I'm offended by the notion somthing's wrong with our party because we lost

What was wrong about John Kerry's call for health care reform? Family premiums have increased by more than $3,512 and prescription drug prices have grown four times faster than inflation, with no credible plan from Bush outside of his ridiculous call for health savings accounts that would favor those with money to save, and Bush's hawking of litigation reform that would let negligent doctors off the hook. Kerry's health plan would give every American access to the range of high-quality, affordable plans available to members of Congress and extend coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every American child. The Kerry-Edwards plan would reduce prescription drug prices by allowing the re-importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada, overhauling the Medicare drug plan, ensuring low-cost drugs, and ending artificial barriers to generic drug competition. Bush offered his prescription plan that came with restrictions on importation and no plan to reduce the overall cost of prescriptions.

What was wrong about John Kerry's plan to spur economic growth and recover jobs for Americans which had been shipped overseas thanks to a compliant tax code that rewarded corporations for leaving our communities high and dry. Kerry would cut taxes for businesses that create jobs here in America instead of moving them overseas. Kerry would also stand up for workers by enforcing our trade agreements. Ninety-eight percent of all Americans and 99 percent of American businesses would get a tax cut under the Kerry-Edwards plan. Kerry would cut the deficit in half during his first four years in office. He would end corporate welfare as we know it, roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and impose a real cap to keep spending in check. Kerry would invest in new technology to manufacture energy-efficient cars, high-grade steel, advanced plastics and other new products.

Bush had no plan for economic growth for the average American outside of more tax giveaways to the wealthiest and corporations.

The 'moral values' crowd was afraid that gay marriages would cheapen their second and third marriages.

Democrats were supposedly wrong because we refused to bend to the effort to discriminate against some of our citizens to appeal to a narrow-minded minority of evangelicals.

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Nobody's going to get any of that stuff under the Kerry/Edwards plan, because they lost.

That is the crux of it -- everything you say is true, and we lost. If you can't win with all that going for you, surely it is a sign that something is wrong somewhere.

Get offended all you like. It won't get you into office.

Affordable health care for all and an end to the rewards for moving factories overseas and abandoning workers here at home. maybe we need a more forceful argument but the meat of it would be the same. None of our nation's problems can be solved by warmed over appeals to discriminate against gays and lesbians or to evicerate rights of women to maintain control over their own bodies in reproductive matters.

The morals explanation was a canard invented by pollsters and furthered by a media who has spent the last week deriding the results of the same polls that showed Kerry on the way to a major victory. The one I saw had 'moral issues at 23% and the economy at 20%. Funny how we can't get a resonable discussion from them about the latter.

up what you're fighting for?"

values and issues that we would be unwilling to compromise on. We need to work particularly hard to curb the idea that they are trying to promote now - that being liberal is a shameful thing. Then, we need to work to revamp our image and make our ideas understood and heard. We need to bring these issues to the forefront and make them more important that our opponent's issues.

All I'm saying is that our core values and beliefs are NOT wrong and we should not abandon them. We should STRENGTHEN them. Now, if we can just figure out how.......

It means the Dems didn't do whatever was necessary to win, whatever that may've been. Nothing else matters if you don't have a seat at the table.

no?

Dems pulled out all the stops to kick Bush out, and still came up short. Someone here said it was the "political version of D-Day".

And it wasn't just a matter of political strategy or the candidate.

Americans weren't clamoring to buy what Kerry and the Dems were selling -- even if they had won. Dems need to start thinking big, lest they run the risk of permanent minority status. They need much more than a simple right or left shift, both of which they have tried over the past 30 years or so with no permanent success. Go left and you lose forty states. Go right and you end up with wishy washy poll happy Clinton centrism, which is a temporary fix. If Dems don't sit down and really try to think big and long term they will regret it - yet again. I say this as a moderate independent.

Karl Rove had won before we even did battle as he was so intimate with our strategies he knew us even better than we know ourselves.

I don't think the margin of victory was all that impressive despite the recorded 3-4 million vote advantage for Bush. I believe that millions of Democratic votes are stuck in provisional ballots that remain uncounted and in early voting and absentee ballots. Minority Democrats and first-time voting youth nationwide were herded into voting with the provisional ballots and another majority of Democrats were encouraged by our side to file absentee to effect a paper trail. These represent a sizable amount of the uncounted votes. Our appeal was working. We were just waylaid by a opposition campaign of fear, lies, intimidation, and outright fraud. It's far too early to pack up our agenda and go home. As far as the economy and jobs, healthcare, and Iraq were concerned, Democrats had overwhelming support against Bush who was negligent or indifferent to the plights of ordinary Americans.

