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Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 09:46 PM
Democrats' Losses Go Far Beyond One Defeat
Thu Nov 4, 7:55 AM ET
Los Angeles Times
By Ronald Brownstein Times Staff Writer

In the struggle for political power, Democrats now face a stark threat: Under George W. Bush, Republicans are consolidating their control over the culturally conservative regions of the country.

The 2004 elections underscored that the nation's so-called red territories — areas that support the president — are becoming redder. And that threatens to leave Democrats at a long-term disadvantage in future races for the White House and battles for Congress.


Although Bush in Tuesday's vote made some inroads among swing groups such as Latinos and married women, exit polls and voting results in key counties across the nation suggested he won his second term mostly by increasing the GOP strength in places where the party was already strong — especially rural, small-town and fast-growing exurban communities.


Bush successfully defended 29 of the 30 states he won in 2000 — and increased his margin of victory in 19 of those 29. Exit polls showed he dominated among the same groups central to his much narrower win in 2000 — including regular churchgoers, married families and gun owners. And both the exit polls and voting results make clear that he inspired a huge surge of Republican turnout — just as he did in the 2002 midterm elections.


Just as important, his strength helped carry the GOP to substantial gains in congressional races across the red states. All six of the Democratic House seats that Republicans won Tuesday came in red states. (Four of them came in Bush's home state of Texas, where a new redistricting map benefited the GOP.)


Even more dramatically, Republicans captured six Democratic Senate seats in states that Bush carried twice, while losing only one red state seat, for a net pickup of five in those states. With those gains, Republicans now hold 44 of the 58 Senate seats in the 29 states Bush has carried twice, bringing the party to the edge of a majority even before contesting seats in the blue states that voted for Al Gore (news - web sites) and John F. Kerry.


Adding to the concern for Democrats is that the GOP made all these gains even while Kerry reached many of the targets his campaign set. The results suggest this wasn't an election Kerry lost so much as one that Bush won.


Kerry inspired millions of new voters and established a clear advantage among young people, according to exit polls by the Los Angeles Times and Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool. His campaign engineered huge turnouts among minority voters in such key cities as Cleveland and Philadelphia. And he held almost all of the upscale, socially moderate suburban counties in the Northeast and Midwest that shifted from the GOP to the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton in the 1990s.


Yet in the key states — especially Ohio — all of that was overwhelmed by Bush's ability to expand his vote among culturally conservative constituencies, especially rural and exurban voters.


Compounding the problem was Kerry's inability to compete for any Southern state except Florida: That left him with few options for reaching 270 electoral votes, especially after his bid to open a new front in Western states such as Arizona, Nevada and Colorado fell short. "Democrats face this terrible arithmetic in the Electoral College (news - web sites) where if they don't carry any of the 11 Southern states [of the Old Confederacy] they need to win 70% of everything else," says Merle Black, an expert on Southern politics at Emory University.


The math is just as daunting in the battle for Congress. Republicans will now control 18 of the 22 Senate seats in the states of the Old Confederacy, plus all four in Oklahoma and Kentucky. In the past two election cycles, the two parties have competed for nine open Senate seats in the South; with their sweep of five Democratic-held open seats Tuesday, Republicans have now captured all nine. "The only reason the Democrats dominated [Congress] for as many decades as they did is their advantage came from the South," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who specializes in Southern races. "When the South essentially left the Democratic coalition, that's when we had the national shift to the Republicans."


To many Democratic analysts, the clear message of these results is that even with its growing strength among upscale social moderates, the party will find it virtually impossible to reach a presidential or congressional majority without regaining at least some ground with socially conservative voters. "We've got to close the cultural gap," said Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, a leading centrist party group.


And even as Bush solidified his hold on culturally conservative voters, more social moderates appeared to drift away from him, especially along the two coasts.


According to both the Times and the National Election Pool exit polls, Bush ran only about even or slightly behind with independent voters — making him the first winner since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to lose with that critical swing group. Bush also fell short among voters who called themselves moderates and slipped a step among voters with college degrees, the exit polls found.





To some extent, Bush may be a prisoner of his own success: It won't be easy for him to expand his party's appeal with those sorts of swing voters while meeting the demands of the conservative coalition that powered his victory on issues such as potential appointments to the Supreme Court. "Their coalition is very stable but it's very narrow," said John C. Green, a University of Akron political scientist who specializes in the relationship between religion and politics. "It will be interesting to see if any Republican besides Bush can succeed without finding ways to expand it. There's not much margin of error in this coalition."

Yet Bush's unshakeable hold on his own voters allowed him to challenge for far more Democratic-leaning terrain than Kerry could contest on the Republican side. By the campaign's final days, Kerry was seriously bidding for only three states that Bush carried last time — Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire.

Bush, meanwhile, seriously contested twice that many states won by Gore in 2000.

Although Bush ultimately fell short in at least 18 of the 20 states Gore won in 2000, he reduced the Democratic margin in 13 of them. And although Bush continued to run poorly among socially liberal constituencies such as single women or voters who rarely attend church, the Times exit poll found that he significantly improved his performance among married white women (especially those without a college education) and Latinos.

As in the 2002 midterm elections, Bush demonstrated that he could inspire a remarkable Republican turnout. Both the Times and NEP exit polls showed that Republicans constituted about as large a share of the voters Tuesday as Democrats.

That erased a 4-percentage-point Democratic lead in 2000 — and fulfilled the goal set before the election by Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist. These patterns come into sharp relief looking at Ohio, the state that ultimately decided the presidency more than any other.

Kerry did almost everything he could have hoped in the state. He accumulated a margin of nearly 218,000 votes in Cuyahoga County (including Cleveland), an advantage nearly one-third larger than Gore managed in 2000.

Kerry even carried all three of the classic suburban swing counties that analysts watch closely in the state: Stark (Canton); Montgomery (Dayton) and Franklin (Columbus).

Yet Bush still overcame Kerry with the political equivalent of a death by a thousand cuts. Bush crushed Kerry and expanded his margins from 2000 in the rural and exurban counties that stretched across the state's southern boundary and up its western edge to the Michigan border. Those results point to an ominous possibility for Democrats: that Dowd is right when he argues that white rural and blue-collar Midwestern voters are now committing to the GOP.Kerry's losssuggests that the Democrats may not be able to recapture the White House until they find a nominee who can reverse that current in both regions.

---------------------------
[i]Times staff writer Richard Rainey and Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus contributed.

Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 09:47 PM
Times national exit poll results

Data from the Los Angeles Times exit poll show how various groups of voters in the nation cast their ballots in the election. The two columns of percentages for Bush and Kerry are read horizontally. For example, of all the men who voted for president, 53% voted for Bush and 46% for Kerry.

Presidential choice % of all voters Bush Kerry
Bush/Cheney 51% 100% --
Kerry/Edwards 48 -- 100%

Other 1 -- --

Gender % of all voters Bush Kerry
Men 49% 53% 46
Women 51 49% 50


Gender and marital status % of all voters Bush Kerry
Married men 31% 59% 40
Single men 16 40% 58

Married women 30 57% 42
Single women 19 35% 64


Age % of all voters Bush Kerry
18-29 20% 43% 55
30-44 32 52% 47
45-64 36 54% 45
65 or older 12 55% 45


Race/ethnicity % of all voters Bush Kerry
White 79% 57% 42
Black 10 14% 86
Latino 5 45% 54
Asian 3 34% 64


Education % of all voters Bush Kerry
Less than college 48% 54% 45
College degree or more 52 49% 50


Income of voter % of all voters Bush Kerry
Less than $20,000 10% 46% 51
$20,000 to $39,999 20 47% 52
$40,000 to $59,999 20 51% 48
$60,000 to $74,999 15 53% 46
$75,000 or more 35 54% 45


Political ideology % of all voters Bush Kerry
Liberal 32% 19% 79
Moderate 29 45% 54
Conservative 39 82% 18


Party affiliation % of all voters Bush Kerry
Democrat 40% 12% 88
Independent 19 48% 49
Republican 39 94% 6


Party ideology % of all voters Bush Kerry
Liberal Democrats 22% 5% 95
Other Democrats 18 19% 81
Other Independents 13 36% 60
Conservative Independents 6 77% 22
Other Republicans 13 89% 11
Conservative Republicans 27 96% 4



When decided presidential vote % of all voters Bush Kerry
Today/yesterday 8% 45% 52
Over the weekend 2 47% 46
Before the weekend 43 37% 62
Always knew 47 65% 34


Military affiliation % of all voters Bush Kerry
Household with a veteran and/or family active in military 46% 54% 45
Not in military, nor a veteran 50 48% 51



Religion % of all voters Bush Kerry
Protestant 51% 61% 38
Catholic 25 55% 44
Jewish 4 26% 74


Attendance at religious services % of all voters Bush Kerry
Weekly or more 42% 65% 34
Less than that 58 42% 57


Gun ownership % of all voters Bush Kerry
Own guns 36% 65% 34
Don't own any 64 43% 56



Voting status % of all voters Bush Kerry
First-time voter 11% 42% 57
Voted before 89 53% 46


Locality % of all voters Bush Kerry
City 36% 43% 56
Suburb 32 52% 47
Small town 20 58% 41
Rural 12 62% 37


Region % of all voters Bush Kerry
East 24% 42% 57
Midwest 24 54% 45
South 32 57% 42
West 20 49% 50


Union household % of all voters Bush Kerry
Union households 27% 43% 56
Non-union households 73 54% 45


Sexuality % of all voters Bush Kerry
Heterosexual 96% 53% 46
Gay/lesbian/ bisexual 4 17% 81


Do you think the country is on the right or wrong track? % of all voters Bush Kerry
Right track 51% 89% 11
Wrong track 49 11% 87


Do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, or not? % of all voters Bush Kerry
Worth it 50% 88% 12
Not worth it 50 14% 84



Note: numbers may not add up to 100% where some answer categories are not shown.

