On election night at John Kerry's Boston headquarters, some of his supporters told the story of a voter in such a rush to get to the polls that he ran headlong into a traffic sign. As soon as the man came to his senses, he shook it off, put his head down, and charged on to vote.
Even in defeat, Democrats can be proud of that resolve. But if Democrats want to become a majority party again anytime soon, we'd better learn to look where we're going. We can start by using this loss as a chance to look forward, not backward. No campaign is perfect, but John Kerry and John Edwards did an awful lot right -- winning the debates, raising record sums of money, earning more votes than any Democratic ticket in history.
If we can avoid the circular firing squad that followed past defeats, we will see the deeper, more daunting challenge that awaits us. Democrats went all out against a bad president who had a bad record, a whole year of bad news, and a bad strategy to abandon the center and rely entirely on the far right -- and we still got beat.
But we can't get discouraged. We're still convinced that there is a winning progressive majority in this country. Bill Clinton forged it in the 1990s -- and by capturing the vital center of the electorate, we can achieve it in 2008.
To do that will require a new strategy. Democrats can no longer operate on the assumption that we will win national elections if we just get out our vote. If Republicans are now the majority party, we can only win by also convincing voters who would otherwise vote for them to vote for us. We need a strategy to persuade voters and turn them out.
Democrats have to expand our reach -- because nothing less than the future of progressive governance in this country is at stake. The great Democratic Party that is responsible for most of our social and economic progress in the last three-quarters of a century is once again in danger of ceasing to be a national party. We cannot let that happen.
So how can a blue party become a red-white-and-blue party once again? Here are five places to start:
1. Accept the truth. For the first time since before the New Deal, Republicans are now the majority party from the top of the ballot to the bottom.
That's reality -- and we delude ourselves if we take false comfort in the closeness of our loss.
This was the second national election in a row -- 2002 was the first -- in which Republicans won a majority of the votes cast. That broke a string of three presidential elections and three congressional elections in a row in which neither party won a majority. Moreover, this election was the latest chapter in a four-decade swing to the Republicans that began after Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide victory.
The dimensions of that swing -- and our decline -- are staggering. In1964, Johnson won 60.6 percent of the popular vote and 90 percent of the electoral votes, and Democrats held 2-to-1 advantages in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and among governors and state legislators. Today, the Republicans not only control the White House and both houses of Congress, but a majority of statehouses and state legislatures. In the 10 presidential elections since 1964, the Democratic candidate has won a majority of the popular vote only once -- Jimmy Carter won 50.1 percent in 1976. President Clinton slowed our slide in the 1990s, but even he never reached that magic 50 percent mark. The trend in the vote for Congress has been the same. After 40 straight years of domination, Democrats have not won a majority of the cumulative national vote for the House since 1992.
In 1964, according to the University of Michigan, more than one-half of all Americans -- 52 percent -- identified themselves as Democrats, compared with 25 percent who identified themselves as Republicans and 24 percent as independents. In the 2004 election, party identification was dead even: 37 percent Democrat, 37 percent Republican, and 26 percent independent.
We cannot assume this trend will end on its own. We know the Republicans will do everything they can to keep it going. It is up to Democrats to stop it.
Analysts who believe changing demographics will lead to a new Democratic majority should take a careful look at this election. According to that theory, women and the increasing number of minority voters will lead to an emerging Democratic majority. In this election, the percentages of women and minorities in the electorate indeed increased. But President Bush made significant gains among both groups. He won white women by 11 percentage points, 10 points more than his 2000 margin. Among Hispanics, Bush cut a 27-point deficit in 2000 to just 9 points this time. In the critical battleground state of Ohio, Bush secured his victory by winning 16 percent of the African-American vote, nearly double what he won in 2000.
We got out our base, but our base is not what it once was. The biggest blow in this election is how badly we lost the middle class.
It's no surprise for Democrats to lose white men and evangelicals. But in this election, we also lost white women, married people, couples with children, high school graduates, college graduates, people over 30, and, by our estimate, voters in every annual household income category above $40,000. Our coalition consisted of high school dropouts (though we won them by only 1 point) and those with postgraduate educations. That coalition is not the foundation for building a durable Democratic majority.
2. Expand the map. If Democrats are going to be born again as a majority party, we have to speak to the whole country again. The South, which helped elect every Democratic president in history, hasn't given us a single electoral vote in the 21st century. In the 23 ultimately uncontested red states, Bush held Kerry to 40 percent and ran up a nearly 8 million-vote margin. That's 202 electoral votes Republicans now win without breaking a sweat, in states where they now hold 39 out of 46 Senate seats.
