Another lesson to be drawn from the election is to not blame John Kerry.
The first reason not to blame John Kerry is that he did rather well as our standard bearer. He united the party. He raised enough money to be competitive. He performed extremely well in the debates. He won a plurality of independent voters. He won more votes than either Bill Clinton or Al Gore. He maintained a Democratic Northeast, mid Atlantic, and West Coast. He put forth a resonably detailed group of sound policy proposals. This is not 1988. The trouble was not our candidate.
A second reason not to blame John Kerry is that it distracts from the work necessary to build a majority party. Some people argue that we should focus on picking a nominee based on style and public relations.
Will Saletan, in Slate writes as follows:
If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry. You already have legions of people with preparation, stature, expertise, and nuance ready to staff the executive branch of the federal government. You don't need one of them to be president. You just need somebody to win the White House and appoint them to his administration. And that will require all the simplicity, salesmanship, and easygoing humanity they don't have.
One way for us to gain power is for the Republicans to screw up so badly that the public turns to us. Jimmy Carter in 1976 is an example of the public turning to a Democrat after Nixon demonstrated that the GOP could not be trusted.
If that happens again, we better be ready with a President who has the ability to govern effectively or our time in power will be short.
The best way to persuade a majority of the voters to stick with us is to govern effectively when given the opportunity. Jimmy Carter, as much as I admire him, did not do so. As a result, the worst scandal in American history kept the Republicans out of the White House for only four years. Saletan's advice to have an empty suit at the ready is like eating candy. It gives you energy for a while but it does not provide the nutrition needed to sustain you.
In 1992, we were very fortunate to have a candidate who combined superb campaign skills with the ability to govern effectively. Such candidates are rare. If we do not do the work of building a majority party, we will gain power only when such a candidate comes along. The Republicans are able to win elections even when they put up candidates relatively poor campaign skills. The 1988 election is a prime example. To be able to win without a candidate like Bill Clinton, we need to begin to rebuild majorities in the House, the Senate, the statehouses, and the state legislatures.
Many Americans do not trust Democrats' ability to govern. Nominating someone who, upon winning an election, confirms those suspicions is crazy.
I don't blame Kerry, but I sure as shit blame the democrat party for not having the balls to run with Howard Dean. I knew this election was over the second that he was thrown to the wolves for screaming. Oh no, we don't want someone with passion, that would be terrible. We'll do what we usually do, pick someone who we think will appeal to everyone and then act surprised when the GOP attack machine tears him apart. I don't think Dean would have been nearly as vulnerable to their style of attack. Mainly because he would've fought back. Would he have alienated the right and embarrased some of the left? Quite probably, but even if you lose, you win, because you didn't transparently try to run someone pretending to be something they're not.
If you're on the left, freaking embrace it. Quit trying to guess who's going to win over the swing votes by trying to sound conservative. Put up a candidate that will annoy the hardcore righties so much that the churchies will hang themselves saying things that the centrists will find abhorrent.
Just my opinion.
Posted by: drew at November 4, 2004 04:23 PMDrew, you say that Dean got beaten cause of The Scream, then say that he wouldn't have been beaten by the GOP attack machine that started the whole Scream attack?
Posted by: ArC at November 5, 2004 12:59 AM
http://img103.exs.cx/img103/4526/exit_poll.gif
"This chart makes the trend obvious. In states with paper ballots and audit trails, the exit polls accurately predicted the vote results. In states using electronic machines, the vote results were distorted in favor of Bush."
source - http://www.whatreallyhappened.com