Posted on 11/06/2004 11:47:08 AM PST by Pokey78
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 - The Democratic Party emerged from this week's election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance.
Democrats said President Bush's defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008.
"We really need to work on the question of what we are for," said Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president whose 1984 loss to Ronald Reagan was invoked by some Democrats in assessing the party's spirits now. "Unless we have a vision and the arguments to match, I don't think we're going to truly connect with the American people."
Gov. Janet Napolitano, Democrat of Arizona, where Mr. Kerry made a failed effort to grasp from the Republican column, said: "We need a fresh reassessment of how we communicate with people. How did a party that has been out of power in Washington, D.C., become tagged with the problems of Washington, D.C.? How did a party that is filled with people with values - and I am a person with values - get tagged as the party without values?"
And Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana said: "We need to be a party that stands for more than the sum of our resentments. In the heartland, where I am from, there are doubts. Too often we're caricatured as a bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."
Mr. Kerry's loss has, inevitably, created recriminations about a candidate that many Democrats had always viewed as stiff, and a campaign that was often criticized as slow-moving and unfocused. Democrats said that Mr. Kerry failed to provide a compelling message, gliding on the belief that Mr. Bush would defeat himself, and that the campaign was slow in responding to attacks on his war record by Vietnam veterans.
And some Democrats, especially centrist ones, expressed concern that liberals would draw a mistaken lesson from the loss: that the Democratic Party needed to swing back to the left to energize Democratic base voters to counter the upsurge of conservative base voters on the right.
"That's not a recipe for winning," said Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat frequently mentioned by party officials as a possible presidential contender in 2008. "That's a recipe for disaster."
But the criticisms of Mr. Kerry were slight when compared with the scorn offered for Al Gore after he lost in 2000, or for Michael S. Dukakis after his defeat in 1988. And there was little sign, at least so far, of the kind of intra-party warring that typically grips losing political parties.
Instead, in interviews with elected officials and party leaders across the country, Democrats were much more interested in talking about the future than this past year, reflecting what Stanley Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who advised Mr. Kerry and worked for Bill Clinton in 1992, sardonically described as the unifying power President Bush has wielded over the typically fractious Democratic Party.
Several party officials said what they were most concerned about was the extent to which Republicans had succeeded in presenting the Democratic Party as out of the cultural mainstream.
"I'm not saying that Kerry did anything wrong on this, but I think that we ignored in large measure the three big cultural issues of this election: guns, abortion and gay rights, epitomized by gay marriage," said Harold M. Ickes, a former senior adviser to Bill Clinton who ran an independent political committee that sought to unseat Mr. Bush, adding. " These are very, very big issues. They really, really motivate people."
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, Democrat of Michigan, said that in order to be competitive with Republicans, Democrats had to have a message that was ''strong and strongly pro-work, pro-responsibility, pro-duty, pro-service, pro-child, pro-seniors."
"And not to be afraid of saying God," Ms. Granholm said. "And not to be afraid of saying that this is a country that is based upon faith.''
Party officials said they were concerned about evidence of a cultural gap between Democrats and much of the country. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said that his dealings with Mr. Kerry and his advisers had vividly demonstrated to him the problems the party faces.
"I remember being on a trip with him in New Mexico: I put a cowboy hat on Senator Kerry and someone on his staff shuddered and asked me to stop," he said. "This is I think an example of the East Coast not connecting with the West Coast and with the rest of the country."
Democrats said their immediate concern was the 2006 Senate elections, when 17 Democratic incumbents are up, compared to 15 Republicans, giving Republicans an automatic upper-hand from the outset. Several of the Democrats are in nominally Democratic states where Mr. Bush made a strong showing, like New Mexico and Minnesota. The Republicans picked up four Senate seats on Tuesday, expanding their hold on the Senate to 55-45.
The problem, some Democrats said, will be even more vexing in 2008, when there will be no incumbent president , leaving the race open on both sides. At this very early date, party officials said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator, is best positioned to win the presidential nomination. But Democrats and some Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was open to caricature by Republicans as the type of candidate that this election suggested was so damaging to the Democratic Party: a Northeastern, secular liberal.
