The "Silent Majority" Is Back

Bush’s electorate, however, consists of more than Christian conservatives. As Newsweek’s revealing look at the laundering of charges of Kerry’s aloofness and his inability to connect to the middle-class hit the new stands, accompanied by behind-the-scene accounts of the eccentricity of his wife Teresa whose every word lost another vote for her husband, coupled with a vice-presidential running mate who couldn’t even carry his own state for the Kerry campaign, Democrats have fallen into an expected post-election funk. What some elements of the Democratic Party fail to realize, however, is that the perceived bloc of Christian conservatives who seemingly put Bush back in office for a second term, are nothing more than a smaller element of a larger resurrection of Nixon and Agnew’s old “silent majority,” i.e., middle America. Having sat in front of their televisions during the recent campaign while watching P-Diddy telling young Americans to “Vote or Die” as he adjusted his plethora of gold jewelry, accompanied by bubble heads Paris Hilton and Cameron Diaz who stood in the background, seemingly dazed and nodding in approval, matched by the audacity of an unshaven and slovenly-dressed Michael Moore promoting his Fahrenheit 9-11 film through countless attacks on Bush foreign policy, or the “Reverend” Al Sharpton delivering a speech at the Democratic National Convention, how many of a slumbering middle America wondered what had become of their Democratic Party, ignoring Kerry’s views on the Iraq war, health care, or the economy?

Post-Election Analysis: Where Do The Democrats Go From Here?
Analysis by Bob Skilnik
As newly-reelected President George Walker Bush headed to the solitude of Camp David last week-end and began ramping up for the path of his next four years in office, the mantra on the lips of Democratic Party followers in their West and East Coast strongholds — separated by a huge “red” divide — sounds remarkably the same: “What went wrong? How could we have lost?”

As reported earlier in the News Informant (“’Last-Minute Campaigns Concentrate On New And Veteran Voters In Contested States”’: http://www.newsinformant.com/articles/2004_11_01/000858.php, November 1, 2004,), the two factional issues of gay marriage and abortion seemed to have played heavily in Bush’s reelection, allowing George W. Bush to beat the one-term curse of an earlier presidential father and son team, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. In particular, the state constitutional referendum on the ballots of eleven states to ban gay marriages or unions, is now being credited with bringing out an estimated 19 million social conservatives to the polls, plus a healthy portion of an additional 4 million from the same group that sat out the election in 2000.

The move by Massachusetts and its Supreme Judicial Court to rule in favor of gay marriage in the middle of Kerry’s quest for the White House, forced the hand of other states to take a position on the volatile subject. In doing so, it might have also brought out the conservative vote for Bush in record numbers. In Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Utah, Oregon, and former President Bill Clinton’s own state of Arkansas, the amendment to ban gay marriage won by wide margins. The pivotal state of Ohio might have gone to Kerry but for the gay marriage issue, thinks Phil Burress, chairman of the Cincinnati-based Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage. “The Massachusetts Supreme Court cost Kerry the election,” he opined. Representative Barney Frank, an openly gay Democratic from Massachusetts, has agreed that in his state’s rush to legalize gay marriage, there were damaging ramifications, “I think it hurt,” he says.

With San Francisco Mayor Gavin’s much publicized and reckless move to defy the will of sixty-percent of California voters who had previously voted against gay marriages and start illegally marrying thousands, the nation’s collective mindset was established. Kerry, who despite the advice of Clinton to take a stronger stand on banning gay marriages and thus chip away at Bush’s stronghold in the red states, ignored his advice. After listening to Clinton during a telephone conversation, the candidate hung up and turned to an aide saying, “I’m not ever going to do that.” Throughout the campaign, the Massachusetts senator had taken the position that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but also that it should be up to the states to decide. His position versus Clinton’s advice left Kerry facing a paradox. Had he listened to the former President and changed position, he might have gained some support from voters in the red states, but would have also been facing more charges by Republicans of flip-flopping on another issue.

Whether or not this issue alone can be construed as being the defining moment in the election, however, is debatable, but it has already brought out a backlash that demonstrates how little attuned the liberal elite are to the ideals and values of middle America. Many continue to promote the notion that Bush’s constituency consists solely of fire-and-brimstone gay-hating Evangelicals who still fight the notion of Darwinism. As new numbers come in for the final tally of Bush voters, now close to 60 million with a winning margin of 51% to 48 %, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley at Slate Magazine, for instance, had this to say about religious conservatives; “First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don’t believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.” If Democrats are looking for a way to chip at this portion of the electorate, this seems like an attitude that sorely needs to be reevaluated, as some avowed Democratic voters later complained to Slate’s editors of Smiley’s inflammatory article.

