Kerry Was NOT The Problem - The Party is

Kerry would have made a fine president. But let's face, it: he got clobbered in the rural vote and the traditionalists' vote. We need to make inroads with this group.

I don't really blame Kerry for this, however. Kerry ran a good campaign, and he correctly saw that the party needed to reposition itself towards really taking on the Republicans on foreign policy and security.

In the end, culture became the main obstacle. It's true that Kerry, as a wealthy, educated, intellectual Northeasterner, was out of place here, but the truth is that that in and of itself SHOULD not be a problem.

There was a time when rich Northeasterners were able to carry the rural vote. FDR, JFK, RFK (had he been not been killed), to a lesser extent Hubert Humphrey (until '68 at least, and no, he wasn't rich, but he was liberal and northern).

If the party had a better image among more culturally-conservative voters and voters in red states, Kerry's background wouldn't be a problem.

What we have to face is that the Democratic Party is a minority party. We haven't won a majority of the vote since 1976, and even then it was only just barely at 50.1% and came in the aftermath of Watergate. In fact, we have to look back 40 years to 1964 for the last time a Democrat really carried a healthy margin. You could even make the case that our party had started losing our way long before that. After all, Kennedy just barely won, Stevenson lost overwhelmingly in the '50s, and you may have to go back to Truman to find a time when a Democrat didn't have any problems with traditional voters and rural voters. Kerry did as well as he could, but we have to face the fact that the Democratic Party starts out with a disadvantage in EVERY RACE b/c of it's inability to reach rural and more traditional voters.

If the party were healthy, we would not be hearing the refrain that we MUST have a Southerner leading the ticket. That's a false solution. Certainly, if a Southerner in '08 is the best candidate, by all means, we should go with him or her, but we should not delude ourselves into thinking that will solve all our problems. It's merely a band-aid, not a cure. The candidate we nominate should be the best candidate and the best presidential material, period, regardless of regional origin.

If we successfully change the image of our party, something that can be done without losing our values our goals, but merely by repackaging and straightforward, we can win, even when we have a "Massachusetts Liberal" on the ticket.

Kerry wasn't the problem, the problem was the way liberals are defined in the media and are viewed by those who should be our strongest supporters.

We need to quit pointing fingers and analyze this election rationally. Part of the problem is we were focused on too few states. To win everything had to fall our way. It didn't.

if the unaudited e-voting machines are still in use and the repubs are the "vote counters", we won't win.

Sit on the sidelines and watch. No one needs your defeatism

And no matter what my statements sound like to you, please don't speak for all the other members of this board. :^I

Then the pundits will be talking about how our image is great with the voters and how the Pubs need to change theirs to win.

They obviously won't listen to reason. They elected a man (?) who started a war (knowingly) for no good reason, a man who has put this country so far in debt that soon our currency will no longer be the currency of record in the world, we all know there were a million reasons NOT to elect this asshole........BUT THEY DID!
It's quite obvious that the truth doesn't work. Should we make up lies like the Reslugs? Do we all have to grovel at the cross? Should we have our minds erased so we're not "Liberal Elitists"?
The Republican Party has framed the debate, and there is no way in hell we're ever getting these people to vote for us again without some total meltdown by the Slugs. Another Watergate, Bush schtupping one of his cows, proving that this election was rigged, Dick Cheney getting a 14 year old knocked up and taking her for an abortion. I'm sick of kowtowing to these hayseeds and begging for their votes. It's THEY who have now become the "Elitists" because they know we'll come grovelling on our hands and knees looking for votes that we'll never get. Ignorance is rewarded in this country and I'm sick of it.
If they view Bush as a self made man, a man that wasn't raised in the lap of luxury, and elitist himself who puts on a fake cowboy act to appeal to the masses, then they're MORE ignorant than I thought (if possible).
There are two types of people in this country now. Those that are informed, intelligent and are able to make decisions based upon logic and raw data. Then there are the other type. The type that are too lazy to attempt even a cursory search for the truth, are easily led, love to be scared (be it by constant threats from our government that we're all going to die by the hands of terrorists if we don't have complete blind faith in them to protect us, or the fear of a God that will damn our eternal soul to hell if we don't have complete blind faith in HIM) and cannot or will not take their lives into their own hands instead swallowing some hollow promise of false security from the government and their god.
What we're faced with here is not changing the perception of our Party, it's changing the basic beliefs of these people who still think the earth is flat. They're steeped in superstition and refuse to change, because change is terrifying to them. They love to do things the way they've always done them and anything deviating from their "norms" is not going to be accepted.
Sorry about this rant, but I was in NYC for the election and this is the first time I've had to vent here at DU. These rural people are NEVER going to accept change, that's why they cling to the Reslugs because the Reslugs KNOW this and USE these people for their own selfish purposes to attain their agenda, which has nothing to do with the rural voters at all. They prey upon their fears and control them in that way.
Anyway, end of rant. I'm going to go read.