How the poll was conducted: The Los Angeles Times Poll interviewed 5,154 voters who cast ballots in the general election Tuesday as they exited 136 polling places across the nation, including 3,357 California voters as they exited 50 polling places across the state. Precincts were chosen based on the pattern of turnout in past primary elections. The survey was a self-administered, confidential questionnaire, in English and in Spanish. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all voters, including California voters. For some subgroups, the error margin may be somewhat higher. Fieldwork provided by Schlesinger Associates of Edison, N.J. and Davis Research of Calabasas.

*

Source: Times Poll


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20041104/ts_latimes/democratslossesgofarbeyondonedefeat&e=4

Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 09:48 PM
Stung, party begins asking `hard questions'
Thu Nov 4,12:12 PM ET
Chicago Tribune
By Mike Dorning Washington Bureau

Even before John Kerry conceded defeat Wednesday, Democratic strategists, activists and party leaders already were beginning a difficult self-examination of the party's failure to connect with voters, spurred on by a deeply disappointing performance in the election.

The debate over the future of the Democrats will play out in the weeks and months ahead, probably continuing until the party has settled on a new presidential nominee four years hence. And the parameters of the discourse are still emerging. "This will be an important choice," said former Bill Clinton (news - web sites) aide Paul Begala. "The Democrats will ask hard questions about our party and our future."


Some themes already were clear Wednesday, as party insiders traded condolences and activists took to Web logs to express their frustration. Some in the liberal wing of the party suggested that John Kerry had failed to present a sufficiently coherent and clear alternative to President Bush and the Republican Party's policies. In particular, they criticized him for sounding an uncertain trumpet against the war in Iraq, which Kerry voted to authorize.


But, in the initial hours after the defeat, much of the discussion among political professionals touched on how the Democratic Party could draw a closer connection to moderate and rural voters on issues of values and culture. "If we don't step back, take a good hard look and address these issues, we're going to be in the back seat for many years to come," Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) (D-Conn.) told CNN.


Exit polls showed 22 percent of voters were most concerned about "moral issues," ahead of any other concerns, including Iraq, terrorism or the economy. President Bush, a born-again Christian who embraced religion in a midlife struggle against alcohol, comfortably includes regular references to faith in his political speech.


Spreading the word

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was citing the the Bible, particularly the Gospel of St. Matthew, as inspiration for her political beliefs during a CNN interview. "On some of the social issues, the Democrats did not connect well enough with the country. Certainly, we are faith-filled. We love our country," Pelosi said.

Not only did the Democrats lose the race for the White House but Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) suffered a humiliating defeat and the party lost seats in both chambers of Congress. Democratic candidates lost every contested Senate election in the South.

And, unlike the presidential election four years ago, when the political significance of the Democratic loss was clouded because Al Gore won the popular vote and Florida's pivotal electoral votes were disputed, the election results Tuesday showed a clear victory for President Bush.

1st majority vote since '88

Though Bush's 51 percent majority is not overwhelming, it is the first time a presidential candidate has gained a majority of the vote since 1988. And the results in the congressional contests strengthened the sense that Democrats are becoming uncompetitive in places like the South and rural America.

"One thing's very clear: What Democrats are selling, people aren't buying in large parts of the country," said Jim Kessler, a Democratic strategist who recently joined the staff of a centrist party organization, The Third Way.

The struggle over the future of the party will play out as a new leadership emerges. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is almost certainly out of a job, said party strategists and office-holders. For the time being, Kerry remains the Democrats' most prominent spokesman. But vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now a senator from New York, may become increasingly prominent as they consider potential presidential bids.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also may take on a larger public role as the party fights to retain its appeal to Hispanic voters, which defected to Bush in significant numbers Tuesday. And Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) could have a larger role as Democrats wrestle with how to become more competitive in rural America.

Sen.-elect Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is expected to be one of the party's new stars as the Senate's only African-American and a charismatic and articulate speaker who even before his election was tapped to give a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

Senate Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is widely considered the most likely replacement for Daschle as Democratic leader. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is considered a potential successor to Reid.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20041104/ts_chicagotrib/stungpartybeginsaskinghardquestions&e=5

Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 09:51 PM
The value of selling values grew
Fri Nov 5, 6:34 AM ET

The value of selling values grew On Election Day, 36% of John Kerry's supporters told exit pollsters that they weren't so much voting for their guy as voting against President Bush. In contrast, only about 14% of Bush's backers said the same of Kerry.

Nothing better explains what went wrong for the Democratic candidate: Kerry was unable to communicate why people should vote for him.


The exit polls, and much post-election spin, offered a ready explanation for this. Twenty-two percent of voters listed "moral values" as their No. 1 concern, ahead of the economy, terrorism and Iraq. These voters turned out in huge numbers, and they voted overwhelmingly for Bush. Election over.


The polls also show that those who attend church regularly vote Republican. So, the reasoning goes, the Democrats are out of touch with the nation's values.

The interpretation is easily overdone. Not coincidentally, 23% in exit polls also identified themselves as white evangelical or born-again Christians, a core Republican constituency that isn't going to switch parties.

But Kerry and other Democrats are lacking a compelling message to serve as an alternative to Bush's platform of faith at home and resolution abroad. They have policies on issues ranging from health care to welfare that have a moral component. But they don't spend much effort explaining that dimension of those values, which are the bedrock of their policies.

As Democrats regroup after their punishing loss, they will no doubt debate how they can win back churchgoers, Southerners and other voters who see values lacking in the Democratic message.

They won't find the answer in a fight to prove which party is more religious, much less which side God is on. But defining core values and communicating them clearly is a different matter. People want to vote out of inspiration, not anger, and they didn't find enough in Kerry to attract their votes.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&ncid=742&e=1&u=/usatoday/20041105/cm_usatoday/thevalueofsellingvaluesgrew

Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 09:58 PM
The Democrat Failure
George Will


"I think the Union army had something to do with it."
-- Gen. George Pickett, years afterward, on why his charge at Gettysburg failed.


WASHINGTON -- John Kerry's liberalism had something to do with his defeat. Hence so didthis: By Jan. 20, 2009, all the elected presidents for 44 consecutive years will have come from three Southern states -- Texas, Arkansas, Georgia -- and Southern California.

Kerry ran a high-risk "biography candidacy" based on a four-month period 35 years ago. His contrasting silence about his 20 Senate years echoed. He was an anomalous kind of challenger. The most important changes he promised would be either restorations or resistances. That is, he campaigned as the candidate of complacency, albeit a curdled, backward-looking complacency. Regarding foreign policy, he promised to turn the clock back, to the alliance-centered foreign policy prior to the intrusion of the "nuisance" of terrorism. Regarding domestic policy, he promised to stop the clock, preventing any forward movement on entitlement reform to cope with the baby boomers' retirements.


Never in this marathon did Kerry himself do anything to change the campaign's dynamics. He counted on events in Iraq, and on the power of his party's unconcealed belief that Bush is an imbecile. But Democrats cannot disguise from the country their bewilderment about how to appeal to a country that is so backward, they think, that it finds Bush appealing.

Democrats, notoriously cold toward losing candidates they have improvidently nominated, resemble Dallas fans as described by quarterback Roger Staubach: "Cowboy fans love you, win or tie." They should rethink their compressed nominating calendar -- Kerry was effectively selected by the 135,000 who voted for him in Iowa and New Hampshire -- and the fetish of allowing those two states, rather than, say, Michigan, to dominate the process.

As part of its penance for nominating a senator -- it is 44 years since one was elected president -- and one more liberal (according to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action) than Walter Mondale, the Democratic Party should purge its Michael Moore faction. Moore, the vulgarian who made the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," is unhinged by his loathing of Bush -- and of the country that has now re-elected him. Moore and the hordes of his enthusiasts are a stain on the party -- as are those Democratic senators and representatives who last June made a merry festival of the movie's Washington premiere. Moore illustrates the fact that the Republican Party benefits -- it is energized by resentment -- when the entertainment industry and major journalistic institutions (e.g., The New York Times, CBS News) enlist as appendages of the Democratic Party's advocacy apparatus.

