QUICK POST-MORTEM THOUGHTS ON THE ELECTION


The Dems lost a very winnable election for three main reasons: 1) they failed to establish credibility on national security issues; 2) they were unable to respond to the GOP's gay-baiting "values" approach to domestic issues; and 3) Kerry, despite the attributes of his biography (skillfully dented by the Swift Boar smear) and his tenacity (unlike Dukakis, he fought back) was simply a poor candidate.


It is tempting to say, given how Kerry came to "winning" (as opposed to the millions of votes that separated him from legitimately winning) to think that these are relatively small problems to be fixed. But that analysis ignores the palpable weakness of Bush's re-election bud. If you look further down the ticket, 2004 was a disaster for the Dems. Decades of neglecting their grassroots has led to unfavorable congressional gerrymanders that pad the radical GOP's House majority, and besides for Ken Salazar, they got shut out of all of the competitive Senate races.


To recover the Dems need to:

1) stop treating national security and the War on Terror as a wedge issue that needs to be neutralized and more as the bipartisan struggle it should be;


2) begin a major effort to reframe the values debate. There is simply no beating or even neutralizing the GOP edge if they can define public morality as gay-bashing. I give Kerry credit for trying, especially in the debates, but in the end he came off as unauthentic. The problem is not the lack of Dems with that skill - Clinton knew how to do this, and so do Edwards & Obama, it is deeper than that. The Democrats need to begin to wage a long-term campaign to recapture terms such as "family values," and they will need to brush off the large segment of their core who are likely to respond "enough with the G-d talk!!"


3) fix the friggen nomination process to increase the likelihood of getting a candidate who can communicate to the vast numbers of socially conservative (but not fundamentalist) working class voters. Right now, until I see any else who can match him in this area, I'm backing John Edwards. He now has four years to appeared to have mastered the intricacies of international affairs. I give him until the end of the year to relax with his family, and then its back to work, John, because the last thing this country needs right now is another practising lawyer.