Of America's 3,114 counties, Bush won 2,532 -- or 81.1 percent -- covering 78 percent of our country's land mass. In only 162 of those counties -- just over 6 percent -- was Bush's margin of victory less than 5 points. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Bush won 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties -- Kerry won just three. When Democrats do not compete on three-quarters of American soil, we have no margin for error in the presidential elections -- and we're almost sure to be a permanent minority in Congress. Meanwhile, Republicans squeeze us on the turf we still hold.
In this election, the Republicans held onto Ohio and Florida, the two big states they had to defend, and increased their margin in Florida to 5 points. They put major efforts into
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota -- all critical states for Democrats. Kerry held on to all of them, but by margins of less than 4 points, meaning they will be major battlegrounds again in 2008. Having so many of the contested elections in critical blue states puts us in the position of a football team playing most of the game on defense in its own territory. With a good defense, it may hold on for a while, but eventually the other side will score.
Competing nationally -- including in the South, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountain West -- is important for more than just tactical reasons. A national campaign would force Democrats to develop a national message that would have broader appeal to swing voters in both red and blue states. That's important, because presidential elections are won not just by pressing your advantages, but by removing obstacles that keep people from voting for you -- and often even from hearing you.
In 1992, Clinton removed roadblocks that had kept voters from voting Democratic in the 1980s by calling for fiscal discipline, welfare reform, and a tough stance against crime. That opened the door for voters to listen to his positions on issues about which they were likely to agree. A narrow strategy, aimed at getting big votes out in Democratic enclaves, makes candidates press their advantage with voters already inclined to vote for them, rather than removing the obstacles that keep otherwise persuadable voters from eve n considering them.
When Democrats don't compete on Republican turf, it also makes it easier for Republicans to polarize the election, because we aren't appealing to their voters. Since there are more conservatives than liberals -- 34 percent to 21 percent in this election -- an ideologically polarized election is one that Republicans are almost always going to win.
Despite the fact that we haven't won an electoral vote in the South in the past two elections, Democrats can compete in that region. In 1976, Carter won 10 of 11 states in the Old Confederacy. In 1992 and in 1996, Clinton won four Southern states. Overall, in his two elections, Clinton won 14 of the 2004 red states at least once.
And that brings us to point No. 3.
3. Close the security and culture gaps. The No. 1 issue on voters' minds on Election Day was something that we don't discuss in polite company in the blue states: moral values. The heartland -- that great bastion of fiscal conservatism at home and restraint abroad -- had good reasons to doubt Bush's values, but doubted ours instead. Moral values aren't simply the social issues Republicans cynically exploited, such as same-sex marriage and abortion. At a time when some in the world are out to destroy our way of life, many Americans are more concerned than ever about the bedrock values that built it -- patriotism, personal responsibility, opportunity, and a clear sense of right and wrong.
Most voters in red states think we Democrats look down on them for worrying about the moral direction of the country. They have no idea that we might be concerned about it, too.
The result? Millions of Americans voted against their own economic interest. Of the 28 states with the lowest per-capita incomes, Bush carried 26. An administration whose overriding motive has been to protect the rich was just given a second term by the very people who will suffer the most for it.
Such a walloping has serious consequences down the ballot, as well. Because so many voters in red states reject the Democratic brand out of hand, we lose Senate races in those states even when we have clearly superior candidates.
We can crack the cultural code; we've done it before. When Clinton offered progressive ways to solve problems that Republicans only talked about -- like crime, welfare, and family values -- he got through to millions of middle-class Americans who'd been tuning out Democrats for years.
We can't let those hearts be closed to us again. First and foremost, we need to bridge the trust gap on national security by spelling out our own offense against terrorism and clearly rejecting our anti-war wing, so that Republicans can no longer portray us as the anti-war party in the war on terrorism. We must leave no doubt that Michael Moore neither represents nor defines our party.
We need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate, by pressing our own ideas to give parents more tools to protect their children from a coarsening culture, hold absent fathers accountable for support, and enable parents to spend more time with their families. Rather than embracing Hollywood values, we need to hold the entertainment industry accountable for its part in promoting an environment that makes it so tough for parents to raise their kids.