Never have Americans felt less affinity with Europe, but never have their politics been more European, meaning organized around ideologically homogenous parties. Just 25 years ago there were many liberals and conservatives in both parties. On Tuesday, four moderate-to-conservative Texas Democratic congressmen were defeated, the result of a second redistricting since the 2000 census. A conservative Georgia Republican won a Senate seat vacated by a conservative Democrat and a conservative Louisiana Republican won a seat vacated by a moderate Democrat. This continues -- and very nearly completes -- the process of producing a perfect overlap of America's ideological and party parameters.


Unlike the two most recent incumbent presidents re-elected, Bush did not run on rhetorical froth -- "Morning Again in America" (1984), "A Bridge to the 21st Century" (1996). He will feel vindicated in his foreign policy and empowered for his well-advertised domestic agenda of tax cuts, tort reform, entitlement reform and conservative judicial nominees.

In the 37 elections since 1860 -- the first won by a Republican -- Democrats have won only 14. Only twice in 15 post-World War II elections has the Democratic nominee achieved 50 percent of the vote. American politics has known many oscillations; some scholars have discerned an almost metronomic regularity in its political cycles. Now, however, there is an astonishing stasis, immune even to the winds of war.

Since 2000, the issues driving civic discourse have changed radically but the electoral map has changed negligibly. The only 2000 red state that turned blue this year -- New Hampshire -- made the Northeast, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine, monochrome. New Mexico, a 2000 blue state that turned red (or seems to have, as this is written Wednesday morning), completes a red swath from California's southeastern border to the Atlantic.

The nation's population center did not cross the Mississippi until the 1980 census. Today it is in Phelps County, Mo., heading southwest, away from the Democratic Party with its apparently metabolic impulse to ignore such realities.

Jolie Rouge
11-05-2004, 10:28 PM
Democrats Have Bad Case of the Blues
By TOM RAUM

WASHINGTON (AP) - After losing back-to-back presidential elections, Democratic leaders are trying to figure out how to make the party more relevant to mainstream Americans and keep it from slipping into perpetual minority-party status.

And the task is daunting, many Democratic consultants and leaders agree.

Republicans have cut deeply into formerly Democratic areas in rural America, the Sunbelt, and among Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority group. They have made gains on ``family values'' issues, winning over social conservatives who previously voted Democratic on economic issues, while keeping their advantage on national defense. ``We were on a tough playing field,'' said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggesting Republicans had made inroads among socially conservative former Democrats by emphasizing ``wedge issues'' like gay marriage and abortion.


Ballot measures in 11 states to ban gay marriage also helped boost turnout for Republicans.


Democrats also have no strong leader to pull the party out of the wilderness.
With the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the party's top two congressional leaders are Pelosi, a San Francisco-area liberal, and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, now the No. 2 leader, known mostly as a low-key insider.


For 2008, the presumptive leading presidential candidates are New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Northeastern centrist and one of the most polarizing figures in American politics, and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a trial lawyer and failed vice presidential candidate with little public service besides six years in Congress.


Democrats have a bad case of the blues after seeing so much red.


A look at the 2004 election map with states President Bush won in red and John Kerry's in blue underscores the dilemma.

www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/electoral.college

Unbroken stretches of red nearly from coast to coast, encompassing most of the heartland, the South, the Great Plains, the desert Southwest and the Rocky Mountain West. Blue states are mostly a fringe along both coasts - the Northeastern seaboard and the West Coast states of California, Oregon and Washington - along with some of the industrial states bordering the Great Lakes.


Democrats suffer from a chronic geographical and ideological predilection: They nominate candidates from the political left who have a hard time appealing to those in the middle. ``My advice to the Democrats is never, never nominate anybody from Massachusetts again,'' said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.


The last Northeastern Democrat elected president was John F. Kennedy in 1960. Since then, just three Democrats - all from the South - have served: Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas.


Once solidly Democratic, the South today is solidly Republican.


Democrats also lost seats in the House and Senate, increasing GOP majorities there. ``I don't think there's any question that we did not get the wind, the uplift that we had expected in this campaign,'' said Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. ``The red states, after the debates, got redder.''


Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said Friday that Democrats were never able to bring economic issues to the fore. ``We run elections in a real world. You can choose to say you wanted to focus on the economy, but Iraq was a powerful story. People were dying. You cannot have Iraq news without a candidate talking about it,'' Greenberg told reporters during a post-mortem session.


Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, said: ``Democrats have started forming their circular firing squads.'' But Borosage urged Democrats not to capitulate, saying polling suggests a majority still supports the Democratic position on many economic and domestic issues like health care and the economy.


Al From, head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which helped put Bill Clinton on the path to the White House in 1992, said Democrats ``have to do a better job with connecting with those people who go to work every day and play by the rules.' We need to compete all over the country. We can't allow ourselves to abandon any region like the South. And we can't cede territory to the Republicans because they'll take every inch we give.''


Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant, said the election was closer than Bush's 3.5 million-vote victory makes it seem. She suggested a swing to Kerry of 100,000 votes in Ohio would have given him the presidency. Still, she said, ``I think we can do a better job - and I don't blame this on Kerry, it's just something constitutionally we haven't done - of talking more about our values and love of country.''


Democrats search the dark clouds for signs of light. Republicans could overplay their hand. Democrats still have an edge among Hispanics, which they could exploit. Focusing most of their attention this year on battleground states, they could do more to reach out to voters in other parts of the country, particularly in the Southwest and Mountain States.


Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said he's seen the Republican party all but written off in the past when Democrats simultaneously ruled the White House and Congress - only to come roaring back. ``Eventually, the party in power is going to screw up,'' Hess said.


House Democratic leader Pelosi put it another way. ``Quite frankly, I think the table is set for us in the next election,'' she said. ``We have lost just about everything that we can lose.''



11/05/04 23:09


http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?flok=FF-APO-1131&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20041105%2F2309889101.htm&sc=1131

dangerousfem
11-06-2004, 01:02 PM
Thanks for these.. it just states what has been obvious for a long time...

many years ago.. the Dem party did stand for the common man and comon morals... but they have moved from that.... it use to be that the Reb party was only made up of rich and upper middle class... now you see middle and poor all supporting the Reb party, why? Because they now stand for family values .. the majority of people don't support gay marriage, or abortion, and many other liberal ideas that the dem party now stands for.

Jolie Rouge
11-19-2004, 01:25 PM
The Liberal Crack-up
Emmett Tyrrell

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- History takes time. To understand the historic decline of the Democratic Party, I have found it useful to reach back to a book I wrote in 1984, "The Liberal Crack-Up". It is a diagnosis of what was then the core philosophy of the Democratic Party, liberalism, and a prognosis of its future. Doctor Tyrrell was not optimistic, but history takes time.

Today, the Democratic Party has lost both houses of Congress, the presidency and many state offices it had controlled for at least two generations. It is about to be outpaced throughout the federal judiciary. The liberal crack-up began with the defeat of that liberal fantastico, Jimmy Carter. It picked up steam during the 1990s, when the Democrats lost the House and the Senate and many state offices -- and the media's legend endures that President Bill Clinton is a political genius.

His genius is in self-promotion. He is a cunning huckster. But the liberal crack-up did not reach the point of no return until Nov. 2, 2004. Then on that glad and glorious morn, that reductio ad absurdum of a liberal presidential candidate, Jean-Francois Kerry, the Democratic elites and all the liberals in the media beheld Victory. It was to be a return to their vicarious lives as Kennedys! Roosevelts! Progressives!

Alas, by Nov. 3, their delusions became very difficult to maintain. Sure there are many who still think they won. Doubtless Jean-Francois, his balmy wife and many in his entourage still feel as morally and intellectually superior as they did in the expectant hours of Nov. 2. Yet clear-headed students of politics today recognize that the Democratic Party has suffered a catastrophic defeat. Some, such as Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, are politely suggesting that their party is in need of a philosophy transplant, something less narcissistic, less out-of-this world, than the troubled philosophy that since the 1960s has been at its core,
namely, liberalism.

Some will say liberalism was the very core of the Democrats' beloved New Deal, but they err. The liberalism of the New Deal was leavened with urban machine politics, Southern conservatism, and that wild and woolly philosophical hybrid, Western populism. The liberalism that became rampant in the Democratic Party beginning in the late 1960s drove out all other intellectual impulses. Yes, a poseur such as Jimmy Carter might make a feint toward fiscal conservatism, but he could not resist his education lobby, his environmentalists or his "minority rights" careerists. And he was most in his element lecturing Americans on their "inordinate fear of communism" and their "malaise." Today, he is just another "blame-America-first" megalomaniac.

Boy Clinton was not a lot different. His 1992 big spending plans (he called it "infrastructure") and health-care colossus were kept in check by the country's growing conservatism manifested most inescapably in the Republican ascendancy on Capitol Hill in 1994. His vaunted balanced budget was achieved at least in part by his stinginess toward the military. His whole egotistic lifestyle was late-20th century liberalism replete with zoo sex in the office and hand-holding with visiting preachers and therapists. Then came Al Gore, and after that the football-throwing, snow-boarding, wind-surfing, bungee-jumping fantasist whose self-important huffiness over being called "French-looking" made teasing him such a delight.

