So I stopped at the liquor store last night to pick up a bottle of Jameson. Not to be too melodramatic about it, but after the day I’d had, I needed — hell, I deserved! — a good stiff drink. The grog shop was unusually busy for a Wednesday night in Sandy, Utah, and I found myself wondering if the people in line around me were also disgruntled Democrats in need of a belt. There was no way to tell, of course. The guy in front of me looked like he’d just turned legal, and from the way he gingerly placed a single Smirnoff Ice on the counter in front of the cashier, I gathered he was experimenting with his new-found right to get potted. The woman behind me, meanwhile, was loaded down with a half-dozen bottles of wine and looked to be in a hurry. I guessed she had a dinner party to get back to. And right after I made that guess I started thinking that maybe everything in the universe doesn’t really revolve around politics after all. After all, the election of George W. Bush didn’t stop the sun from rising, the college kid from getting his first drunk on, or the wine lady from cooking a meal for her friends. Life continues. And realizing that little fact left me feeling much better about what happened on Tuesday.
A lot of folks in the liberal blogosphere haven’t made this realization yet. There’s a lot of anger out there, some of it justified, in my opinion, some of it not. There’s also a helluva lot of self-pity. Both reactions are understandable, if not terribly productive. Mostly there seems to be a lot of the same disbelief I wrote about yesterday. Those who voted for Kerry (or at least against Bush) simply don’t get those who did vote for Bush.
Of all the ideas flying around out there, I think I’ve been most interested in what people are thinking about this fundamental disconnect between “reds” and “blues.” Over on the letters page of Salon.com, one person wrote:
“[The problem is] that we don’t have thoughtful, intellectually honest discussions with people who think differently. The candidates don’t, the pundits don’t, the activists don’t, and the voters don’t. Instead, many of us dig in, use only facts that support our views, jump to conclusions without clear evidence, oversimplify, dismiss those who disagree, and then complain that democracy is in serious trouble.
“But democracy depends, at least partly, on being able to listen and discuss with eyes, mind and heart wide open.”
Others, however, think there’s no point in even trying to talk to the other side. Another letter to Salon:
“Those of us with blue state values have to accept that some Americans have very different values than ours and are not necessarily receptive to our attempts to ‘understand’ them.
“It’s only by gravitating to people who do share our views, online or off, that we can work together to bring about social change. And keep our sanity.”
While these folks debated why the two sides just can’t seem to connect, others tried to make the point that the two sides aren’t as far apart as we may think. Over at Boing Boing, for instance, I found a map that supposedly better represents the distribution of votes than the familiar red-and-blue winner-takes-all of the electoral map. Basically, the thesis here is that most states contain a mixture of blue Democrats and red Republicans, which results in the whole country being colored in varying shades of purple… aside from Massachusetts, which this map depicts as 100% blue, and my own home of Utah, which shows up as red as my grandpa’s union suit. (Apparently, this map’s creator is unaware of the handful of liberals who do exist in Utah. There aren’t many of us, but the state is NOT 100% Republican, no matter what the brochures may say. I don’t know if the reverse is true of Massachusetts.)
Thanks to Boing Boing, I also found another map that’s making the rounds. This one depicts a new vision of North America that would probably please a lot of folks on both sides of the political spectrum; it shows the West Coast, Great Lakes states, and New England allied with our northern neighbors in the new “United States of Canada,” and the Midwest and Southern states renamed, “Jesusland.” I laughed when I saw this, but a lot of people seem to be taking it quite seriously. I’m thinking there may be a whole new nickname developing for the red states.
Continuing to scan around the ‘net, I see that some folks stubbornly refuse to admit defeat while others warn of the hell to come over the next four years.
Most people, however, just seem to want to tell Democrats how they screwed up. For example, the wonderful Bull Moose Blog notes that, while John Kerry “ran a hard and admirable campaign,” “endured the vicious and ferocious Republican swift boat attack with dignity,” and “came this close despite the incumbent’s clear advantage of leading a country at war,” he ultimately lost because he “never develop[ed] a compelling theme. When incumbents have been defeated in the recent past (Ford, Carter and Bush I), their challengers offered a distinct vision as well as a biting critique.” I agree, and plan to write more about this in an upcoming post.
The best bit of analysis and advice that I’ve encountered, however, comes again from Salon.com, where Democratic media consultant and Boston Globe columnist Dan Payne lays out a strategy for how to handle the next four years:
1. Forget the unity stuff. When Republicans lose, they set out the next morning to challenge, undermine and overthrow the Democrats. Democrats are no less united against George Bush than they were the day before Election Day. Stay unified; stay on Bush’s case.
2. Hire a strategist, not a fundraiser, to run the Democratic National Committee. The ability to raise money is valuable, but the ability to design and execute a strategy is crucial.
3. Develop values issues, such as Internet censorship, the export of white-collar jobs, stem cell research, etc. The DNC should send every Democratic official “What’s Wrong With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank. Learn how the Republicans ate our lunch, using values issues to smother economic self-interest.
4. Target baby boomers. This cohort is anti-authoritarian because they grew up during Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate. Now, this demanding audience is facing retirement pretty much clueless. They need (and expect) economic protections, like long-term care and a solid Medicare.
5. Get thee out of Washington. Move the party apparatus out of D.C. Democrats are cut off from the real world and talk to each other too much.
6. Admit Karl Rove beat us. He outsmarted and out-organized unions, 527s and party organizations. Getting anti-gay marriage measures on 11 state ballots didn’t hurt either.
