Matt Yglesias says that Democrats should stop wishing for the perfect candidate and just be grateful they aren't faced with the clown show the Republicans are putting up:
He says that the Republicans could be having an interesting debate about the nature of conservatism and the direction of their party. But they're not. He points to this post at the American Scene which explains:
In fact, there is no ideological fighting going on, except between Ron Paul and the rest of the field. Instead, the GOP is engaged in an identity-politics-driven contest. The GOP is not debating what it stands for, nor is it a party that knows what it stands for and is looking for the best candidate to win a general election and/or to effectively carry out the party’s program. The GOP is not trying to find a leader for the party. It is looking for a candidate who is the incarnation of the party. No wonder they’re having a tough time.
That's what they always do. They want a living incarnation of the party (Jesus, maybe, if he hated racial minorities and liked torture and tax cuts.)
The problem is that it's not easy to find a walking incarnation of a party based entirely on a dissonant image of narrow regional folkways and aristocratic privilege. Now that the Bush political franchise has been permanently tarnished, you can't just pull one off the shelf.