Bush’s electorate, however, consists of more than Christian conservatives. As Newsweek’s revealing look at the laundering of charges of Kerry’s aloofness and his inability to connect to the middle-class hit the new stands, accompanied by behind-the-scene accounts of the eccentricity of his wife Teresa whose every word lost another vote for her husband, coupled with a vice-presidential running mate who couldn’t even carry his own state for the Kerry campaign, Democrats have fallen into an expected post-election funk. What some elements of the Democratic Party fail to realize, however, is that the perceived bloc of Christian conservatives who seemingly put Bush back in office for a second term, are nothing more than a smaller element of a larger resurrection of Nixon and Agnew’s old “silent majority,” i.e., middle America. Having sat in front of their televisions during the recent campaign while watching P-Diddy telling young Americans to “Vote or Die” as he adjusted his plethora of gold jewelry, accompanied by bubble heads Paris Hilton and Cameron Diaz who stood in the background, seemingly dazed and nodding in approval, matched by the audacity of an unshaven and slovenly-dressed Michael Moore promoting his Fahrenheit 9-11 film through countless attacks on Bush foreign policy, or the “Reverend” Al Sharpton delivering a speech at the Democratic National Convention, how many of a slumbering middle America wondered what had become of their Democratic Party, ignoring Kerry’s views on the Iraq war, health care, or the economy?

The fact that the Republicans now hold an even larger majority in the House and the Senate, while simultaneously dismissing Minority Leader Tom Daschle with his frequent bouts of perceived obstructionism, and have seized total domination of the once-Democratic Party stronghold of the South — including Louisiana where the GOP won their first Senate seat since Reconstruction — can’t simply be the result of Christian conservative voters voting en masse or the bogeyman-labeled dealings of a Machiavellian Karl Rove. The victory of Bush and the Republican Party can’t be argued as anything less than a mandate and a repudiation of the current ideology of the Democratic Party. As Clinton observed in the election aftermath, Democrats were seen in Middle America as “two-dimensional aliens.”

As for the Democratic nominee, party officials have to be wondering why they were straddled with another Northeastern liberal after the humiliating defeat of former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis by another Bush family president in 1988. “My advice to the Democrats is never, never nominate anybody from Massachusetts again,” says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. State of origin aside, the indifference of voters towards Kerry was reflected in a telling LA Times exit pool that indicated that only a slight majority of Kerry voters said they made their decision for the senator primarily because they liked him. More than half were motivated by their hatred of Bush, not because of any love or respect for Kerry. In response to another question about what a polled Kerry voter liked most about the candidate, only eighteen percent replied that they considered him a “strong leader.”

As George Bush resumes his role as the leader of the free world, his party’s control of the House and Senate may give him the ability to tackle more than just an exit strategy in Iraq. Look for an emphasis on domestic issues, including a hybrid privatization of Social Security, with a tweaking of how new members of the work force will contribute to the ailing system. The President has also been talking of a change in the tax codes. Observers note that a tax rate system that is flatter might become part of Bush’s new agenda, or possibly the institution of a national sales tax, coupled with the elimination of most, if not all, deductions.

The problem with such an ambitious agenda is adequate funding, this on top of a record deficit. Any other bumps in the road for Bush and his programs, at least in the next two years, could be reflected in a turnout of some Republican office holders in 2006. Democrats will need to appear willing to work with the President while simultaneously looking to exploit chinks in his ambitious agenda. They will also need to roll out a new public relations campaign of attracting Middle Americans with candidates who exude moderate or centralist values.

At the moment, however, there’s no evidence that this will happen anytime soon. Already indicative of Democrats glossing over how they’ve managed to lose five of the last seven presidential elections are the calls now for the head of Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and replacing him with Howard Dean while ramping up the party’s forces for the possibility of running Northeastern and secular New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the 2008 presidential campaign. It’s no coincidence that the two Democratic Party presidential winners were not only from the South — Carter and Clinton — but also considered moderates. If Dean and Hillary are the Democratic Party’s contemporary idea of moderates, Republicans will hold power for at least another decade.

Maybe in time, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party will have a chance to grab hold of the party’s leadership and give the next Republican presidential candidate a run for his/her money, or even make some headway during the 2006 House elections. More than ever, there will need to be a realignment in the Democratic Party ideology and a new appeal of the party with Middle America. Will it happen in time to stop the Republican steamroller? Doubtful. While the finger-pointing continues, the emerging chorus from Democrats indicate they still don’t get it.

“Official may end effort to ban gay marriages”:http://www.masslive.com/metroeast/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1099644483115560.xml The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts) (November 5, 2004)
“Was gay marriage Kerry’s undoing?”:http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/04/was_gay_marriage_kerrys_undoing/ The Boston Globe, opinion by Joan Vennochi (November 4, 2004)
For Bush And GOP, A Validation The Washington Post, analysis by John F. Harris (November 3, 2004)
Exit polls: Electorate is sharply divided CNN (November 4, 2004)
A Virtuous Victory National Review, analysis by Larry Kudlow (November 3, 2004)
The GOP edge grows wider The Christian Science Monitor, analysis by Linda Feldmann and Sara B. Miller (November 3, 2004)
Eleven States Ban Gay Marriage Fox News (November 3, 2004)
GOP Topples Daschle and Sweeps South The Miami Herald, reprinted from The Associated Press (November 3, 2004)
GOP Extends Decade of House Control The Miami Herald, reprinted from The Associated Press (November 3, 2004)
The National Fissure Remains Deep and Wide Los Angeles Times, analysis by Ronald Brownstein (November 3, 2004)
President Seems Poised to Claim a New Mandate The New York Times, analysis by Todd S. Purdam (November 3, 2004)
Challenges facing a second Bush term
Stock market stages Bush rally

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