At the heart of the liberal crack-up, which I first diagnosed in 1984, is the impulse to politicize everything from food to sex to happenstance -- and to moralize. The liberal of the liberal crack-up is a free-floating moralizer. Such liberals are also dramatists of the most adolescent variety. No human experience is beyond their melodrama. There is no misfortune that they will not exploit for votes. Their politics is built on a world of extremes.
The conservatism of President George W. Bush, a conservatism that has been governing America for most of the past 24 years, remains to these liberals shocking, dangerous or "extremist," as they say.

The liberalism of the liberal crack-up is what is "extremist." Even a sensible idea or a fine principle is exaggerated to the point that it becomes preposterous and untenable. Thus in the last election, the perfectly sensible and tolerant solution for stable homosexual couples' legal difficulties, namely, civil unions, was not sufficient.

No conscientious liberal of 2004 will be content until the Nation adopts homosexual marriage. Nor will the good liberal accept such limitations on abortion as parental consent for minors. Naturally, the good liberal will only accept the most extreme criticism of the Iraqi war. The good liberal increasingly sees politics as a realm dominated by conspiracies and lies.

The inflamed drama of liberal politics has become too much for ordinary Americans to endure. The liberal crack-up is beyond therapy. It is history.

Jolie Rouge
11-19-2004, 03:50 PM
CONFESSIONS OF A CULTURAL ELITIST
Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters
Tue Nov 9, 8:03 PM ET
By TED RALL -- UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No one is criticizing the morally incongruous Kerry for running against a war he voted for while insisting that he would have voted for it again. Party leaders have yet to consider that NAFTA, signed into law under Clinton, may have cost them high-unemployment Ohio. No, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, darling of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, blames something else: the perception "in the heartland" that Democrats are a "bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."


Firstly, living in the sticks doesn't make you more American. Rural, urban or suburban--they're irrelevant. San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district is every bit as red, white and blue as the Texas panhandle. But if militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason.

We do, and all the more so after this election.

I spent my childhood in fly-over country, in a decidedly Republican town in southwest Ohio. It was a decent place to grow up, with well-funded public schools and only the occasional marauding serial killer to worry about. The only ethnic restaurant sold something called "Mandarin Chinese," Midwestese for cold noodles slathered with sugary sauce. The county had three major employers: the Air Force, Mead Paper, and National Cash Register--and NCR was constantly laying people off. Folks were nice, but depressingly closed-minded. "Well," they'd grimace when confronted with a new musical genre or fashion trend, "that's different." My suburb was racially insular, culturally bland and intellectually unstimulating. Its people were knee-jerk conformists. Faced with the prospect of spending my life underemployed, bored and soused, I did what anyone with a bit of ambition would do. I went to college in a big city and stayed there.


Mine is a common story. Every day in America, hundreds of our most talented young men and women flee the suburbs and rural communities for big cities, especially those on the West and East Coasts. Their youthful vigor fuels these metropolises--the cultural capitals of the blue states. These oases of liberal thinking--New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boston--are homes to our best-educated people, most vibrant popular culture and most innovative and productive businesses. There are exceptions--some smart people move from cities to the countryside--but the best and brightest gravitate to places where liberalism rules.


Maps showing Kerry's blue states appended to the "United States of Canada" separated from Bush's red "Jesusland" are circulating by email. Though there is a religious component to the election results, the biggest red-blue divide is intellectual. "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" asked the headline of the Daily Mirror in Great Britain, and the underlying assumption is undeniable. By any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush.


72 percent who cast votes for George W. Bush, according to a University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks poll, believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or active WMD programs. 75 percent think that a Saddam-Al Qaeda link has been proven, and 20 percent say Saddam ordered 9/11. Of course, none of this was true.


Kerry voters were less than half as idiotic: 26 percent of Democrats bought into Bush-Cheney's WMD lies, and 30 percent into Saddam-Al Qaeda.


Would Bush's supporters have voted for him even if they had known he was a serial liar? Perhaps their hatred of homosexuals and slutty abortion vixens would have prompted them to make the same choice--an idiotic perversion of priorities. As things stand, they cast their ballots relying on assumptions that were demonstrably false.


Educational achievement doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. After all, Bush holds a Harvard MBA. Still, it bears noting that Democrats are better educated than Republicans. You are 25 percent more likely to hold a college degree if you live in the Democratic northeast than in the red state south. Blue state voters are 25 percent more likely, therefore, to understand the historical and cultural ramifications of Bush's brand of bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy.


Inland Americans face a bigger challenge than coastal "cultural elitists" when it comes to finding high-quality news coverage. The best newspapers, which routinely win prizes for their in-depth local and national reporting and staffers overseas, line the coasts. So do the cable TV networks with the broadest offerings and most independent radio stations. Bush Country makes do with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity syndicated on one cookie-cutter AM outlet after another. Citizens of the blue states read lackluster dailies stuffed with generic stories cut and pasted from wire services. Given their dismal access to high-quality media, it's a minor miracle that 40 percent of Mississippians turned out for Kerry.


So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us.

But don't demand our respect.

You lost it on November 2.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=17&u=/ucru/20041110/cm_ucru/confessionsofaculturalelitist



:eek: :rolleyes: :confused: {{ [i]This is not "tongue-in-cheek"; this is not satire. This guy is stone cold serious. THAT is part of the DNP current problem. [i] }} :eek: :rolleyes: :confused:

janelle
11-20-2004, 12:45 AM
Just for that Kerry isn't going to tell us his plan. LOL :D He never told us anything but vote against Bush. Duh.

Rush Limbaugh said the country has been going conservative for a long time and Rush is right.

The Dems have been hanging onto Predisent Kennedy's tails for years but can't anymore. Most young voters under 30 don't even remember him. News reels just don't get his charisma over.

dangerousfem
11-20-2004, 06:00 AM
So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us.

But don't demand our respect.

You lost it on November 2.


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: And Dems wonder what went wrong for them?? These are the type of poeple they have speaking for them.

dangerousfem
11-20-2004, 09:36 AM
http://www.flowgo.com/funpages/view.cfm/6410

Jolie Rouge
11-20-2004, 12:02 PM
If Kennedy was alive today, he would not even be allowed to speak at the DNC so far has the party moved from the ideals he held.

adorkablex
11-20-2004, 12:15 PM
http://www.flowgo.com/funpages/view.cfm/6410

That was mature.

Jolie Rouge
11-20-2004, 12:26 PM
I can't get it to run ... what is the "joke" ?

dangerousfem
11-20-2004, 01:33 PM
That was mature.

And some of the stuff you guys have posted are???? I seem to remember a few"mature" :rolleyes: things posted by the anti Bush crowd....

dangerousfem
11-20-2004, 01:37 PM
I can't get it to run ... what is the "joke" ?

hmm.. I just tried it.. it loaded ok.. its just one of those animation pages, kinda like the jib jab ones... withl Kerry as a baby crying..lol... and hey if the shoe fits ya know? He gave a very classy c consession speach, and now he is back to whining.... :rolleyes:

adorkablex
11-20-2004, 06:55 PM
And some of the stuff you guys have posted are???? I seem to remember a few"mature" :rolleyes: things posted by the anti Bush crowd....

I haven't posted anything such as that.

Jolie Rouge
11-26-2004, 10:19 PM
Reshaping the electorate
Michael Barone

Amid the Cabinet reshuffling, little attention has been paid to the appointment of Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman as Republican National Committee chairman. But Mehlman's appointment could turn out to be as significant for our politics as Condoleezza Rice's is likely to be for foreign policy.

If Karl Rove was the architect of George W. Bush's thumping re-election victory, Mehlman was the structural engineer who turned the plans into reality. Mehlman's great achievement was to create a largely volunteer organization of 1.4 million people who turned out the vote in counties big and
small for Bush. He managed this task the way Rudolph Giuliani managed the NYPD: by requiring metrics -- numerical goals, validated by independent parties -- to measure the work being done every week.

This enabled the Bush organization to plug holes and provide psychic rewards for those doing good work. No one (including Giuliani himself) thought Giuliani could cut crime in half in New York City; very few thought that Mehlman could produce 10 million new votes for Bush. But Giuliani did it, and so did Mehlman.

The surge in turnout was unusual for what was, after all, a rerun election. Turnout was down in 1956 when Dwight Eisenhower faced Adlai Stevenson a second time. Turnout was down in 1996 when Bill Clinton faced Ross Perot and a decorated World War II veteran a second time.

Many people figured they had made the decision already and didn't need to go to the polls again. Not so in 2004, when Bush faced a second liberal Democrat who had spent much of his career in the Senate. With the absentee votes in California and Washington finally counted, it appears that overall turnout was up 12 percent. John Kerry's popular vote was also 12 percent above Al Gore's. But the popular vote for Bush was up a stunning 20 percent. Before the election, some liberal commentators were claiming that Bush would win no votes he hadn't won in 2000.

Not quite: He won 10 million more.

