“Where are Democrats? They’re desperately seeking to preserve every government program and benefit enacted since the days of the New Deal. The problem for them is that the New Deal paradigm — the belief that Washington could endlessly improve people’s lives — has lost its appeal,” writes Fred Barnes in the Wall Street Journal.
Needless to say, I enjoy reading stories like this one. Anything that dissects and eviscerates liberals and analyzes why they lost the election, I’m all over it. About George Bush’s decisive victory, Barnes writes:
George W. Bush got more votes in winning re-election than the entire population of France. He improved his share of the vote among Latinos, women, African-Americans, Jews and Catholics. Winning a plurality of states along the Mississippi River has guaranteed presidential victory since 1912. Mr. Bush won a majority. This year, says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, “a sense of Republicanism crept up the river. The president won Missouri, which was always a tossup state, by more than 7%. Iowa flipped his direction, and in Minnesota and Wisconsin, we waited all night to find out that Kerry had just barely carried those states.” So the Upper Midwest, following the South, Southwest, Plains, and Rocky Mountains, is now trending Republican.
Democrats thought they had the formula down but obviously used the wrong ingredients:
And don’t forget what Democrats insisted for decades was their path to sure victory. If Democrats could match Republican campaign spending, energize their base, dramatically increase voter turnout, and provoke a robust debate on big issues, they’d win the White House and probably a whole lot more. Well, they managed all of that in 2004. The result: A Republican won with the first presidential majority since 1988. Mr. Bush touted an agenda of bold conservative reform. The last time a Democrat won as an unalloyed liberal was 1964.
During this election, the larger voter turnout benefited Republicans. To think I was worried that more voters equaled more Democrats. Barnes notes that Democrats ignored the growing exurban and rural areas. I’m curious to see how liberals reach out to people living in these places. If Dems are as smart as they think they are, in the quest to appeal to such voters, they’ll avoid the subjects of child killing and homosexuality like Black Death.
Read the rest of Barnes’s analysis. And enjoy it.
More good reading in the Washington Times.
The Los Angeles Times (reg. req.) has the latest on in-squabbling in the Democratic Party:
On one front, a liberal operative at a top think tank has accused the Democratic Leadership Council, the principal organization of party centrists, of pushing the party toward a pro-corporate agenda “that sells out America’s working class — the demographic that used to be the party’s base.”In equally combative terms, a leading young centrist commentator published a manifesto in the New Republic magazine accusing the Democratic left of slighting the struggle against Islamic terrorism and undermining the party’s image on security — an argument instantly embraced and promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council….
[T]hese twin firefights, which have inspired volleys of responses, Web postings and e-mails, reflect enduring divisions over strategy, message and policy that could influence the race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee next month and are certain to loom over the contest for the presidential nomination in 2008.
Pass the popcorn!
Read about my epiphany in Update V.
Upcoming posts:
- 2004 Blogosphere Round-up…with a twist!
- DC Blogger Meet-up after-action report…with pictures!
