Why the Dems will lose

The Democrats will lose the White House this November and quite possibly the Senate, leaving the Republicans with control of all three branches of government¹. Despite the fact that, perhaps because, Democrats are generally intelligent, fact driven thinkers, they seem completely unable to articulate clearly and succinctly why anyone should vote for them.

For example, three leading Dems on Candy Crowley's "State of the Nation" suggested

1. "We don't want to go back to the failed policies of the Bush era"; yet Paul Ryan is quite clear that he doesn't either. What he wants is to balance the budget by cutting government spending. That's not what Bush did, so this is an easy claim for the Republicans to dismiss.  
2. In answer to Crowley's question about youth unemployment among college graduates: "We want more people to go to college, not fewer and the Republicans will be cutting PEL grants". But this doesn't answer the question and is of little help of comfort either to unemployed recent college graduates with a mountain of debt, or high school graduates wondering whether a college degree really is a good investment. 

It's this inability to articulate a clear case and a compelling vision of the future that will sink the Democrats this cycle. The Dems are angry, but unlike the Tea Party, have been unable to channel that anger into a concise message. Occupy Wall Street is exhibit #1. The current flailing for an electoral life preserver is exhibit #2. 

It's tempting to say, they deserve what's coming to them were it not for the fact that most of us will be paying the price while our erstwhile representative go off to cushy lobbying gigs. We deserve better.