Bush's popular vote was up 23 percent in the 13 battle-ground states that decided the election. Kerry's paid-worker, union-led turnout drives in central cities nearly matched that -- his vote was up 21 percent over Gore's in the battlegrounds. But that wasn't enough to outdo the Bush volunteer efforts in the make-or-break states of Florida and Ohio.

Elsewhere, Bush had a bigger edge. His popular vote was up 21 percent in safe Bush states and 16 percent in safe Kerry states, compared to 12 percent and 5 percent for Kerry. The Bush organization literally reshaped the electorate. The 2000 exit poll showed an electorate that was 39 percent Democratic and 35 percent Republican. The 2004 exit poll, which was tilted toward Democrats, found a dead-heat: 37 percent to 37 percent. That means that Republican turnout was up 19 percent and Democratic turnout up only 7 percent. This is the most Republican electorate America has had since random-sample polling was invented.

Re-elected presidents seldom do much for their parties; certainly Reagan and Nixon didn't. Roosevelt did, and Bush evidently intends to also. Look for Mehlman to continue engineering volunteer organizations to increase Republican turnout and further reshape the electorate. Obvious targets are New Jersey and Virginia, which elect governors in 2005. Neither was a battleground state this fall; Bush ran better in New Jersey and a little worse in Virginia than expected, and Mehlman would like to make Virginia safer and put New Jersey in play.

Then there are the 2006 Senate races in Pennsylvania, where Republican Rick Santorum could face a serious challenge, and in Michigan and Minnesota, where freshman Democrats are likely to face serious challenges. John Kerry carried all three of these battleground states with just 51 percent of the vote. Mehlman wants to change those numbers by 2008.

Sam Walton made his fortune by selling goods at low prices in downscale rural and exurban communities where other retailers saw little profit. Mehlman won the election for Bush by increasing the Republican vote in downscale rural and exurban counties where neither party used to think many more votes could be won.

Wal-Mart is now the most successful retailer in history.

Mehlman seeks to be the most successful party-builder ever.

No one made much money betting against Sam Walton.

I wouldn't bet against Ken Mehlman, either.

Jolie Rouge
01-26-2005, 08:13 AM
Can The Democrats Resurrect Themselves?
by Gary D. Halbert
January 25, 2005


Even the staunchest of Democrats will admit that their party is currently in disarray. President Bush defeated John Kerry by over 3½ million votes. Republicans, already in the majority in Congress, picked up additional seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in last November’s elections. It was not pretty for the Democrats.

Now the party of FDR is trying to figure out how to resurrect itself. Do they move further to the liberal left as Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and the Hollywood elite would prefer? Or do they move toward the center where you find Senator Joe Lieberman? Powerful forces on both sides are trying to gain control, and it will be very interesting to watch the battle over who becomes the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Perhaps the biggest question is where do the Clintons fit into this picture. Clearly, the Clintons want to retain control over the party, but their guy – Terry McAuliffe – has been a disaster for the Democrats. He’s stepping down even as everyone expects Hillary to make a run for president in 2008. So it’s no surprise that there’s a real battle brewing over who will be the next DNC chairman.

Since the major investment markets are still floundering to find direction, I thought this week would be a good time to get back to one of my favorite topics – politics – which I haven’t written about since before the election. I asked my conservative colleague Spencer Wright – a political junkie if ever there was one – to write me a piece on what it would take for the Democrats to resurrect themselves. Here are his thoughts.


How To Fix The Democratic Party
by Spencer Wright

“This just in: The Democratic Party is a smoldering wreck, a shadow of its former self. It is clear to me, as I hope it is clear to the powers that be in the DNC, that the Democrats are at risk of remaining the political underclass for the next two decades and perhaps more.

At Gary’s request, I will attempt in this article to genuinely point out the Democrats’ problems and what they need to do to fix them and get back on track. Some of you no doubt will ask, “Since you are a conservative, why do you care? Isn’t this good news?” My answer may shock you. Yes, I am a conservative and no, this isn’t good news. America works best when there is real and substantive debate. Very few answers are found solely on the right or solely the left.

The once powerful Democratic Party is clinging to past glories and ignoring present realities. Over the last 160 years the Democratic Party has literally changed the world in some noble and spectacular ways. From the tenacity of Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, to the courage and steadfastness of FDR and Harry Truman, to the vision of John F. Kennedy, a Democrat can look back with pride. Yet considering the direction in which today’s Democrats seem to be moving, these men may as well have lived a thousand years ago.


Think Big & Get Serious

Former Reagan speechwriter and advisor, Peggy Noonan, recently wrote a column entitled “If I Were a Democrat, Here’s What I Would Do.” I am a big fan of Noonan, and I think she hit the nail on the head with several points in her column. I will summarize some of Noonan’s advice to the Democrats, and offer some of my own in this week’s E-Letter.

The first thing Noonan advises the Democrats to do is “…think big and get serious.” This is absolutely correct. The Democrats are a fractured party with fractured issues. They no longer have any grand over-arching themes and are therefore losing their national identity.

If I were to ask you what the Democrats stand for, many of you might say bigger government and higher taxes. This is the image many Americans have of the Democrats. But these are two issues which simply rub the public the wrong way. As Peggy Noonan suggests, the Democrats have to be bold and think bigger than that if they are to regain power.

Here’s an idea. Why doesn’t the party that created Social Security step forward and propose big ideas to fix it? Stop denying that there is no Social Security crisis looming. You know there is. Stop criticizing President Bush for his ideas until you go bold and suggest some of your own. You do have some ideas, don’t you?

Minority leader Harry Reid should be in the well of the Senate pressing the idea that Democrats created Social Security and Democrats will play a major role in fixing it. Is that so hard? This isn’t caving in to the Republicans or the president. The Dems don’t have to rubberstamp Bush’s ideas. They need to come up with some of their own, big ones at that.

A Fresh New Face At The DNC

In her recent column, Noonan wrote, “No one wants to be head of the Democratic National Committee.” Actually, that’s not true – there are several Democrats who want to head the DNC. The problem is that no one of serious stature wants to be head of the DNC, unless you consider Howard Dean such a person. And some Democrats do, especially those who believe the party must veer to the far left to get back into power.

Don’t allow the vocal liberal minority to steer your party over a cliff. The Clintons’ man, Terry McAuliffe, was a great fundraiser but he was a disaster for the DNC in terms of victories. Howard Dean would be even worse. He lacks McAuliffe’s strengths and multiplies his weaknesses. Howard Dean is a ticket to nowhere. Don’t buy it. You need a new image, one of strength and character. A respected and capable spokesperson goes a long way.

While resisting the far left in your party, you also have to deal with the Clintons. Once again, they are trying to hand pick the next DNC chairman. They want someone at the DNC who will support Hillary in 2008. It has been widely reported that they asked Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, to take the job. They also reportedly asked Harold Ickies, former Clinton deputy chief of staff, to head the DNC. Apparently, both have declined.

My advice is not to elect Howard Dean. Move beyond the Clinton grasp - you don’t owe them anything. Take a chance on a fresh face. You need someone who can convey your new, bold initiatives with the courage of his/her convictions.

Turn Away From The Ultra-Left 527 Groups

All political parties have special interest groups and single-issue groups that embarrass them at one time or another. In the case of the Democratic Party, these 527 groups are hugely funded, very well organized and are moving ever closer to complete control of the party apparatus. Yet only those on the left fringe of your party endorse these groups. They certainly don’t reflect mainstream American values. You need to stop them. Peggy Noonan writes:


The [527] Groups – all left-wing outfits from the abortion people to the enviros – didn’t deliver in the last election, and not because they didn’t try. They worked their hearts out. But they had no one to deliver. They had only money. The secret: Nobody likes them. Nobody! No matter how you feel about abortion, no one likes pro-abortion fanatics; no one likes mad scientists who cook environmental data. Or rather only rich and creepy people like them. Stand up to the Groups--make your policies more moderate, more nuanced, less knee-jerk.

Yes, that means you need to move to the center. You can do it confidently and boldly. You don’t need these groups. Most of the liberal 527 groups spew hatred and bile and deceit; they are everything that is wrong with the process. You are better than that. Rise above it and stop pandering to your lowest common denominator.

Jolie Rouge
01-26-2005, 08:17 AM
Dem’s Numbers Are Down & Shrinking

After the last two election cycles, here is where the Democratic Party stands. The Dems hold 202 House seats, 44 Senate seats, and 22 governorships. By comparison, in the 102nd Congress in 1991-93, Democrats held 267 House seats, 56 Senate seats and 32 governorships. They’re down 65 House seats, 12 Senate seats and 10 governorships in a matter of 12 years. Bill Clinton, while he was a popular president, did you no favors.

From a Democrat’s point of view, this is certainly a pathetic state of affairs. But in every defeat there is an opportunity to learn something. You should have learned that the American people don’t like obvious and malicious obstructionism and filibustering. The people of South Dakota sent chief obstructionist Tom Daschle packing.

But did the Democrats get the message? Apparently not. They continue to obstruct every Bush appointment. In the latest instance, Dr. Condoleeza Rice was approved as the next Secretary of State by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a 14-2 vote (with Barbara Boxer and John Kerry voting no). Yet the Democrats have obstructed a full confirmation vote in the Senate. The question is, what do they hope to gain from this repeated public rebuke of the president?

