Life will go on. We will survive. It might get pretty ugly. The DFL can pat themselves on the back in Minnesota.
Now, some more extended thoughts.
Terry McAuliffe must go: This is the second straight election in which the Democrats have lost seats in both the House and the Senate. If you consistently lose the close ones, that's a bad sign.
McAuliffe is meant to be head of the Democratic National Committee. But Zell Miller's right in one way (damn him). The Democrats are shrinking away from being a national party. They need a message that they can be true to all around the country, and not just hope to win in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. (more on this below)
Maybe this was a good election to lose: If you believe Mark Schmitt, the next four years will be like Nixon II redux: ".... politically, it at least avoids a situation where Kerry would have borne the responsibility and blame for Iraq or for raising taxes." See also John Quiggin.
Exactly. Without winning either the House or Senate, a Kerry administration would have been hamstrung and ineffective.
Unfortunately, it's often hard to predict in advance which elections will be good ones to lose. Indeed, I have a non-scientific feeling that people have said "this was a good election to lose" and been proven wrong, more often than it actually being a good election to lose.
Governments that over-reach their mandates lose to competent opposition parties. In many ways, this was a solid win for Bush, 51% of the popular vote and up to 286 electoral votes (depending on Iowa and New Mexico). But this is hardly 1936 or 1964 or 1984.
If the Democrats can organize themselves before 2006, they could make gains in the midterms. The Senate seats up in 2006 are the same ones up in 2000, which was a relatively good cycle for the Democrats (a net gain of 3).
Tim Pawlenty probably has mixed feelings this morning. Look at how well Kerry ran in the suburbs, the surprisingly narrow margin for Bush in southern Minnesota, and how the DFL picked up seats in the suburbs, and ran other suburban Republicans close. That narrows Pawlenty's options for what he does as Governor, and how he would run for re-election or for Senator.
On the other hand, Pawlenty clearly has political ability, including the ability to shift with the winds, so this isn't some sort of death knell.
Politics, like cricket and baseball, is not a continuous action sport. Elections are set-piece moments that change the terrain for the next period of play. In terms of Minnesota politics, the next election will see Dayton's Senate seat up, and another gubernatorial election. Dayton's a relatively weak candidate, who would be vulnerable to a challenge by a moderate Republican. The talk seems to be that Mark Kennedy would like to make a run at Dayton. But fresh off his sleazy, slimy, narrow victory in the 6th District (underperforming Bush by 10,000 votes) Kennedy's star will probably wane a little. Will Pawlenty try for the Senate, or go for Governor again? He can't do both.
Matt Entenza was under-rated as MN House minority leader. I wish I'd written this down so I could appear prescient, but really I did think before the election that Entenza's strategy of (a) putting together a coherent state-wide message for the House DFL campaign, and (b) targeting seats that were close last time and suburban seats, was solid, sensible campaigning.
There's some lessons for the national party there. The Democrats need a national message they can tailor for individual states and Congressional seats.
I over-rated the potential Libertarian vote. There are lots of articulate libertarians who disagree with Bush from a different perspective than my own. I clearly didn't spend enough time reading about the Amway-Christianity admixture that seemed to push the Republicans ahead.
On the other hand, libertarianism is the only way for Democrats to compete in culturally conservative places. As best we can tell from the exit polls, the margin of victory for Republicans was the conservative, moral vote.
There's no way that Democrats can consistently win both San Francisco and Topeka if they are perceived as affirming gays in San Francisco, and then trying to be sympathetic to evangelical Christians in Topeka.
I think the only way that Democrats can start beating the Republicans on this issue is to say that this is a country where we have the space to live our own lives as we please so long as we are not affecting others. Your sex life and your church attendance is your business. It's not a state issue.
As an atheist, and as someone who grew up in a very secular political culture, I think, but Amy Sullivan's suggestions that the Democrats need to affirm religion are the wrong way to go.
Trying to get both the liberal, secular vote and win more votes from strong church-goers will only result in more ridiculous contortions and prevent Democrats from running as a truly national party.
A libertarian stance with respect to most cultural questions is both principled, relatively easy to drape in the flag of American history, and strategically advantageous.
Was this an election Kerry should have won, or one they were lucky to get this close on? I don't know.
On the one hand, you have this view that the administration's incompetence was so obvious, so clear, that only the lousiest of candidates could have lost it:
.... even if Kerry pulls this out tonight, this race shouldn't have been close. An iffy economy, a war in Iraq that isn't going well, a record of shilling for corporations in issue after issue (if you doubt this, see David Brooks' op-ed in the NYT): any half-decent challenger should have won with these issues.
On the other hand, there's the view (can't find a good link quickly, sorry) that Kerry did about as well as he could have given the fear that pervaded the electorate after 9/11. (UPDATE: 4 November. Marshall Wittman is one proponent of this view)
Hard to say. It's pretty clear (Bush I, for example) that Americans are prepared to throw out Presidents they deem incompetent. That suggests that absent 9/11, Bush's domestic record might not have gotten him elected.
Bush does appear to have benefitted (especially in Ohio) from the anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots bringing out cultural conservatives. In the South, Bush ran up truly impressive majorities larger than last time. On the other hand Kerry, like Gore, won by a million votes in California and 500,000 in Illinois, and won Minnesota and Wisconsin by more than Gore.
A sweep, but not a landslideThe Republicans [nationally] swept most of the close races, but the difference between winning and losing is small.
In retrospect, Colorado and New Mexico look like the lost opportunities for Kerry's campaign (this assumes Iowa will fall into place for Kerry). In Colorado, they elected a Democratic Senator, gave the Democrats control of both houses, and still voted for Bush. This doesn't suggest a reluctance to vote Democratic.
In New Mexico where Bush has won by just 12,000 votes it seems the Kerry campaign did not campaign enough amongst Native Americans, turning a narrow victory last time into a loss.
Picking this stuff out in retrospect is easy. The real money is in picking it out in advance ...
I was not alone in my foolish prediction of 311-227. At least this stuff isn't my day job.
It's way too early to start predicting who will be the candidates in 2008. That said, I don't think it will be John Edwards. Losers in modern American politics don't get too many second chances. Edwards has also given up his Senate seat. It's a lot harder to run for President without the institutional base of existing political office.
Wait until after 2006 to see how that election shakes out. Re-elected governors and Senators will have fresh cachet to take into a presidential race. It will also depend on who the Republicans might nominate.
Voters in Kentucky elected a Republican who's losing his mind. It's going to be a long way back for the Democrats in some places.
Posted by robe0419 at November 3, 2004 12:34 PM