I’ve been busy watching the election coverage this evening. As a registered Democrat, it’s been fairly depressing. It will be interesting (“may you live in interesting times”) to see what comes of it. Certainly the conservative pundits on the tube have been nattering already about permanent tax cuts (while at the same time somehow funding a war in Iraq), judicial approvals (flushing a wave of conservatives into the judiciary for the next two or three decades), and an easy time for whatever agenda Bush chooses to advance.
Of course, without a super-majority 60 votes in the Senate, the GOP still faces some brakes on its agenda. But it’s looking like it will be the GOP setting the agenda, regardless.
At the same time, it’s a critical point for the Dems. It’s easy to say it was all about Homeland Security, and there’s some truth there. At the same time, the Democratic message was wildly unfocussed during this election. Too much decades-old boilerplate was trotted out, not helped by the two clear opportunities for new blood — New Jersey and Minnesota — being filled by creaking Old Guard liberals. If the Democrats are to mount a challenge to the GOP in 2004, they need two things:
1. A self-destructing Republican Congress and Administration, a la the Covenant with America GOP of the ’94 election.
2. A new message to present an actually attractive alternative to the general public. The Democratic Party needs to reinvent itself, to somehow maintain its foundation in liberal values while still showing that it is not just a party of tax-and-spend and multi-culti irrelevance. (Hint: leaping to nominate Walter Mondale as a senatorial candidate is not the way to go here.)
As part of #2, let me urge folks of the Democratic/Liberal tradition to consider their reaction over the coming days. If you come across with squawking sky-is-falling apocalyptic imagery, you’re part of the problem, because that is not convincing to the general public. Listen to the voters — that is, after all, what the liberal tradition would have us do. Accept your lumps. Resolve to do better, not to sit there and bemoan the monied/bloodthirsty yahoos that voted GOP this time around.
Show that you’re interested in being relevant, and, maybe, you will be.
I think the biggest problem the Dems have is they have no vision of their own… everything I hear them say is a reaction to the Republicans. They need to present goals and ideas that stand on their own and aren’t just based on whatever the GOP is or is not doing. As long as they stay in reaction mode, the Republicans will always have a greater degree of control.
I agree. This was the Democratic election to lose, and they lost it by proving they hadn’t learned anything from 2000 — when they lost the Senate, too.
The Dems need to go back to their core principles. Not their core constituencies, not their core hot button issues and sound bites, but their core principles. They need to present a fundamentally positive picture of what they want to accomplish that doesn’t sound like the last thirty years of campaigning and whining. They need, basically, a Ronald Reagan of the left.
The GOP, on the other hand, needs to remember how it lost its Senate majority. They need to remember how they lost the House after the 94 frosh trashed the joint. They need to show that getting things done does not equal running rampant. Otherwise, they put not only their slender majorities at risk, but the White House in 2004.
Principles.
There is a concept.
Sigh.
How deeply in debt will they go this time?
I’ve done my chicken little impersonation on my blog, but I also put up what I call my Bold Vision for the Fure — let the GOP totally hose it.
Personally, I feel that it’s time for the Appeasers — Gephardt, Lieberman and Daschle, among others — to step down. Surprisingly, the only voice in the wilderness this past month or so has been Gore. He hasn’t been afraid to say what us Liberals have been clamoring about all along.
If — and this is a big if — Gore decides to run in 2004, he needs to reclaim the Liberal Left and not waffle. He has to stand on issues and not back down.
Anything less with find him run out of the primaries.
fure=future — caffeine isn’t helping today.
I voted last night and came to the conclusion that it is now, and maybe has been for a while, the choice of the lesser of two evils. One side bemoans corporate america, labels any gun owner a redneck, and wants to reduce public use of national forests. The other has the homo-hating baptists and folks who want to drill on our public land. Damn, wouldn’t it be loverly if someone moderate came along who didn’t look down their nose at me because I hunt or because I have gay friends.