People are sick of the knee-jerk obstructionism, games and the politics for politics sake. But like it or not, this has become a trademark of the Democrats. You need to lose this attitude. Remember by not being petty or vindictive, you are not automatically giving in to your opposition. The American people expect disagreements; the American people want disagreements; but try taking the high ground. When you are in the minority and on the attack, you look small and nervous. A minority becomes a majority by acting like one.


Weak On Crime & National Security

The Democrats are also perceived as weak on crime and terror and national security. In this post-9/11 era, that is the kiss of death all by itself. You need to change this. Try doing it in public view by holding townhall style meetings around the South and Midwest. (You remember where the South is, right?) Talking to regular folks and really listening for a change is important here. Was FDR weak on national security? No. How many times was he re-elected? You need to get this one right. Consider asking Sam Nunn to lead this effort - his credibility here is rock solid.

Protecting our national interests used to be a top priority among Democrats. Prior to 1968, the Democratic Party had a very impressive record in this area. The old saying goes, ‘politics ends at the water’s edge.’ Not any more. Democrats seem to be chomping at the bit to place other nations’ interests ahead of our own. It seems that the conventional thinking in the party in recent years is to weaken the country and subordinate America to the United Nations or the European Union.

How do you fix this? Stop being ashamed of America’s prominence in the world. Accept that America is a force for good and justice. Embrace that idea and try not to hate your own country. Overhaul the party platform to include ‘strong America’ provisions.

Again, this does not mean that you rubber stamp the president’s foreign policies. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with the president about his foreign policy if you don’t like it. Americans understand disagreement, but they do not like obstructionism. Remember that in the end, it’s the president’s head in the historical noose.


Other Tips For The Democrats

Increasingly, it is hard-working, rank and file folks who are leaving your party in droves. Do yourselves a favor: Move inward from the coasts. Don’t think in terms of red versus blue states. Stop referring to the middle two-thirds of the country as “flyover country.” Keep in mind that there are more regular folks than super-left Hollywood elites and ivory tower academics. Check recent election results to confirm this.

The old saying goes, ‘a Democrat never met a tax increase he didn’t like.’ That has to change. We all know taxes are a reality in a modern society, but tax reform is definitely needed. If you don’t agree with the administration’s ideas, propose your own plan and take it to the people. Tell us why your plan is better without attacking the other guy. Don’t just criticize.

Also its time to give up on class warfare – pitting the rich against the poor. The American people know who pays most of the taxes in this country. This strategy has fallen flat for you three times now; you need to lose it. In order to do this, you need to jettison senior policy strategist Bob Schrum, a seven-time loser, from the party apparatus.

Stop playing the race card. Stop scaring seniors. And stop taking these groups for granted. They are starting to turn on you, slowly but surely. You act as though you are entitled to their votes, that you own these voting blocks. That turns people off.

There is also a lack of core values in today’s Democratic Party. At least that is the perception. Make a public display by amending the party platform to include a universal values covenant. Then try to stick to it.

There are always plenty of pitfalls and mistakes to be made in American politics. Neither side gets it all right or has all the answers. But don’t let the Democratic Party continue to get caught up in fringe issues that are far, far out of the mainstream (same sex marriage, for example). Be careful where you lend your national voice. Try speaking for all Americans and not just the fringe groups and the 527s.


Ways To Improve Your Image

There are too many abrasive talking heads on your side. You have a lot of youthful spokespersons with a lot of vigor, which is good. But their lines seem overly rehearsed and beyond their limited political experience. Many of these young people come across as ‘slick’ and as a result, they aren’t being taken seriously. Americans don’t like slick. Bring the adults back.

Show some respect for opposing views while making your case. Stop the name-calling and non-stop attacks. Try to remain above the fray. Don’t be so shrill. Try your best to appear mature, sane and centered on the issues.

You can do this by dropping themes such as the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ the ‘Bush is illegitimate’ argument and the Bush/Hitler comparisons. Most people do not buy them. America is not a fascist state, and it never will be. So stop propagating the notion that every last freedom and personal liberty are being subverted by the Republicans.

Above all things, the Democratic Party needs to restore its honor and integrity. You can do this by putting forward stronger candidates who appeal to the whole of America and not its urban centers. Try this: the next time a Congressional pay-hike is in the offing, vote against it, denounce it and filibuster it if need be. Remind everyone that you are doing the work of the people who don’t have the luxury of voting themselves pay raises.

Finally, you’re going to have to leave the Clinton’s in the past. There are too many negatives associated with the Clintons. Yes, Bill could win elections and he is charismatic, but he is a natural at politics. You don’t have any naturals on your bench (neither does the GOP). You don’t want to find this out by nominating Hillary in 2008.

If the Democratic Party is going to once again live up to its history, it has to make some serious and drastic changes. So get serious, think big and make them. If not, you will continue to lose constituents. If not, you are almost certain to lose even more seats in Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.” END QUOTE

Jolie Rouge
01-26-2005, 08:18 AM
Conclusions

Some of my fellow conservative readers may not understand why I would include an article on how the Democrats can get back into power. On the one hand, I am sincere in that I would like to see a more credible political debate on both sides of the aisle, even if I prefer that the Republicans stay in control.

I want the American political system to function without the hate-speech and invective that have become all too common. I do not want to see this country ruled by puppets of the most powerful and very liberal 527 groups. I want the interests of all the people served, not the interests of individual egos or selected voting blocks. I want a return to maturity and civility.

On the other hand, I don’t believe the Democrats will take much of Peggy Noonan’s recent advice or Spencer’s suggestions noted above. To move to the center would mean having their picture taken with John Doe of flyover country, and not George Soros or Barbra Streisand or any of the other celebrities whose only connection to the average American is their dependence upon us as consumers of entertainment. It would also mean that they would have to give up the pompous guise of intellectual superiority over anyone who doesn’t happen to agree with their views.

Ronald Reagan designed a winning campaign, and then an effective two-term presidency, because he connected with the hopes, dreams and values of the average American. The Democrats will never be able to do that as long as they continue to be the party of choice for every far-left cause that intentionally conflicts with these dreams and values.

At the end of the day, if Howard Dean becomes the chairman of the DNC, then we will know that those in control of the party have decided to move to the left. If the Clintons manage to get one of their cronies to head the DNC once again, then we’ll know that the party is going to bet everything on Hillary in 2008. In that case, the party will bob and weave with the latest polls and focus groups, rather than having true leadership.

Neither one of those outcomes would be good for the Democratic Party in my opinion. The DNC vote for chairman is scheduled for February 12.

While this E-Letter has focused on the Democrats, the Republicans have no shortage of their own problems. Maybe that will be the subject of a future E-Letter.


Very best regards,

Gary D. Halbert



SPECIAL ARTICLES

Howard Dean may get the DNC job by default.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857146/site/newsweek/

Will the Dems pick Hillary in 2008?
http://www.indystar.com/articles/3/212011-6653-021.html

An interesting read on President Bush’s inaugural address.
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/bennett200501250747.asp

Jolie Rouge
01-26-2005, 08:24 AM
Lawmaker's Son Charged in Election Day Tire-Slashing
By GRETCHEN EHLKE

MILWAUKEE (AP) - The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day.

Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2. Also charged were Lewis Caldwell and Lavelle Mohammad, both from Milwaukee, and Justin Howell of Racine.

The GOP rented more than 100 vehicles that were parked in a lot adjacent to a Bush campaign office. The party planned to drive poll watchers to polling places by 7 a.m. and deliver any voters who didn't have a ride. A criminal complaint said the defendants originally planned to put up Democratic yard signs, placards and bumper stickers at the Republican office in a scheme they called ``Operation Elephant Takeover.'' But the plan was dropped when they learned a security guard was posted at the GOP office, the complaint said.

One witness told investigators the five defendants, dressed in ``Mission Impossible'' type gear, black outfits and knit caps, left the Democratic Party headquarters at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 2, and returned about 20 minutes later, extremely excited and talking about how they had slashed the tires.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Seth Boffeli said the five were paid employees of John Kerry's presidential campaign, but were not acting on behalf of the campaign or party. ``This is not something we engage in, or encourage. We had to make it clear that this is something these individuals were doing on their own,'' Boffeli said.

Some Republican officials have criticized Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, a Democrat, for taking more than two months to bring charges. McCann said FBI agents were involved in interviewing witnesses in four states: Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and New York. ``We asked the FBI knowing that this probably wouldn't be their first priority,'' he said.


Rick Wiley, state GOP executive director, discovered the vandalism on the morning of Election Day. ``It was unbelievable that people could stoop this low in a political campaign,'' he said. ``I figured it had to be someone from the opposition. But I didn't think someone on the paid Kerry campaign would do this.''


Wiley didn't say whether the vandalism prevented anyone from voting, but said poll watchers were about two hours late.


Moore did not immediately return a call seeking comment.



