Posted on 11/04/2004 9:48:13 PM PST by Former Military Chick
Washington — On Wednesday morning, Democrats across the country awoke to a situation they have not experienced since before the New Deal: We are now, without a doubt, America's minority party. We do not have the presidency. We are outnumbered in the Senate, the House, governorships and legislatures. And the conservative majority on the Supreme Court seems likely to be locked in place for a generation. It is clearly a moment that calls for serious reflection.
I had the honor of working for both Al Gore and John Kerry. I believe America would have been fortunate to have had them in the Oval Office. That neither won is not primarily a commentary on them. Nor were their defeats really the result of the mistakes, attacks and tactics that pundits are so endlessly fascinated by: Al Gore's sighs in debates or John Kerry's slow response to the Swift boat veterans; Bill Clinton's campaigning (or lack thereof) in 2000 and 2004; the handling of the Elián González and Mary Cheney controversies. Any time Democrats spend in the coming weeks discussing the merits of our past candidates' personalities or their campaigns' personnel will be time wasted.
The overarching problem Democrats have today is the lack of a clear sense of what the party stands for. For years this has been a source of annoyance for bloggers and grass-roots activists. And in my time working for Al Gore and John Kerry, it certainly left me feeling hamstrung.
Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What we don't have, and what we sorely need, is what President George H. W. Bush so famously derided as "the vision thing" - a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.
For most of the 20th century, Democrats had a bold vision: we would use government programs to make Americans' lives more stable and secure. In 1996, President Clinton told us this age had passed, that "the era of big government is over." He was right - the world had changed. But the party has not answered the basic question: What comes next?
It's not the sort of question that gets answered in the heat of a national election. A presidential campaign feels like running full speed across a tightrope. If you're working on its message, you spend your days sitting around conference tables in poorly lighted rooms, surrounded by spent pizza boxes and buzzing Blackberries, with the clock ticking down on another day and another speech. This is not the place to devise a new thematic direction for the party. What you wind up offering are quips and quibbles, slogans and sound bites, and heaping portions of poll-tested pabulum.
The press also seems to overstate what staff changes can do within a campaign. Much was made of the "who's in, who's out" reports about the Kerry team, with reporters devising narratives about a supposed "shift to the middle" or a "lurch to the left." While new advisers can alter tactics and form new messages, efforts on their part to create a larger vision will fail. That has to happen long before the primaries - and it requires that the party knows where it is going.
Throughout the campaign, voters told reporters and pollsters that they wanted a change, but didn't "know what John Kerry stands for." Our response was to churn out more speeches outlining the details of policies that Senator Kerry would then deliver in front of a backdrop that said something like "Rx to Stronger Health Care." Of course, it turned out that Americans weren't very interested in Mr. Kerry's campaign promises - perhaps because they no longer believe politicians will follow through on their commitments. They wanted to know instead how he saw the world. And we never told them.
Misguided as they may be, the Republicans have a clear vision of America's future. Confronted with their ambitious agenda we have not chosen to match it. Instead, we have adopted Nancy Reagan's old antidrug motto, "Just Say No." As in "Stop George Bush's Assault on the Environment," "Repeal George Bush's Tax Cuts for the Wealthy" and "End George Bush's Policy of Unilateralism." These are good stands. But they are not enough. And the Republicans ended up defining John Kerry because we did not.
I don't pretend to know exactly what the party should do now. But I do know that we better start answering some important questions. What is our economic vision in a globalized world? How do we respond to the desire of many Americans to have choices and decision-making power of their own? How can we speak to Americans' moral and spiritual yearnings? How can our national security vision be broader than just a critique of the Republican's foreign policy? If we sweep this debate under the rug, four years from now another set of people around another conference table will be struggling with the same issues we did. And America cannot afford the same result.
Long after midnight in November 2000, I stood in the rain in Nashville and listened to the Gore campaign chairman, William Daley, tell us there would be no victory speech. On Wednesday, long after midnight, I stood in the rain in Boston listening to John Edwards tell us the same thing. I'm sick of standing in the rain.
Andrei Cherny, the author of "The Next Deal," was director of speechwriting and a special policy adviser to John Kerry from February 2003 to last April.
Traditionally their approach would be to levy another tax, but now they lack the majority to pass one.
nobody in the democratic party knows right now either...feel good, you are not alone...
Awe shucks, no worry, just have Soros write out another $25 million check and run some more hate ads.
He's right there. The 'Rats had no clear idea on how to fight the war on terror. They never had a real thing going in this election. It was all "Defeat Bush!", which was a stupid way to run a campaign.
It ain't the rain you need to come in from.
It's the dark.
The era of small government!!!
America rejects socialism.!!!
Unfortunately for the Democrats (and fortunately for the rest of us) we actually do know how they answer these questions they supposedly need to ponder. And that defines the "soul" of their party, such as it is.
