Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. This is exactly right. Anyone who calls themself "fiscally conservative" and voted for Bush got duped - Kerry was a much better choice as a fiscal conservative. The bottom line is - the GOP won because a) this "social values" ****************, b) the South and the Plains believe every word that comes out of a GOP mouth, and c) the Dems are unable to convince GOP voters that the GOP is feeding them a bunch of ****************. I don't know if this can be addressed without moving further to the right on "social values", and that's just evil.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The fringe groups dont hurt the GOP. Why do you say they hurt the Dems? The Democrats lose because of a lack of fire, not because of it.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. That's probably true, but it hasn't shifted right in the last 10 years. Bush won in 2000 by repudiating Newt Gingrich style conservativism, and even then, he lost the popular vote. He won by 3% as a wartime incumbent in 2004. As for the Senate...it's becoming more Republican, but when some of the Dems were guys like John Breaux and Ernest Hollings and Zell Miller, I don't know if you can really say it's becoming more conservative. As for the House...the Bush I interpretation of the VRA costs the Dems a bunch of seats, probably enough to swing the House, if North Carolina is any guide. I keep hoping at some point the GOPs get cocky and don't renew it. It's funny...California is the biggest state, and used to be solid Red. Now it's even more solid blue. Nobody talks about that. Ohio will be blue soon, the demographic trends are unstoppable. The key is for the Dems to make up for the likely loss of Iowa, and the continuing transfer of EVs to the South. Don't know where that will happen.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The problem is, this should have been an absolute slam-dunk lock, Bush has been so awful. But it wasn't. High turnout usually indicates change. But it didn't. Why?
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I might have agreed with you had the anti-gay-marriage amendment not won by such a crushing margin here, despite being opposed by Taft and Voinovich. This will only accelerate the loss of skilled "white-collar" jobs. If anything, I expect Ohio will start to get poorer, and more red.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. No kidding. My home is in the Democratic Party. However, I'm morally conservative, and I think John Kerry would be a poor leader in fighting terrorism. I also recognize that trade restrictions spell economic disaster. Thus, despite a claim a year and a half ago that "I would never vote to re-elect Bush," I just did. I didn't think he was a great man for the job, just better than any of his opponents. By cutting off people like me that care about issues like social equity and education (and even intelligent environmental management--something neither party has), the Democrats are stuck with a 48% popular vote against an unpopular president when they spent more than ever and had the highest turnout ever.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. To the electorate, the deficit is an abstraction, an abstruse concept that simply doesn't resonate. Nor, frankly, should it. This year's deficit -- independently and in and of itself -- is very manageable in the context of the huge economy we have. Many folks, even Greenspan (a budget hawk), thought the stimulus provided by running the deficit/lowering taxes was a good idea. And balanced budgets, in and of themselves, aren't necessarily virtuous. And deficit spending of a certain degree is not inherently bad. What's bad are hugely imbalanced budgets, or long-term structural dislocations written in the law. The problem is not today, this year, it's the future, when entitlement programs run away -- legally -- with the federal budget. But, again, the Democrats demagogue. Bush talks about a social security system with private accounts, and the Dem yell "privatization!! privatization!!" as thought the entire SS trust fund is going to be invested in Global Crossing (after Terry McAuliffe gets out of the stock, of course). I think the fiscal conservatives are going to have a lot more influence in the next four years. Here's the deal--Bush now will take the historical view of his presidency. What would make his Presidency, for lack of a better word, "Reaganesque?' --Elections in Iraq, a democratic system, large numbers of troops out. --Iranian withdrawal from making enriched uranium. --A solid economy throughout the term --The beginning of long-term fixes to entitlements. --Health care planning/reform. He hits on all 5 and Rudi wins the nomination, Hilary will have a very very tought go of it.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Because in this country there are more strongly conservative people than strongly liberal people.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Someday your internal alarm clark will ring, and you will wake up from the dreamland in which you reside. Someday...perhaps. But perhaps not.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Well yeah, they've done so well in the previous four... Republicans have lost Hagel and Nickels and replaced them with people who ran on social, not fiscal, conservative platforms. As David Brooks said, under this Republican Admin, the era of small government is over. They will be at the trough just as much as they were '01-now.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I disagree entirely with the premise of this thread. Reeps still vote more than Dems.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. He won't. I just can't see it. He'll get the fixes to entitlements - that's about it. Maybe Health care reforms, possibly a solid economy (although I don't trust him not to continue to run up the deficit to the point of unamanageability) But the first two 'aint happening. Not to say that Kerry would have done much better here, cause he wouldn't. Also - I'm split about Rudy. He is by far the most popular Repub out there right now, but he's also a Pro-Choice socially moderate Italian Roman Catholic divorcee from New York who happens to be real strong on crime and a hawk on foreign policy. It would seem to me that while he sees eye to eye with the neocons on foreign policy, I have now idea if the evangelical base of the party they are allied with right now would find him palatable in the end. McCain is anathema to the neocons My guess is JEB runs in 08 against Hillary (although I bet the Dems try to snare McCain and/or Guiliani from across the aisle). If I thought Bush was going to do better in the next four years I would have voted for him again.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Now this is truth (although you eant more ignant rednecks then pansy ass fruitcakes, right? )
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Think back 10 months, when Bush was on his way to raising $200M, and he was a wartime incumbent. There's a reason he's always been strong in the Iowa market.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. It may should have been. Sadly, It wasn't. The state was lost by 140,000 votes. Not a terribly large number, but significant in the big picture of an extremely close election. A 70,000 vote swing right here and we aren't having this discussion. Why it wasn't a lock? That I can't answer. We could go on and on about the wrong candidate, the wrong campaign strategy, etc. etc. I have no clue. I know the reeps here have all the answers for why their guy won the presidency by 140,000 votes, but as for why the country is so terribly divided? No clue.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Depends on what you are talking about. More people want national healthcare than don't. That's a liberal issue. It's the packaging, not the substance of what's being sold. The Dems have to get a lot better at selling concepts, not individual ideas.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Hagel's still in office. He may run for all the marbles in 2008.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Hillary is a guaranteed loser if she runs for President. Bush just beat a "liberal male Senator" on "social values" - a "liberal female Senator" would lose by an even larger margin to any white man the GOP puts up.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The fringe right is equally annoying in my book, but I think (from what I have seen, and various people I have talked to with diff. beliefs), people are more tolerant of the groups on the far right... In other words, people that find themselves in the grey area, get more irritated by the fringe left, than the fringe right .. my .02..