01/24/05 14:40

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/st...830.htm&sc=1110
__

Jolie Rouge
01-31-2005, 10:31 PM
The Ruthless Party
Mon Jan 31, 2005


: The media tolerate or even encourage Democratic rage. But the White House can't afford to.
- Fred Barnes, for the Editors


Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 010, Issue 20 - 2/7/2005
- ON THE EVE of the election in Iraq, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy called President Bush's Iraq policy "a catastrophic failure." He demanded that American troops immediately begin to withdraw. "We have no choice," he declared, "but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in Iraq." Kennedy said the retreat of American forces should be completed "as early as possible in 2006," and suggested that, in Iraq, American troops are a bigger problem than terrorists.


Though appalling, Kennedy's statement was not out of character for Democrats these days. "I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity," said Democratic senator Mark Dayton, before impugning the integrity of Condoleezza Rice. "But I really don't like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It is wrong, it is undemocratic, it is un-American, and it is dangerous."

After Rice took exception to being called untruthful by Democratic senator Barbara Boxer, Boxer complained on TV: "She turned and attacked me."

This is madness, but there is method in it. The talk among congressional Democrats is about the tactics Newt Gingrich used as House minority whip in 1993 and 1994. As they remember it, Gingrich opposed, blocked, attacked, zinged, or at least criticized everything President Clinton and Democratic leaders proposed. It was a scorched-earth approach, Democrats believe. And it worked, crippling Clinton and resulting in the 1994 election that gave Republicans control--lasting control, it turned out--of the House and Senate. Now Democrats, after losing three straight elections, hope brutal tactics will work for them.

So they ganged up on Rice, accusing her of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though they had relied on the same faulty intelligence about WMD. They blamed Alberto Gonzales, as chief White House counsel, of fostering the torture of captured terrorists. All he had done, however, was render a legal opinion on the status of terrorists under the Geneva Convention. As most experts agree, terrorists aren't covered. Kennedy threw the word "quagmire" around like confetti. And so on. What was the initial response of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to the president's idea of reforming Social Security ? Bush wants to "destroy" the system, Reid insisted.

Yet Democrats act as if they're taking the moral high ground. Listen to Howard Dean, who's favored to become the next Democratic national chairman. Asked in an un-aired interview with Fox News to list his supporters for chairman, Dean said: "It's not likely I'm gonna make an announcement like that on Fox . . . because Fox is the propaganda outlet of the Republican party . . . . I have to weigh the legitimacy that it gives you."

Dean is delusional. He and other Democrats cannot confer or deny legitimacy. Nor do they really understand the lessons of the Gingrich era. True, Newt used rough tactics to tear down Democratic proposals and challenge Democratic leaders. He was relentless. But he was also an idea factory of conservative concepts and initiatives. His goal was to attract conservative voters who weren't Republicans. And he succeeded.

The 1994 breakthrough "was the culmination of a long process in which voters' ideology finally got in line with their partisanship," columnist David Brooks explained recently in the New York Times. "The Democrats today . . . have all the liberals. What they lack is support from middle-class white families in fast-growing suburbs. But by copying the Gingrich tactics--or what they think of as Gingrich tactics--of hyperpartisanship and ruthless oppositionalism, they will only alienate those voters even more."

Brooks is correct. Democrats misunderstand their situation. Their view is that Republicans have been mean and bruising while they've been too nice and forgiving. That's right. They think former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who was plainly obsessed with obstructing Bush at every turn, was too kindly. The lesson of the 2004 election for Democrats, then, is that they need to play rough. The real lesson, of course, is that blatant obstructionism is a failed strategy. It's what caused Daschle to lose his seat.

The media tolerate or even encourage Democratic rage. But the White House can't afford to. Senate Democrats have enough votes to block major Bush initiatives like Social Security reform and to reject Bush appointees, including Supreme Court nominees. They may be suicidal, but they could undermine the president's entire second term agenda. At his news conference last week, Bush reacted calmly to their vitriolic attacks, suggesting only a few Democrats are involved. Stronger countermeasures will be needed, including an unequivocal White House response to obstructionism, curbs on filibusters, and a clear delineation of what's permissible and what's out of bounds in dissent on Iraq. Too much is at stake to wait for another Democratic defeat in 2006.

--Fred Barnes, for the Editors



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2280&ncid=742&e=4&u=/weeklystandard/20050131/cm_weeklystandard/theruthlessparty

Jolie Rouge
01-31-2005, 10:51 PM
IT'S OUR PARTY, YOU CAN CRY IF YOU WANT TO
Wed Jan 19, 2005
By Ann Coulter

In what The New York Times called Angola's "worst crisis" in "nearly 30 years" in December 1992, the country erupted into civil war. By January 1993, the streets were piled with thousands of dead bodies. In the prior year, hundreds of thousands had died of starvation in Somalia. Millions more were still at risk.

Also in 1993, January floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless in Tijuana, Mexico. Russia was, according to a New York Times editorial, on the brink of disaster, facing economic circumstances like those "that helped bring forth Hitler." Nine people were killed in a volcano in Colombia in mid-January, including American scientists. In Bosnia, according to the Times, hundreds had died of starvation and exposure in a matter of days.


"It has all been so much fun," Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd gushed in The New York Times in January 1993. It was Bill Clinton's one-week inaugural celebration. "Is it too much to ask that it go on forever?" (For those who loved America, the next eight years would only seem to go on forever.)

Rich and Dowd quoted Hollywood agent Karen Russell, saying: "I'm in this fantasy world. I haven't slept. I'm punch drunk. ... I just feel like I'm in this place called Clinton-land" -- which, if it were a theme park, could bill itself as "the sleaziest place on Earth!" Russell, they said, "spoke for everyone."


While dead bodies rotted in the streets of Angola and Somalia, the only "dead soldiers" in evidence in Clinton-land were the empty Cristal bottles lining the parade route. The most massive relief efforts that week took place at the rows of portable toilets circling each site of drunken Clintonista revelry.


Instead of having the usual Inauguration Day in 1993, Clinton had an "Inauguration Week," with high-tech pageantry, large-screen TVs on the mall, Hollywood direction and, indeed, half of Hollywood. The amount of money that would have been saved just by holding the inauguration in Brentwood could have averted the Rwandan tragedy Clinton ignored just a few years later.

The spokesman for Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Committee said the inaugural events would cost about $25 million -- largesse exceeded only by the $50 million Ken Starr was forced to spend when "Clintonland" turned out to be populated with felons. Think of all the starving children in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and elsewhere that $25 million could have fed! And don't even get me started on Michael Moore's "on location" food budget!


I wouldn't mention it, except for the Times' recent editorial snippily remarking that the amount of foreign aid to tsunami victims offered by the United States within the first few days of the disaster was "less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities." By that logic, why hold the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or spend money on restaurants and theater productions praised in The New York Times? That money could go to tsunami victims!

A letter writer to the Times redoubled the Times' bile, claiming to be "embarrassed for our country" on account of the government's "pathetic initial offer of aid" to the tsunami victims. Yet he was still willing to throw away 37 cents on a postage stamp to send his letter -- money that could have been spent on the relief effort! (One strongly suspects the letter writer was embarrassed for his country long before the tsunami hit and will remain so long after.)

Another letter writer suggested the first lady wear a used dress to the inauguration to "honor the young people who are dying in her husband's misbegotten war." (To honor John Kerry's position on Iraq, Mrs. Bush would have to order an expensive gown and then, after it was delivered, decide she didn't want to pay for it.)


Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.


Speaking of which, I just remembered: George Soros is worth $7 billion! Couldn't he get by on, say, $1 billion and donate the rest to the tsunami victims? If gun owners have to explain why they "need" a so-called "assault rifle," shouldn't Soros have to explain why he "needs" $7 billion? Last year, Soros announced that the central focus of his life would be removing Bush from office. Would that Soros could refocus that energy on alleviating the suffering of tsunami victims.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=108&ncid=742&e=10&u=/ucac/20050120/cm_ucac/itsourpartyyoucancryifyouwantto

packrat9940
02-06-2005, 03:48 AM
:confused: Sounds like Jolie Rouge just might be on Bush's payroll IMO

Jolie Rouge
02-09-2005, 04:15 PM
A cultural disconnect in Dixie
Mon Feb 7, 2005
By Dan Gilgoff

DURHAM, N.C.--The hundred or so Democratic activists gathered in an auditorium at North Carolina Central University on a January weeknight to meet with state party bigwigs have each been given two paper flags--one green, one red. When someone says something they agree with, attendees are supposed to wave green flags; if they disagree, they wave the red. Plenty of the proposals elicit green flags, like withdrawing from Iraq. Then a member of the state party's executive committee suggests reaching out to NASCAR dads. "We have churches and values," she says, "and we have to make that clear." A wave of red flags ripples across the room. Grumbles activist Don Esterling, 62: "We don't need to be Republican light."

