Posted on 11/07/2004 11:03:11 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
WASHINGTON - No longer can Democrats console themselves with the 2000-vintage battle cries that the Supreme Court stole the election or their guy got more votes or millions of people were disenfranchised.
This time, after an election in which President Bush defeated Sen. John Kerry by 3.6 million votes and the Republicans expanded their majority in Congress, there is no sweet solace for Democratic leaders or activists.
"The Democrats had no theme in this election," said Marshall Wittman, a former aide to Republican Sen. John McCain who is a fellow with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Washington. "The Democratic Party as a whole right now is seen as a message-less blob. ... If Democrats think this is a run-of-the-mill defeat, they are wrong."
Although Kerry attacked Bush on Iraq, terrorism and the economy, more than one in five voters cited moral issues as their biggest concern, and most backed the president. Their support helped Bush carry huge swaths of rural and small-town America, painting the political map Republican red across the South, most of the Great Plains, the core of the Midwest and other heartland regions.
Jon Ausman, a member of the Democratic National Committee and a political consultant in Tallahassee, Fla., said Bush defeated Kerry by 20 or more percentage points in 31 counties in the Sunshine State, nearly all outside big cities or their suburbs.
"In county after county across this country, we saw that the message we have been delivering does not resonate with a lot of rural voters," Ausman said. "We are going to have to revisit our message about what America is and what America can be. We need to develop a value-laden message instead of a problem-based message.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
They cannot abbandon their special interest. They will always be filled with liberal doublespeak.
It's called .. HOW CAN WE FOOL THEM TODAY; TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY - AT LEAST TILL WE GET ELECTED.
Re-inventing thwmselves without revealing their true selves is the hard part.
Do you really think so? I would imagine that if their choices were a dead message and no power or a new message with power then their current constituents will probably be left behind for others to take in.
The problem with the Dims reinventing themselves is that the party has been so taken over by socialist radicals that they don't really want to be any different. They want to stake everything on their whacky ideas and refuse to accept that the majority does not want that. The older more mainstream Dims need to realize -- and many probably have -- that their former party is now totally run by the lunatic fringe. Those who protested the Dim convention in 68 are now in charge.
Same article ran in 2000 and 2002. Let's hope it runs again in 2006 and 2008.
Reinventing? LOL, not a chance.
Let's face it, they'll all be registering for the spring Political Science class, Repackaging for Success 101.
They'll still be supporting the same old things, but they'll be sounding like republicans until the votes are counted.
But they did have a theme: Beat Dubya, bring our troops home now, concentrate on domestic issues and stop worrying about terrorism. It just didn't turn out to be that compelling, for some reason.
Reinventing yourself is useless as long as you remain a leftist.
America is wise to the liberal game now.
Like polishing a turd...
The Democrat party isn't "message-less". It has quite a number of very clear messages:
1) America is the enemy
2) God is the enemy
3) Democrats are smart and you are not
4) Power trumps principle any day
5) The government owns your money, not you
6) Western Civilization has nothing of value to make it worth preserving
7) If the terrorists hate George Bush, we're with the terrorists!
8) Only true believers in homosexuality and abortion are welcome.
etc.
"Do you really think so? I would imagine that if their choices were a dead message and no power or a new message with power then their current constituents will probably be left behind for others to take in."
What constituents. The Democratic specail interest in Leftist. Their base is Leftist. And the Leftists think they are right. They won't change and they won't alienate they're specail interests and their base.
The government owns your monry and you
I've seen several liberals having discussions about needing to "frame the issues" from a moral perspective. In a nutshell, they have no intentions of changing their crazy positions. They simply plan to claim they're moral. For example, they've talked about paying more taxes as being "patriotic" and moral on the basis that the money can be used for the "poor". They also thought that it would be a good idea to say that not allowing two people to choose to marry (gays) is immoral. It's really quite fascinating to see their insanity at work.
the best is when Dean said... "and we are going to take back the White House" - what's that about? Like they are above the Republicans (more like above all little people), and they own the White House.... geesh!
While democrats may WANT to morph into something that can win elections, they are at core a coalition of complaining special interests that are growing apart.
The party big shots couldn't silence one of their groups, the radical gays, until the Nov election was over. The gays showed their hand too early with the marraige fiasco.
Many blacks felt insulted by the obvious pandering. The Jews sized up their self interest and started a slow slide toward the GOP. Mexicans began looking at the abortion/gay marraige issues and it made them uncomfortable. College students tired of the lectures from liberals.
All the subcultures that the dems have been counting on for generations have something in common: they are malcontents. Angry, cynical victims of their own group psychosis.
I sort of feel sorry for the remaining Zell Miller democrats, they've been dropped off and abandoned on the political highway. Their vehicle is speeding along into irrelevancy with the stereo turned up LOUD.
When you allow everybody into the large tent, eventually the radicals take over. Power becomes more important than principle. This is a problem that our one-vote, one man democracy is having. Representative government is far better than mob rule.
How about doing away with inner city fraud, for one??? Endless racial demagoguery? Hate-America, Blame-America rhetoric?
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