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.
the overarching problem is that the nation has a VERY CLEAR SENSE of EXACTLY what the Democrat party stands for:
that's what they stand for in brief.
America knows all to well what they stand for, and the 51 percent of us that have had it with their diseased defecation they continually offer as 'democracy'... quite frankly make us want to vomit.
In fact, that is what we the 51 did to the 48 percenters this election, we vomited them out of power every where we had the chance.
Screw them. Screw them to the walls and let em hang there til they rot. Just like they have this nation since the election of FDR.
I hope they focus group and analyze this loss to death. They are the party of defeat and NO ideas. Their only use now, is that of a rotting flesh corpse lesson of a cautionary tale...
Let them rot in their own self delusion and contempt. America has rejected them and their ideals. I hope this is the end of their party. May their party shatter and splinter into oblivion.
I've been telling people for years that JFKennedy was the first Reagan Republican (even before Rush said it on his show). The problem is, most of these people either were too young to remember, studied history in public (yech!) schools or are just plain blinded by party loyalty. (Actual quote from my grandmother "...I'm a Catholic first, a Democrat second, and an American third." This was just before she feigned a heart attack to try to keep me from enlisting in the Army in 1968.)
You just can't reason with people like these!
NYT, But if you were to answer these questions honestly you would become Republicans. Just skip the conference table and change your party affiliation.
Yep, reactive while slamming proactive, it's the dogma of the Democratic party.
Thank God we continue to have a proactive President in a time of war.
Well there is your problem right there honey! The American voter obviously disagrees with your assessment of that vision.
If they had as much intelligence as they think they do, they'd ask one simple question. "What did Clinton do to win two terms"? Answer: He co-opted the Republican platform. That obviously wouldn't work again, so they fell back to the liberal platform that they hold in their hearts. If they want a future as a national party, they should co-opt the Libertarian platform.
"If they ever fully embrace their liberal beliefs, they will run away with every branch of government in the landslide"
You must be kidding? The farther left the dems go .. the more elections they have lost. They're about as close as they can get to fully embracing their liberal beliefs.
The only problem for them is, if they ENACT the libertarian platform, they legislate themselves out of existence.
LOL. They are "sick of standing in the rain". Most people have sense enough to come in out of the rain. Duuuuuummies.
Wow, W. Cleon Skousen had great foresight. By looking into communist goals, the Democratic Party has morphed into a subversive party by 1960 standards. This list is just amazing, thanks.
Do tell. ;-)
As a loser, I had the honor of working for both Al Gore and John Kerry. And in my time working for Al Gore and John Kerry, it certainly left me feeling like a loser.
This is an amazing admission.
They need to change their platform.
If they do, they will only end up Republican-lite, and they can't win that way either.
The country has changed, and will continue to change. The only thing they can do is split into two parties.
Know what the significant difference is to me? Bill, Hillary, Gore, Kerry the quest for power oozed out of their pours. You could see it miles away. No one wants someone to be president that has a bloodlust for power. Bush on the otherhand seems like he can take it or leave it, that it is a duty and honor to serve rather than what he can do with the power. I think that is what the dems project and changing it is impossible because it comes from the heart.
heheheh Brilliant line
I dont think the term "big Business" was used in the sixties so I am thinking some of this was made up after the fact.
Bob Shrum is 0 for 8.
Why do they keep getting hired?
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