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. That may be because of the severity to the demonization of each fringe side. While the fringe right groups outwardly demonize and guarantee a place in hell to the left, the left fringe tends to snicker snidely and look down at the right while trying to figure out how they think. My $.02 back at you
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. I'm gonna agree. The extreme, call it fringe if you will, right seems much more tolerated and accepted within its party than the counterparts on the left. Especially the religious extreme fringe groups. Howfreakingever, none of these groups make up a significant percentage or powerblock within the respective parties. Do they? I have a hard time believing that the fringe elements of either party are really on the minds of voters in such a way as to really affect their vote.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. But what do those particular positions matter when he's matched up, against, say, Hilary? Who are they going to vote for?? Pat Robertson?? Right now the Democratic party is not only devoid of intellectual substance, it's leaderless. Why do you think they all went orgasmic over Barack Obama?? The guy is perfect -- African American, moderate, articulate, always on key. But they are so desperate for someone to take them out of the wilderness, they'll go gaga over a 1st time Senator who just stepped out of the state legislature. Guys that should step up -- like Biden or Dodd -- don't really seem to be all that keen on it. Edwards is finished, unless he can run for office in Massachusetts. Bill Richardson might make an interesting candidate, but does he have the stomach for it? I wonder...do you think a cork popped in the Clinton household last night? This paves the way for them to make their run. The leadership vaccum is there and Hilary has the cojones to fill it. And she will galvanize the Republican base more than any bible thumper ever would.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. They are -- in a way that the fringes -- "the base" -- shaped the central messages of both candidates in this election.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. The right's obsession with the Clintons is truly remarkable. Its ALL down to the Clintons.
Re: The Democratic party must CHANGE, Moore-types must be abandoned. Let me at one thing which relates back to the original topic in the thread. We can discuss the benefits of DLC centrist type democrats vs. Old School New Deal Democrats. We can talk about the need to change policy vs. the need to change substance. I don't have all the answers on that. I will say that in one sense, we have to boot the "Michael Moore" types in that we have to get rid of the shrill, America sucks, and the people that don't agree with us are idiot types. I have much agreement with Michael Moore on several issues. But I can't stand the guy. He's a blowhard, and I can understand that if you are someone who has a sense of pride in being an American, that he is going to turn you off even if you are not particularly conservative. I saw this crap in the Green Party, and it was one of the reasons I decided I couldn't support its efforts. Most Americans like this country. They do not appreciate being patronized by Europe or anyone else. They do not like the idea that the United Nations, which puts countries like Sudan on its human rights commission, can tell us what to do. The Guardian's "write to a voter in Clark County" was unbelievably stupid. And the Michael Moore's of the world say "Yeah! That's it! Shame us! Make us look bad!" Was that Kerry's position? No. He actually ran to the right in the primary. When he attacked Bush on the war, he did it in terms of implementation, not principle. Some people say that this sunk him. I disagree to an extent. It is true that it was very hard for him to reconcile his support for the war with his later attacks on his presidency, but I think more damning was the view in the eyes of many that Kerry was at least sympathetic to the Michael Moore's of the world. I didn't see it that way, but the perception is there. When some people think of the democratic party, they conflate it with the A.N.S.W.E.R.'s of the world even if the democratic party rejects the viewpoints of those radicals. In other words, the Democratic party doesn't get much support from the radical left (except for some who see it as a lesser of two evils), but the centrists of the world see such a relationship to the detriment of the party. Perhaps too many Americans suffer from selfish pride. But it's there, and if you want a change in policy, you're going to have to deal with it. When certain posters on this site remind us that Columbus Day is really "Slaughter of Indigenous People's Day" and call on us to bow our heads in shame on the anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they are going to annoy the crap out of several other Americans. And this has at least a residual negative affect on the mainstream Democratic party. There isn't too much the democratic party can do about this, even with a hard tack to the right. What I would suggest is that the Michael Moore's of the left recognize that they are viewed by some as spokespersons of the mainstream Democratic party. If you're happy with how voters in square shaped states perceive that, then go ahead. But my take on it is that this just drives these people to Bush and the cReeps.