Finally, something that just made me smile, somebody’s signature line from a message board, which only a handful of people are likely to get but is pretty funny if you’re in on the joke:
Vote Cthulhu – for when you’re tired of the lesser of two evils.
I saw a blurb promoting “Cthulhu for President! Why vote for the lesser of two evils?” pretty early on in the campaign. 🙂 And I gather it’s been around for more than one election.
If you look closely at the purple map from Boing Boing, you’ll notice that although Utah is probably more red than any other state besides Idaho, it still is not as red as the farthest red on the scale provided, neither is Massachusetts the most brilliant blue.
And (to my acute embarrassment) I indeed laughed out loud when I saw the “Jesusland” map. Yeah, that’s pretty funny…
I would like to see Democrats present a united front next time, and give me a candidate I can vote FOR, so that I can do that instead of voting “against” somebody. I never really felt as though I had any other reason to vote for Kerry besides the fact that he’s not Bush (for whom I don’t particularly care, either… A president should at LEAST be articulate in the English language.)
Incidentally (and this may greatly surprise you), I didn’t vote for Bush either.
Actually, Jen, I’m not that surprised that you didn’t vote for Bush. I imagine that you’d be the sort that would value competence over ideology (which leaves Bush out), and, really, your ideology doesn’t strike me as all that extreme.
I agree 100% with your assessment of what the Dems need to do next time around. Kerry’s flaw — the flaw of the whole left, really — is that the Dems haven’t been able to articulate in short, simple sentences exactly what it is they stand for. I truly believe that if the Dems can improve their marketing, a lot of moderate voters will realize that their values and that of the dreaded liberals really aren’t as far apart as they’ve been led to believe.
“the flaw of the whole left, really — is that the Dems haven’t been able to articulate in short, simple sentences exactly what it is they stand for.”
This is exactly why I wouldn’t vote Democrat. You know I’m conservitive by nature, however part of being considered a leader for our country should be the fact that we need to know who our candidate really is. Kerry, and not all Democrats, but some and even some on the right, cannot come out and explain who they are and what they stand for in simple language. Instead it appears to be that they’re beating around the bush.. no pun intended.. 🙂 We never got to know who Kerry really was and the fact that I didn’t know that worried me more than a current President who has made some mistakes. Kerry may not have been so bad if he really had a plan as to how he was to run the country. Teresa Hines-Kerry is the one to be afraid of though..
Anywho…. it really is marketing.. and knowing where a party stands.. I don’t think Kerry was a better speaker than Bush… Kerry seemed very canned and Bush just doesn’t have grammatical skills.. I’d take a southern hillbilly over someone who sounds like they’re reading a script and not sincere though… my opinion of course :), but still a marketing win for the right.
Well, I disagree about Kerry’s speaking ability, and you know I disagree about President Bush’s abilities — I’m not ashamed to admit that I was in the “anyone-but-Bush” camp. However, I do understand why a lot of people were put off by Kerry. He spent all of his time attacking Bush and never explained what he offered as an alternative. That information was out there if you went looking for it, but most people don’t have the time or inclination to go looking. They want to have it handed to them, and it was a big mistake for Kerry not to do that. The attack was important, but he needed to spend an equal amount of time on his own platform.
I intend to post my thoughts on how everything went down a little later, but for now I’ll just say that I’m not at all reluctant to admit that your side ran a better campaign this time. Karl Rove really is a genius. I think he’s an EVIL genius, of course, but a genius nonetheless.
The Democrats need to find a counterpart to him, I think.
Incidentally, I don’t think you know your candidate nearly as well as you think you do if you honestly believe that he’s a southern hillbilly. The man’s a blueblood who went to Andover and Yale — that’s not exactly a Hank Hill background… 🙂
my reference to a southern hillbilly, was merely what many have painted GW as… he grew up in quite the opposite lifestyle but still remains rooted in a very Americana-type environment. Both candidates are well educated men and back to things I’ve posted on earlier topics, neither is the perfect candidate for each party…
2008… I’d love to see Mitt Romney and Hillary run against each other.. then we’d have something to talk about.. 🙂
Hilary v. Mitt – now there’s a ticket made in hell! Honestly, I wish all the talk about Hilary running in ’08 would go away. Running her for president would be a strategic blunder of biblical proportions. I personally don’t understand why the folks on the right find her so offensive, but I’m no fool when it comes to the effect she has on them. The pundits think the Christian Right turned out over the issue of gay marriage, just wait and see what’d happen with her on the ballot.
Actually, our conversation here has gotten into the territory that really interests me about this recent election. Politically, it’s a done deal, and not much has changed, so I really don’t have much else to say about that. But this election has revealed a stark difference in the way the two sides see things. It isn’t just disagreements in policy or philosophy. It’s almost like we’re seeing two different versions of reality.
You see Bush as “remain[ing] rooted in a very Americana-type environment.” In other words, if I may paraphrase you, you see him as a salt-of-the-earth regular guy who would be at home drinking coffee at the corner diner. Am I right?
I, on the other hand, see him as a spoiled child of privelege who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life and is extremely out-of-touch with the average working American.
The same goes with Kerry — I see an okay guy, you see a stiff. I think Bush is phony, you think Kerry is phony.
Now, I’m not trying to pick a fight or even open another debate — we think what we think about these men, and the election is over so there’s no sense now debating their relative merits — but I am very interested in how you and I, two guys who are close to the same age, grew up and live in the same area, and have a lot in common in other areas, can see the same two guys in such radically different ways. The whole country seems to be experiencing this same kind of disconnect, and I don’t recall it ever being so bad before.
Any thoughts or insight from your perspective on why?