In addition to Mrs. Clinton, two Democrats from this year - Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was Mr. Kerry's running mate, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor - are likely to move to wield influence, and perhaps run for president themselves.
Both men are burdened by their own losses this year. And in one disadvantage for Mr. Edwards, several party officials said there would likely be renewed hesitancy to run a member of Congress for the presidency, given the success the White House had undercutting Mr. Kerry's credibility with votes he had cast.
So the other Democrats mentioned as either high-profile leaders and possible presidential candidates are all governors; Mr. Warner, Mr. Richardson, Ms. Napolitano, as well as Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina and Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois.
Party officials said that the results of this election underscored what had appeared to be the case in 2002. Republicans have now surpassed the Democrats in registering and turning out the voters.
Coming off this election, Democratic officials said they were concerned that the party's ideological and geographical appeal is shrinking after looking at an election night map blazing with red states. They said that while Mr. Kerry might have been technically right in saying that a presidential candidate could win without competing in the South, the party would stumble unless it broadened its support.
"We must be a 50-state national party," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson. "We must take on the South, reach more working poor people."
Ms. Napolitano, who in an interview over the summer expressed confidence that Mr. Kerry would win her state (he lost it by 11 percentage points), said: "You can't write off everything from Atlanta to California. You've got to find some beachheads there. Obviously it's going to be more uphill than we thought."
Some party leaders cautioned against glumness, noting that Mr. Kerry had come within 3 percentage points of defeating Mr. Bush, a wartime president. But other Democrats argued that the party had as strong a chance for victory as it could have hoped for, and argued that the loss presaged a period of Republican domination.
"We are in a tremendous amount of trouble," said Gordon Fischer, the Iowa Democratic chairman. "There are fundamental problems not only with the candidates, but also our tactics and the message: Who Democrats are and what we believe."
Most of all, though, party leaders said the main challenge now was coming up with a compelling case to make to voters, to counter what they acknowledged was the clear message Mr. Bush had made. Mr. Warner, reflecting what has been a theme of his governorship in Virginia, said Democrats should seek to present themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility by attacking Republicans for growing deficits.
Al From, the head of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate Democrats, said that the party made a mistake by spending too much time on getting out the vote and that the way to win an election was to come up with a message the way Mr. Clinton did in 1992.
"This is the second election in a row where they got a majority of the popular vote, because they did in 2002," he said. "A mobilization strategy, while important, is clearly not the most important thing. We need to persuade people who would otherwise vote for them to vote for us. And you do that with good ideas.''
ENGLISH TRANSLATION: "Next time we will LIE and call ourselves centrists." [The way Klinton won]
These guys are just like the New Yorkers and mASSholes - they are so full of how 'special' they are and how living where they do makes them SOOO much more intelligent, insightful, wise, blah, blah, blah - I have lived on 2 Continents in 3 countries, traveled and done business on 4 contintents - these people are NOT special - New Englanders and New Yorkers are more bigoted, delusional and narrow-minded then ANY of the other people I have met and worked with - if used to be a joke among my European friends to see just what stupid things visting US 'cosmopolitans' from New York and Boston would say and do.
These fools shouldn't change a thing - well - maybe they need to yell louder and speak a little slower so all the rest of us 'slow thinkers' can understand and learn.
SHEESH!
I wonder if she's still lectoring at her Catholic parish.
The irony is that gun-control measures produce no positive results, abortion is already legal so it makes no sense to trot it out each election cycle for people to rally around or condemn and gay marriage is important to maybe 2-3% of the voters. SS reform is possibly the most populist measure in front of us today and the democrats are running from it. They have no sense and simply don't understand the electorate.
Nor do they care, except as it benefits their lust for power.