Instead of scoffing at Bush's faith-based agenda, we could fight for a stronger safety net in which both government and religious groups do more. Even as we oppose a federal amendment to take away the states' right to define marriage, we can do more than Republicans would ever dream of to reward marriage by helping young couples own a home and start saving for college and retirement.
One of Clinton's great achievements was to put our government back in line with our values. After years of hearing politicians talk about fiscal responsibility, he forced Washington to live by it. Now, politicians have returned to their old ways -- led by Bush, who promised a "responsibility era," then failed to veto a single spending bill, even as the growth of domestic expenditures tripled. As John Edwards said during an address to the
Democratic Leadership Council, "Mr. President, if you're not going to use that word 'responsibility,' we'd like to have it back."
If we're looking for a values issue that speaks to the forgotten middle class across the cultural divide, we also should go after Bush's other war -- the war on work. Democrats should offer a tax reform plan as ambitious in rewarding work as Bush's disastrous plan was in protecting wealth.
Above all, like so many of our most successful leaders, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Clinton, we must be willing to speak the rich language of faith, which can move mountains. It's not a matter of quoting Scripture; the key is to make clear that our policies are animated by principles, not focus groups. Remember that values -- not programs -- move nations.
4. Make ideas matter most. Even as we celebrate and expand the important gains Democrats made this year through the Internet and a stronger organization, we should recognize their limits. The fortune we spend on campaign ads is only as good as what we have to say. The best ground game in the world can't win ground that's off-limits to our message. If we want to take back the majority, we need to mount just as massive an effort at pioneering new ideas.
This election was mostly about Bush. The 2008 election will be a fair fight about the future, where ideas will matter more than opposition. This was a turnout election. The next one will have to be a persuasion election as well.
The best thing we can do is come up with new, innovative, bold ideas to tackle the big challenges facing our country: developing a tough, smart approach to keeping our country safe in a world where terrorists are out to kill us; reforming the tax code to create an ownership society with upward mobility for hard -- working middleclass Americans who see their futures squeezed by competition from low -- wage countries; restoring the engine of economic growth by tackling the deficit and the threats of rising health care and energy costs; addressing the aging of America and the pressures it puts on both public and private pensions and retirement schemes; fortifying the family against the increasing pressures of work and culture; finishing the job of bringing all Americans into the economic mainstream; and restoring democracy by restoring competition to our political system, responsibility to Washington, and a civic ethic to our daily lives.
Democrats can establish a new politics of national purpose that rises above the political polarization of Washington to solve the big challenges our country must face. If we give voters a compelling reason to vote for us, campaign tactics will take care of themselves.
5. Surprise people. Why did Bush become a divider, not a uniter? Because he and Karl Rove understood that a polarized nation works to their advantage.
When both parties play to their respective stereotypes, Republicans win.
Clinton geared his entire 1992 campaign to surprising people by proving he was a different kind of Democrat from those they'd been voting against for years. He proposed cutting bureaucracy, linking college aid to national service, putting more police on the street, and ending welfare as we know it.
The last two campaigns have been short on such shock therapy. Next time, we have to surprise people by becoming an insurgent reform party again. Indeed, the one silver lining in defeat is that we're finally free to reform a status quo we neither condone nor control.
Is Michael Moore the true voice of the Democratic Party in the war on terror? Are we really a party that would rather win the culture wars through the courts than with the people?
We think not -- and we owe Americans a true picture of what the Democratic Party stands for. If we don't have at least one position that forces skeptics to take a whole new look at the Democratic Party, they won't. But if a new Democratic insurgency can earn our party a second look, it's only a matter of time before Republicans will be the ones feeling our pain again. Freedom's just another word for everything left to win.
Making Democrats a majority party again will take hard work and the courage to make tough choices that challenge old party orthodoxy and take on sacred cows some Democrats may want to preserve. But if we are to succeed, we need to put our values first and be willing to reform our programs to further them.
That's the most important point. The choice we face is not between principles and pragmatism. We don't have to compromise our beliefs to win back America's trust. On the contrary, we need to live up to the Democratic Party's best traditions: Andrew Jackson's belief in equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none; Franklin Roosevelt's passion for bold reform; Harry Truman's tough-minded internationalism; John Kennedy's ethic of civic obligation; Johnson's quest for social justice; and Clinton's insistence that opportunity and responsibility must go hand in hand. Our way back is to honor our first principles and grandest traditions, not abandon them.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Strategy
