Losing the Election

[dlgood]

Having lost a presidential election, and looking backwards, having seen a large number of electoral losses over the past fifteen years, one wonders what the problem is with the Democratic party. Based on the economy and the war, they shouldn't be losing seats.

But that doesn't speak to the larger issue I think the party has. And frankly, has been having since the latter years of the Johnson administration.

For various reasons, the old New Deal coalition just isn't holding together. And as far as I can tell, the primary effort among the party has been to try to hold together whatever they could, in no small part, by trying to cherry-pick voters with targeted efforts here or there.

What's been missing, IMHO, and what cost the last two elections, is the "Heart". When asked, almost anyone can give you a short comment on what W is about. Or what they believe the Republican party is about. And that's powerful. But can people tell you waht John Kerry's vision was? What the party's mission was? What the democratic party is missing, IMHO, is that narrative.

What's your vision of what America's supposed to be. What's the moral argument for progressivism. In the US, we have a separation of church and state, but that doesn't mean discussion of morality is absent from public life. Or should be. And in the absence of a strong vision for a civic religion foundeded in progressive ethics, morality, and community -- the Right has been free to define Morality in terms of Sex, Abortion and Otherness. The Right has a mission. A mission that I disagree with, but they have one, and it gives them power to sway.

So, I think that's the real challenge for the Democrats. What is your mission? Why do you come to serve in public life? What is your vision for America? And then, only then, do you talk about the programmatic effort to enact that vision.

I think back to my financial situation. I've got money. I've got people who are supposed to be taking care of my money. The details matter, but I don't care nearly as much about the details as I care about the overall goals that we've set. Having established that I know what the vision is, and that we're mostly on the same page, I can generally trust my guys to take care of the details I don't have the time to handle myself.

But I can look at the voting map, and say with some degree of confidence, that I don't think a lot of America is particularly comfortable with whatever passes for vision coming from the Democratic party. And consequently, they're not voting for it.

The answer isn't for the Democrats to move left, or move right, or find a fundamentalist, or what have you. The answer is to go back to the beginning, to go back to that Mission Statement. And to articulate a compelling, relatively coherent, progressive vision for public life that competes with the vision offered by the Right. Because I very much believe there's an audience. Do that, and they'll start picking up seats, counties, and votes instead of seeing old majorities continue to erode.

Comments

[margotlefaye.livejournal.com]

Of the comments made here, about the only one I disagree with is the idea that what we have to work toward, the next opportunity to make significant change is in four years, with the next Presidential race. We not only can do something sooner, we must do something sooner. There's another election in two years, and we've got to wrest control of the House and Senate from the Republican majority who are currently nothing more than a rubber stamp for whatever Bush wants. And, there are smaller things we have to do, things that will be, in the long run, every bit as important. For example: we have to fight, on the local level, to protect the environment. Bush can lower Federal standards, but we can force our local communities to adopt tougher ones. We're going to have to fight hundreds of these battles, and they will be pitched battles, instead of just the great, over-reaching battle of a presidential election. But that's the only way we're going to get our country back.

And, if the Democratic party was shying away from articulating its own moral vision, it is because it believed that voters didn't like or want that articulation. We have to change that. It's a two way communication.

I guess what I'm saying is that we can't wait around for the leadership of the Democratic party to come up with something. We are the party, and we have to do it ourselves.

Thankfully, as I look around the net and in my work place and at my friends and family, I'm finding there are a lot of people who are angry, disappointed and shocked enough to do just that.

As a side note, the Democrats didn't actually lose this election. As with Florida in 2000, it was stolen, There have been articles, scattered about the net, on everything from the commitment of the CEO of the company that made Ohio's voting machines to securing the election for Bush, to the suppression of minority votes, to glitches in the voting machines. One machine gave Bush 4,000 more votes than he'd actually earned or than had been actually counted (per an article on CNN.com) But, there is no question that if Kerry had been able to provide a stronger moral vision, and if the Dems had had their act together, the election would not have been so close that it could be stolen.