One more for the road

I'm too tired and bummed to write much of anything right now. But following yesterday's theme, here's my one post-election haiku:

Now I know feeling
prisoners get when parole
denied for four years

Not everyone's too tired, though: My friend Roberto Scalese, who is quickly becoming the in-house pundit here at Happyscrappy, has some great advice for what led the Democrats to defeat, and what they need to do to turn things around. It includes:

There's an infuriating tendency for Democrats and liberals in general to just assume that everyone knows why their position is correct, and why anyone who disagrees is a racist, sexist, idiot or is just plain evil. It's the year 2004 and we still call people evil. The entire party sounds like a junior high debate team. Evangelicals are NOT YOUR ENEMY. Southerners are not your enemy. Ranchers and hunters are not your enemy. If these people disagree with you, convince them otherwise. Stop assuming they're hicks who don't know any better. Those hicks are voting you out of office.

Here's his advice in full:

So my first reaction to this election debacle: Let the bloodletting begin.

It is now more than ever time for the Democratic party to step back and completely overhaul its membership, mission, vision, platform and public face. If Terry McAuliffe isn't fired after losing in 2000, 2002, and 2004, the Democrats deserve what they get.

Everyone is going to focus on the presidential election, but its what happened “downticket" that's really the problem here. Because of the Democratic party's inability to effectively voice an opinion on ANYTHING, the Republicans have a stranglehold on the house and are closer than ever to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Add to that Bush as President, and we are perilously close to a Republican hammerlock on the US Government. I can't really recall when there's ever been this kind of authoritative control by one party.

John Kerry was the best candidate the Democrats had. He didn't lose this election, his party did. If he ever had a party that came out and stood on principles, that espoused a vision that everyone could understand, that motivated voters not by fear but by inspiration, Kerry would be the clear winner today. Instead, the Democrats embraced the Anybody But Bush mantra and just expected their base to come out and vote. Why is anyone surprised this didn't work. Kerry's performance was Herculean in that he came a hair's breadth from the White House without a major party to speak of.

You can't blame this on Rove dirty tricks, on touch-screen voting, on provisional ballots or anything else. The Dems coughed up the ball, and they are the ones who should take it on the chin. No one stole this election. We lost it. Bad.

I can only think of a few solutions, short of wandering the desert for 40 years.

1. Get a war-time consigliere. Karl Rove is evil, unscrupulous, yada, yady yada, but he is absolutely indispensable to Bush and is a major factor in the President's inexplicable success. Rove does the dirty work while the candidate can stand on principle and look the part. The Democrats need someone who isn't afraid to get a little blood on his shirt and knows that he works in the kitchen, not the floor. This isn't a new phenomenon for the Republicans, by the way. Anyone remember Lee Atwater? Where do you think Rove got this stuff?

2. Rebuild your platform. Clearly, the Democratic platform is a non-starter for 45 percent of Americans, and you'll never win an election if you only have 55 percent of the people willing to hear what you have to say. The Democrats need to have a nation-wide convention over the next few years to completely re-examine what they believe in and why it doesn't play in the south, mountains, farms and churches. There's no reason the Dems need to cede ANY of those areas to Republicans, but they have because of poor attitude (addressed below) and an unwillingness to look at their pet issues. Maybe, if you have issues that most Americans aren't interested in learning about, you have to repackage the idea. O maybe you just have to scrap it for the sake of getting a fair hearing for everything else.

3. It's time for an attitude re-adjustment. Finally, there's no one for Democrats to blame for this loss. Ralph Nader didn't cost them 2000, either, but he got hooked with the blame because it's easier to point at some weird outside factor than take a look at what you could have done to address your weaknesses. There's an infuriating tendency for Democrats and liberals in general to just assume that everyone knows why their position is correct, and why anyone who disagrees is a racist, sexist, idiot or is just plain evil. It's the year 2004 and we still call people evil. The entire party sounds like a junior high debate team. Evangelicals are NOT YOUR ENEMY. Southerners are not your enemy. Ranchers and hunters are not your enemy. If these people disagree with you, convince them otherwise. Stop assuming they’re hicks who don't know any better. Those hicks are voting you out of office. No one who's unemployed should sound pious. And the Democratic party is now a huge bread line.

4. Stop taking blacks, Latinos, women and youth for granted. It isn't working. When the Democrats hold their summit to rebuild their platform, minorities need a real seat at the table. In exchange, however, no one group should expect that all their issues will become front and center. The Democrats need consensus-building within the party, because the splintering of groups and back-biting within the party is crippling.

5. Speak with one voice. I understand that the party likes to think of itself as open to any and all ideas, and that's great. That should never be removed from basic Democratic beliefs. However, the willingness to consider all points of view can't be your defining characteristic. People don't are what you're willing to listen to, they want to know what you're willing to do. Once the Democrats get their attitudes in order and define a new platform, they have to hone a message that sums up the Democratic point of view. If not, the Republicans will do that for you. The GOP has totally mastered the practice of definitional language. Anyone who doesn't understand this needs to read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." Now. Once Democrats learn to master the language of an issue, defending their platform on that issue becomes much, much easier and palatable for everyone.

6. Change how you talk. The party has some bold and awesome ideas, but the language used to define those ideas (see above) has been co-opted by the Republican party. It's time for Democrats to re-define what they believe, and to do it in a way that has different constituencies understand and prefer. Welfare is a fundamentally Christian concept, so why isn't it pitched like that in South Carolina and Tennessee? Free Markets create multi-billion-dollar consumer bases for American goods, so why aren't we saying that in Ohio and Wisconsin? Environmentalism saves everyone money and preserves national parks, which generates tourist dollars, so why aren't we saying that in Wyoming and Colorado? Instead of using the same, tired, re-defined language that you've used for years, it's time for Democrats to start talking to America, not at America.

7. Gut the party as it stands. Daschle and Gephardt are gone, and instead of mourning that, consider it a good start. Get rid of Pelosi. Get rid of Terry McAuliffe, even if that means a fishing trip on lake Tahoe. These people all represent the old thinking to the American public. God, I'm a liberal and I can barely stand to look at them. Get rid of them. All of them.

8. Finally, once you've done all of that, and only once you've done all of that, the Democrats have to take the biggest step. You have to find real candidates with real charisma and smarts. If they follow everything listed above, that should be easy. Once you have the right party operatives to handle the grunt and dirty work, once you have a unified message that addresses Americans face to face, once you speak a language that isn't dismissive of stale, you have an environment that will invite more Barak Obamas than Erskine Bowles. I mean, for God's sake, did you see some of the stiffs the Democrats ran this year? The party needs to focus on finding candidates with a strong voice, a grounding in real American values (no more lawyers, for God's sake), and a genuine likeability to run for major office.

That's the deal, I think. But that's only after sitting down for a half hour to type this up. I'm sure there are more things that need to be done, but what's clear is that it's not time. I strongly urge everyone reading this to think about this problem and see if you have solutions, too.

Posted by Jason Feifer at November 3, 2004 08:21 AM