Once again, Rob has offered what seems to me to be clear insights into the political situation in this country. He has done this in four articles (1, 2, 3, and 4) which I urge you to read in their entirety. However, in order to prevent this from being simply a set of links, allow me to try to summarize some of what he has said.

In the first part he identifies three major factors that will have an important impact on how America and the world is likely to develop: globalization, aging world population, and accelerating technological innovation. He discusses what makes these factors important and how they might affect our changing world.

In the next three articles he takes each one of these factors and explores possible responses which could be offered for each of these factors which could be publicly popular and effective in keeping America competitive in the world market in the decades to come. As a Democrat he hopes that his party will adopt his framework (or something similar) in order to reverse the recent trends towards domination by Republican strategists. However, more than simply hoping for a resurgence of Democratic strength, he hopes that these policy suggestions will be used by someone else if the Democrats continue to follow their current weak strategies which have allowed the Republican consolidation of power. The problems are too real and too important to simply follow party politics when solutions are urgently needed.

I doubt that his suggestions are likely to be heeded by the current Democratic leadership. Even if his ideas gain some traction I'm not sure that they will be enough to fully address the problems this country and the world faces. The first two comments on the first of the four articles mention two items which I'm not sure he has adequately addressed: environmental degradation and increasing competition for oil/energy resources. Even so, I think he presents some sound ideas which I hope will receive wider distribution (hopefully much wider than just my own small, but wonderful, group of readers).

Again, I urge you to read all four parts.

UPDATE: Rob has added a follow up post to his series which links to several other articles of related interest.