"What is our economic vision in a globalized world?"
Socialism, radical environmentalism, more government regulation
"How do we respond to the desire of many Americans to have choices and decision-making power of their own?"
Tell them they are too dumb and the elite will make their choices for them.
"How can we speak to Americans' moral and spiritual yearnings?"
By mouthing a spirituality the national Democratic party doesn't have (which rings utterly phoney to those who have it), and then attacking the real spiritual and moral yearnings of normal Americans.
"How can our national security vision be broader than just a critique of the Republican's foreign policy?"
Re-living Viet Nam and bowing to internationalism and dictatorships is not a vision of national security at all.
We _can_ see the soul of the Democratic party and we don't like it and we voted against it.
This is, I think, the second one that appears to be from a sane, rational thinking human being.
If the writer were to conduct a census of responses and derive the sane/insane ratio, he would answer his own question.
They have a clear sense of what the party stands for, nanny-state socialism. I agree with Limbaugh. They just can say it in plain words. They aren't unaware that the way they act says it loud and clear. But what remains unadmitted remains only a suspicion.
There's too many sane people left for any public admissions. I figure they have one more public school generation to go before they're back in business. 
What an odd statement!
What animates the true core of the Democratic party is leftism. The small minority of leftist death-eaters purchase the loyalty of less ideological constituencies through government employment, income transfers and giveaways. That only gets them to 40% or so. The Dems next task is to hoodwink a gullible 11% into thinking the Dems to be something other than they are. As do Nigerian oil email scammers, the Dems are finding it increasingly difficult to fool that 11%.
If you look closely, they are not trying to change the reality of what they are, only find a fresh new con.
"Why We Lost"...? "WE?" "WE" -- ?!?
They're not even going to try pretending to look outraged whenever we say "liberal media bias" any longer, are they...?
LOL
Kerry had THE REAL DEAL and every Dim candidate since FDR has had some sort of "DEAL".
The deal is that they need a new mantra.
Holding cards from A BAD DEAL is nothing but a loser.
It all boils down to this:
Abortion.
You look at Roe v. Wade and it is downhill from there.
Kennedy was the last real strong Democrat in office for them.
Today he'd be a Republican:
Catholic
Pro-Life
Anti-Tax (Past a tax cut)
Anti-Communist
Hawkish
Free-Enterpriser
I'm not sure what his stand on guns was, but that's not really the point.
The central problem of the D party is their coalition has fallen apart.
You can't be pro-environment and pro-union
You can't be pro-choice and strong on family values
You can't be pro-gay and strong on family values
You can't defend pornographers (liberal interpretation of the 1st amendment) and anti-gun (strict interpretation on the definition of 'militia' in the second)
You can't spend other people's money to improve the lot of the poor if it decreases the competitiveness of American labor.
You can't pay for the right of women to choose with the life of an innocent child - especially when the alternative is 9 months and their signature on an adoption waiver.
Abortion is the ultimate rejection of personal responsibility for their actions.
Women want control over their body, but only after having first relinquished that control by having sex.
You can't be the party of family values and somehow dodge biblical verses such as "I knew you from before you were formed in the womb"
They have to start there. Then they have to call homosexuality what it is - something in need of a cure. Don't spend billions on AIDS and nothing on what causes people to be gay. Eradicate homosexuality and you eliminate the most pernicious vector of that disease.
In Africa, it's nearly too late. Damage is done. Ironically, abstinence is their only cure, and it isn't going to happen. Simply too much to ask of a person.
Abortion is key. They keep clinging to that, and its going to continue to pull them down.
Every woman in their heart of hearts knows that you can't rub your stomach, swollen with child, and think of it as both a non-viable tissue mass and your baby in the same honest moment. Impossible.
Abortion is not defensible. It is their central vulnerability. It is the reason why they MUST remain godless. They can't call upon Him for victory, and kill 40 million kids at the same time.
The longer they cling to it, the more it will drag them down.
Here's my prediction - with RU486 out, Democrats will lead the charge to overturn Roe v. Wade.
They will steal the issue from Republicans, in a bid to reclaim the high moral ground.
They will also repudiate homosexuals within the next four years.
Moderates will start wafting back, and then it will be anybody's guess what will happen next.
I know this sounds implausible, but only Nixon could go to China. Only the Democrats could repeal Roe v. Wade and leave the gays behind.
If guns killed them in 1996, gay marriage killed them in 2004. 2006 will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. They'll lose another 5 to 8 senate seats.
They'll never learn a thing, because they're basically anti-American, but they don't even realize it.
Actually, it is the painful truth that they "lack a clear vision." What they don't get is that you can't have a clear vision in a fog of self-indulgent emotions.
Step back and truly see what the country needs, and realize that socialism is a fools dream.
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