is the relationship between the national Democratic Party and its state parties.

The issue is addressed in the findings, but the offered solution is so facile and devoid of definitive goals that the task force might as well not have talked about it.

Given the current shape of state politics in North Carolina and elsewhere, it is becoming apparent that national and state Democratic parties must change their organizational structures to enable clearer communication between their varied operations.

The Democratic Party in North Carolina is infamously disorganized and fractured. It has failed to come up with any coherent strategy to counter the advances made by Republicans in the state, instead offering a muddled message. Patsy Keever, the state party’s new chairwoman, should be given a chance to improve the party, but she will need to offer a clear and specific strategy that does not shy away from the party’s stated ideals.

Concerned Democrats will have to dig deeper than the findings presented by the task force.

The party must make clear what it stands for by acting on it. Currently, it is clear to all what most Republicans stand for: fiscal and social conservatism. So, Democrats, what do you stand for?