Carolyn
Hello??? The Republicans 'presented' the Democrats as 'out of the mainstream'??? IDIOTS! The Democrats presented themselves as out of the mainstream, because they are out of it. Whoopi Goldberg grabbing her crotch and making Bush jokes? Michael Moore, perpetually immature, discordant, deceptive, propagandizing obtuse conspiracy theories and blatant lies? Ben Affleck? Barbara Streisand? A teeny-bopper looking trial lawyer with scant political experience but a long resume of using junk-science lawsuits to drive doctors out of business? Major media organizations forging documents?
There was NOTHING mainstream about the Democrats in this election. They presented themselves this way, and there is nothing they can do about it, because they are out of the mainstream.
The problem is, Harold, is not that you ignored these issues. The problem is you and your Party are on the wrong side of these issues and all your smokescreens and lies from your own mouths and those of your MSM enablers can longer cover up where you stand (as they have for the past 40 years).
You have been "outed". OUTED!!
Change your hearts and your genuine direction - not just your rhetoric - and you might have a chance. Otherwise, Harold Baby, fuggeddaboudit. America no longer believes your lyin' lips!
Thanks for the rant. I sure needed it.
If you believe the first part of the question, and have to ask the second part of the question, then there's no point in trying to explain.
The key part of this article was the implications for the future of the U.S. Senate. The GOP needs a solid strategy for grooming great conservative candidates to win Senate seats in red states. Two Senators from each state solidly won by Bush and one Senator from each "battleground" state would probably give us 60 votes, easy. And they would be real Republicans.
I saw a guy on FOX this morning from the "Sun". He was extremely good in doing analysis. He hit the target by saying that the dems don't recognize the middle of America and they constantly demean average American's values.
He said that just talking the talk will not get the dems anywhere. Kerry tried that .. and it fell flat. He said if the dems pick Hillary as their candidate, they are destined for another devastating defeat - because it will mean they have not learned their lesson from this defeat. He said Hillary is far to the left of her husband and since that fact has already been established, the dems will have a hard time trying to paint her as "moderate" like Bill.
I was kind of surprised by his statements.
it's the same ole "I don't know how he won, no one I know voted for him" mentality. Let them keep it up. And if one more Democrat says we have to start TALKING about faith, I will scream .. it's just proof they absolutely don't get it.
First, they have only been, "out of power" for two years, and a lot of Clinonites burrowed in at State, Defense, and elsewhere in the federal government.
Second, what values? Not values about human beings certainly. Maybe globalism and spotted owls and global warming and the UN and about Hillary care. You don't have values about genuine hard-working, country loving, god fearing tax paying citizens. Your party thinks they are all hicks and rubes, and have even been saying so in print in the last couple of days.
"We need a fresh reassessment of how we communicate with people. . . ."
Yes. They still think it's all about what you say and how you say it. They forget that the baby boom generation is nearing retirement, we've been around the track way too many times to be taken in by the old 60's "Baffle 'em with bullsh&t" approach, that worked when the nation's median age was 27.
And every election cycle, the voting population gets slightly older, more conservative...
Some how this still has the distinct ring of more nanny-state socialism take from everybody and hire the Washington elites and fund the UN to me. How about some mention of personal freedom. You know, just to be left alone without having to apply for a permit and pay user fees and hassle with a bunch of government bureaucrats for the right - you know - to sit in a hammock and drink beer. There is more to life than some policy wonk's nuanced programs and that is what is wrong with Rats. We don't love them, we don't like them. We just want them out of our face. We don't want a different set of programs. After 50 years of these technocrats monkeying with programs we know we can't get better programs. Government is incapable of it. All we are left with is fewer programs, and that is what we want, along with fewer elite liberal intellectuals to try to explain it all to us.
The Demo Rats need a botox treatment. Change party name to National Socialist Party? Or just merge with the Communist Party USA.....that might work for them.
>> Democrats said President Bush's defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 year<<
More like 5 million, it seems.
Its time to sit down and reassess how you get your point across. Media manipulation, judicial fiat, violence, screaming, prevarication, and a few more devices that the libs have used over the years just wont cut it any more. It is time to articulate and persuade. Quit complaining about how divided the country is when it is your side that is being divisive.
Well said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.