Posted on 09/11/2004 11:40:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
On Nov. 19, 2002, right after the Republicans had dashed Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives or the Senate in the midterm congressional elections, I wrote in this column that the Democrats "can still win in 2004." But then I added, "Here's the bad news: If they don't change their losers' strategy, they haven't a prayer."
Well, they still haven't a prayer.
As was said of the reactionary Bourbon kings of France in the 19th century, since then the Democrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, continues to make the same mistakes that buried his party two years ago, and therefore he is heading for another debacle this November.
The striking Republican victories in the 2002 midterm congressional elections were a remarkable personal triumph for President George W. Bush and his political master-strategist Karl Rove. But although they gained the crucial strategic prize of control of both houses of Congress, in terms of movement among voting blocs, theirs was a tactical victory, not a strategic one.
The Republicans did not make any significant inroads into the traditional Democratic "rainbow" coalition of the last 30 and more years. They made small but potentially crucial gains in extending their own base. For the first time since 1994 they won more than 50 percent of votes cast.
Their much-touted initiative, beloved of both the president himself and Rove, to woo Hispanic voters showed some very significant signs of gaining ground. Rick Perry, the victorious Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas, won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote. The president's own brother Jeb won a whopping 60 percent of it in Florida. New York Gov. George Pataki coasted home to re-election with 50 percent of it.
Those results came in three of the four most populous states in the nation. Two years on, they are still all run by Republican governors with a proven track record of wooing Hispanic votes in the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. New York still looks solid for Kerry, but Bush has a lock on Texas and almost as surely he is developing one on Florida.
Still, there was as yet no significant additional realignment among white voters in 2002. And there was no discernible upturn in GOP support among 34 million African-Americans. Nothing has changed in those factors since that election. But something else has not changed as well. In 2002 the Republican record on domestic issues was extremely weak, but their tactical game plan in obscuring that weakness and focusing on simple and far more potent issues was masterly.
In 2002, as today, the Republicans had one general in chief: Bush. And he had one strategic adviser and chief of staff: Rove.
The Democrats had a motley crew on wannabe leaders, and none of them had "The Right Stuff." For them it was a replay of the "Seven Dwarves" fiasco of 1988 when the only Democratic champion to emerge out of a lackluster field was Michael Dukakis.
Today the Democrats supposedly have a general in chief in Kerry, but he certainly does not delegate through one chief strategist and planner with a proven track record.
After months of endless waffles on Iraq and failures to take the president apart when he was -- or should have been -- reeling on one national security and economic issue after another, Kerry finally responded to his tumbling approval ratings last week by bringing James Carville, former President Bill Clinton's strategist in chief, on to his team.
But he did not even do what President George Herbert Walker Bush did when he brought Secretary of State James A. Baker on board to try and save his floundering re-election campaign in 1992 against Clinton: Kerry, unlike the elder Bush, did not even give his "emergency commander" the authority to do the job. Carville, along with fellow Clinton alumni Joe Lockhart and Joel Johnson, has just been added as another voice in a disorganized, decentralized and confused Democratic command structure.
And this is how a President Kerry would run the United States?
Even with the elder Bush's full support, and given total authority over the 1992 campaign, Baker was brought in too late to make any real impact. Without comparable authority, Carville doesn't have a prayer.
Kerry's dilemma is very clear. He has eerily echoed the spineless bungling of the Democratic congressional leadership in the 2002 campaign.
Then, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle more than any other Democrats influenced the overall party strategy in the midterm campaign. It was they above all who rolled over and backed the president on his hawkish policy toward confronting Iraq -- just as Kerry did. And like Kerry, even though they made the arguments on the economic front, they failed to do so with any decent emotional punch and therefore failed to connect with voters.
With Gephardt leading his passive Dems by the nose on these two crucial issues for the American electorate, the Democrats had nothing to counter the Republicans' "something" in 2002. Now, 2004 looks like the same old story.
Like a broken record or a scratched CD, the Democrats still imagine that Bush's support base will magically fall apart all on its own and that voters will flock to them even with a candidate who goes back into hibernation after every short burst of activity and who must again re-establish his personal credibility with the public after the hammering he took through August.
As we have repeatedly noted in UPI analyses, the root cause of the Democrats' dilemma in the post-Tip O'Neill era is that they continue to imagine that they can beat something with nothing. And they never have.
Only Bill Clinton, who despite his self-indulgent personal flaws most definitely was "something," has effectively led them into the corridors of executive power and kept them there over the past generation.
And so far, Kerry has yet to prove he can compare with the old Comeback Kid. Time is running out, and so is the Massachusetts senator's credibility.
MARTIN SIEFF is Senior News Analyst for UPI, a sister news agency of Insight.
The Democrat party has evolved into the party of whining/lying losers, who hate America and what is good for America.
What's it going to be this year?
Nobody is "smart enough" to understand their message.
Nobody is "smart enough" to understand their message.
They don't want anyone to know their message.
The Democrats' problem is their "something" - liberalism, does NOT play well in a country that rejects liberalism as a matter of course. So they've been forced to run on nothing and that of course has made it impossible for them to expand on their Clinton-Era gains among socially liberal suburban voters. There are only so many voters of this type in the nation's suburbs and the rest do not share the Democrats' identification with a secular voter demographic. How do the Democrats talk to religious voters and culturally conservative Democrats and Independents in fly-over country? No wonder 2004 is beginning to look a lot like the last mid-term election that turned out to be such a debacle for the Democrats and the quality of their presidential candidate leaves a lot to be desired in terms of achieving victory in November.
Too much "nuance" from the girlymen
Gosh, I thought to know Kerry was to love him. But with friends like Dan...what's the frequency, Kenneth?...Rather, Kerry doesn't need enemies.
Here's something Pat Caddel said:
---Caddell said he wasn't trying to sensationalize the issue, explaining that instead "I'm trying to save my party, you know, by telling the truth."
He said that forfeiting the presidential race would be the least of his party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal.
"The race is over – and we've got bigger problems than that," he warned.---
Yeah, criminal conspiracy.
These "elitist" types think they are superior to the "average American" due to their advanced degrees, fame, or wealth.
They are sadly mistaken.
The Democrats have had nothing for a generation -- since the 1964 election. Carter won only because of Watergate, and Clinton won because the "something" he brought to the campaign was a mesmerizing narcissistic personality which wooed the dysfunctional. Again, the Democrats have really not brought anything to the table in any election since 1964, but it's only now that this has become obvious.
The Rats will say they're the victims of the most heinous smear campaign ever seen in American political history, which Karl Rove got away with by co-opting and intimidating the news media with a bunch of right-wing zealots on the internet. This year it will be that they didn't get the "truth" out.
America is just too stupid to grasp the nuanced, progressive Democrat party platform. Perhaps their platform would go over better in Belgium. Or North Korea. Or Cuba.
"Those mean swift boat vets. If it hadn't been for them, Kerry would have won by a landslide." They will never admit that they themselves are the reason for their failures. This is typical of the Victim Generation that now pervades our society -- their woes are always someone else's fault; they never take responsibility for their own failure.
Lacking a viable ideology, the Dems' "something" is hate and fear.
What's it going to be this year?
Between the Swift Vets exposing Kerry's war record and Freepers exposing the forged Texas ANG memo I expect that they are going to blame unregulated political speech.
Remember the Dems say that first amendment only applies to Larry Flynt printing pictures of naked women, not to Americans discussing the politics and future of our country.
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