Or maybe they do. In the American South, the ranks of Democratic senators have shrunk from 20 to four since 1980, and the party's presidential ticket has lost every state for the second time in a row. "This is the worst it's been for Democrats here . . . since Reconstruction," says Emory University Prof. Merle Black. And yet a handful of "red" state governors, including North Carolina's Mike Easley, Tennessee's Phil Bredesen, and Virginia's Mark Warner, have proved Democrats can win in the South, partly by irking party activists with NRA endorsements and support for capital punishment. "I'm a former prosecutor, a hunter, love to drive race cars, have very strong religious beliefs," says Easley. "That's everything you'd think of as conservative." But while it's possible for Easley to distance himself from the national party, it's a tougher gambit for presidential hopefuls.


Democrats lost their iron grip on Dixie after spearheading the civil rights bills of the 1960s. The New South's economic boom attracted fiscally conservative northerners, while the political realignment of the region's evangelical Christians hastened the GOP ascendancy. The last few years have seen, for the first time, more southern voters identifying as Republicans than as Democrats or independents. That helps explain why, last fall, five Senate seats vacated by retiring Democrats fell into GOP hands.


Values. But the South's successful Democrats have compensated for liberal stances on social issues like abortion by convincing voters of their personal values. Easley, for example, is pro-choice but talks openly about his faith. "If people see the candidate as a strong believer," says Easley adviser Mac McCorkle, "issues take care of themselves." Former four-term North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, a Democrat, says he framed educational initiatives as what God wants : "Too many of our candidates are reluctant to mention God. [Voters] think if you don't talk about it, you must not have those feelings."


Kerry discussed his faith on the campaign trail reluctantly and was perceived in the South as culturally foreign, "a windsurfer and snowboarder," says University of North Carolina Prof. Ferrel Guillory. While Tennessee's Bredesen is, like Kerry, a northeasterner--raised in New York State--he stressed his rural upbringing and trap-shooting prowess on the stump. "They will vote for a Democrat here, but they have to feel good about the person," says Tennessee Democratic Chairman Randy Button.


Even if Democratic Senate and presidential hopefuls learn to connect personally with southern voters, it's unclear if the winning strategies of southern Democratic state officeholders can hold up in national races. Virginia's Warner, for instance, has reined ina spiraling budget deficit and instituted popular education reforms but has been able to duck divisive national issues like the Iraq war. Southern voters want button-down governors who "keep schools open and roads paved," says Guillory, "but see federal officeholders much more ideologically." Which means, in North Carolina, many voters split ballots between Easley and Bush. "[Easley has] done right by education and attracted employers," says Ann Barnhill, 50, a Greenville lawyer who voted for Easley but backed Bush to show wartime military support and because she detects a softening national morality.


Can Democrats produce a nominee in '08 who wins over southerners without bringing on "Republican light" charges from party activists? Easley says recent history isn't reassuring. "Too often, we're cheering the candidate at the convention," he says, "while looking around at one another saying, 'Hmmm . . . he's not gonna do well at home.' "




http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=926&ncid=959&e=1&u=/usnews/20050207/ts_usnews/aculturaldisconnectindixie

Jolie Rouge
03-24-2005, 01:17 PM
Democratic Party starting to look for survival strategy
-- Joe Scarborough

The Democratic Party continues sinking slowly in the waters of public opinion, but at least some of its leaders are beginning to understand that ignoring the rising conservative tide is no longer an option.

For the past four years, too many Democratic leaders and their allies in the mainstream press have convinced themselves that the problems confronting Democrats were external— a lying president, a corrupt Supreme Court, a rigged election.

After the 2004 election, Democrats and their allies stopped blaming Katherine Harris and Justice Scalia and instead aimed their wrath toward Jesus and God. Manhattan and Georgetown editorialists groused that an electorate stoned on the fumes of high octane religion had gone crazy and had taken America with them.

The New York Times ran post-election columns by historian Gary Wills, who suggested that the United States had more in common with al Qaeda than France because the majority of Americans believed in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

Times columnist Maureen Down bleakly reported that with the election of George W. Bush, evangelicals were marching America toward a new dark age.

Two months later, Democrats in and out of the media stopped suggesting that the president and his party were Jesus freaks and began ridiculing Reagan’s party by suggesting Republicans were utopian dreamers whose vision for the Middle East was dangerously in conflict with the cold realities of the region.

January was filled with exceedingly grim predictions for the Iraq election from the likes of Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore.

After the remarkable election turnout, the Democratic Party fell into yet another period of chaos and confusion.

Party leaders like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry whined through the epic events unfolding in the Middle East while Jimmy Carter and his ilk opted to keep their mouths shut rather than praise democracy’s flowering in the most oppressed region on earth.

Fear and loathing has continued to grip Democrats since the January 30 elections, but fortunately for the two-party system, a few intellectual forces within the party are offering constructive suggestions for a party no longer relevant to national politics.

Recently, James Carville and Stan Greenberg offered the radical suggestion that the Democratic Party stand for something other than obstruction.

"So, we ask progressives to consider, why have the Republicans not crashed and burned? Why has the public not taken out their anger on the Congressional Republicans and the president? We think the answer lies with voters' deeper feelings about the Democrats who appear to lack direction, conviction, values, advocacy or a larger public purpose.”

The liberal founder of the Washington Monthly admitted that too many of his ideological brothers and sisters were disappointed by the good news coming out of Iraq. Charles Peters reminded his fellow Democrats that they must reconcile themselves to the fact that they must support the troops and stop wishing them failure on a daily basis.

The same sentiment was expressed in this month’s New York Magazine. Kurt Andersen wrote of how good news out of Iraq felt like very bad news to Manhattan elites.

Andersen said he and his fellow liberals faced their toughest ideological and moral test since Ronald Reagan took down the Soviet Empire with policies mocked daily in the newsrooms and publishing houses of Midtown Manhattan. Andersen concluded that liberals had a Hobbesian choice to make: Support George W. Bush’s efforts in Iraq or support the terrorists. The author suggested that for too long, the Left has been in a de facto alliance with those killing U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis.

That American opinion leaders may have been siding with Arab terrorists may seem like startling news to many in Middle America, but nothing new to those of us who have been studying the way the press and the Democratic Party has been operating over the past three years.

Maybe a few intellectual leaders on the left are finally realizing that they can no longer make their livings attacking the commander-in-chief’s war on terror any more than they could continue quietly cheering for the Soviet Union during the early days of the Cold War.

We Middle Americans may believe in Jesus, but we ain’t stupid.

After a while, even we can figure out whose side politicians and reporters are on. And over the past few years, it has been clear that while most Democrats are not openly cheering for the terrorists killing our troops, neither were they in America’s corner.

For the survival of the Democratic Party, that has to change.

Jolie Rouge
03-24-2005, 01:19 PM
The Democrats' solution
-- Joe Scarborough

Yesterday I told you the Democrats' problem. Today, I provide the solution.

It's not a cure most Democratic activists and party leaders will want to hear. But then again that may explain why they've only elected one candidate to the White House in 25 years.

The Dean Democrats are veering wildly left in part because that is the way they are being pulled by grassroots forces.

The Washington Post's Dan Balz explained that groups like moveon.org, who almost nominated Howard Dean as their presidential candidate, remain convinced that John Kerry lost in 2004 not because he was too liberal, but because he was not liberal enough.

If you are a Democratic activist or leader who believes Kerry should have been more liberal, don't bother reading the rest of this blog. You are Karl Rove's best friend and delusional when it comes to the political realities facing your party.

For those with ears to hear, here it goes:

The Democrats' first target should be winning back the Senate in 2006. There are a number of "red state" Senate seats up for grabs next year and only a certain type of Democrat can win them.

Republicans have feasted for years on "moderate" Democrats running in these areas. Most Senate Democratic candidates who go up in flames in Middle America usually are almost pro-life, almost pro-gun, almost pro-public prayer, and almost pro-defense. But because of the radical nutbars running their party, these mid-American Democrats can't sync up with the sensibilities of the states they want to represent.

So national Democrats are faced with two options: (1) Continue feeling good about themselves by supporting candidates whose views are closer to those shared by voters in Manhattan, New York (not Manhattan, Kansas); or, (2) drop the litmus test and start playing to win.

Maybe a pro-life, pro-gun, pro-God will never win the Democratic nomination for president.

But there is no reason the party of Bill Clinton can't retake the Senate by winning in places like Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Arizona, and Wyoming.

To win the seats required to seize control of Capitol Hill committees, D.C. Dems are going to have to swallow hard.

Speaking of taking bitter medicine, I know it will hurt party activists, but Hillary Clinton must be avoided at all costs. She remains one of the most divisive figures in American politics. And while she may drive up voters in her base, that base is outnumbered by millions of Americans who consider her to be one of the most liberal forces in American politics.

She will be "borked" by her words, her actions, and her scandals while serving as our First Lady.

Instead, the Democrats must find a governor or senator from Middle America who canhold the base and bring a few states over to the Democratic camp.

The margin of error is so close on the national level that a Red State Democratic ticket— whose president and vice-president pick up their home states— is all that's required to put Democrats back in the oval office.

After winning the Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008, the party can then turn its attention to redistricting in the House to make that process competitive.

You may be asking yourself why a former Republican Congressman would be telling Democrats that they can gain power through the power of moderation.

It's because I know their national leaders will be too stupid to take it.