None of this can be remedied by changing course or changing our agenda. We change our agenda and we cease to be Democrats IMHO.


A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
-Henry David Thoreau

All War is Deception.

---Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Rove can deceive better than we ever did. If we do not accept the fact that we are engaged in war, we will continue to lose.

I wonder though if we give Herr Karl too much credit. What did he have to do to motivate the cast of shills who have infected the commercial news since it's invigoration and exploitation that ramped up in response to the Clinton scandals. The same faces are there, minus the few liberal ones, and they out (foxed) us.

He laid out strategies that have been in existance for over two millenia.

He did nothing new, his success is directly related to the fact that the Democrats fell into the very basic strategic traps that were laid for them. Rove laid the bait as any good general will and we took the bait every time.

And the saddest part of it all is we are about to be given the bait again in the next Congressional session and we will yet again take it. We continue to lose because we are blind to the reality that this is war, not some gentlemen's arrangement.

in the Democratic party. I mean, what degree of our shortcomings were actually campaign driven, as opposed to societal influences and unintended consequences of good intentions from supporters? Events happen. Campaigns have to adjust, recover, and overcome. I can't help but feel like we did pretty good against an incumbent, 'wartime president. Couple thousand of votes in one state could have turned this thing to where the republicans would be doing all of the second guessing. That's where mismanagement of the votes, intimidation of the voters, and fraud come in . . .

I think it is valid to look at small things that we could have done better. But, I will never agree that this signals an inherent huge problem with the Democratic party's values.

Like I said, why weren't they spouting about the downfall of the Repub party after Clinton won two terms? Why weren't they talking about what was wrong with their ideas and core values?

The Repub party figured out how to bring their issues to the forefront. We have to do the same.

1) Government Accountability
2) People before the powerful
3) Free but Fair trade with emphasis on the rights of workers, human rights, and the
environment.
4) A progressive and fair tax system
5) Protecting the Constitution and the Environment for ourselves and our heirs
6) An informed electorate educated by fair and honest public dialogue
7) Transparent government
8) Protection of voting rights--paper verification for electronic voting.
9) A commitment to insure all Americans equal rights under the law
10) Courts peopled by those sworn to uphold the law as opposed to advancing
ideologies.
11) A government that provides opportunities for its citizens
12) International law trumps diplomacy; diplomacy trumps force. Force only, only, only, as
a last resort.
13) A multilateral foreign policy which includes both hard power and soft power.
14) People over partisanship
15) Recognition that: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism
16) Programs with a view to the future, not just the next election cycle.
17) Living our family values by promoting our citizens potential with support for public &
college education, health care and jobs.
18. Government promotiin and encouragement of inquiry to develop alternative solutions
for energy independence and high tech job creation
19) Recognition that diversity is our greatest strength
20) Fulfilling our commitments to America's veterans and all men and women who serve
our country.

~Wes Clark

He makes me comfortable. It takes a large ego to be a successful candidate. Wes seems like a humble, intelligent man . . .

We don't control the media. Plain & simple. People used to get both sides of an issue - now all they hear is the conservative side.

Network & public radio/TV struglle to give both sides (NOW interviewing Norquist), but they don't give both sides on FOX, Christian radio and Hate Radio.

I believe it's a huge contributor to why we lost

same problem for minority Americans.

It may or may not be a policy issue.

Personally, I think we are out-politicked and WAY out marketed.

A wonkish approach to issues like health care is simply too complicated for the Murkan people to digest and ignores the fundamental principle of marketing--appeal to the emotions. The repuke response--that Dems are for socialized medicine--triggers the negative emotional reaction that a generation of cold-war media propaganda has created in most Murkans. It may be true or false, but it is effective. Murkans are reflexively opposed to "socialized" anything.

You can parse books on economic policy. Have fun. The vast majority of Murkans will gladly cede the responsibility for managing the country's problems to whichever campaign feeds them the best slogans and soundbites, which are about as much as they want to know.

You can list the policies we got right until the cows come home, but that doesn't change the fact that voters aren't being swayed by policy alone.

The focus on positions to the exclusion of other tactics, as if it were the be-all and end-all of politics, is a sign that something is very very wrong in our party.

I am tired of the rancor directed at Kerry whom I grew to truly support despite the fact that he was not my first choice.

That said. I think we should just sit back and watch the Repuke wrought destruction. This is what the people wanted, so let 'em have it. If social security withers on the vine, so what. If Medicare costs rise well over the new 17%, so be it. If nice jobs are outsourced, too bad. If the environment (e.g. Yucca Mtn) is wreaking havoc with people's health and they can't afford care, let 'em go pray. And so on.

Our guys in DC should sit on their hands and not cast any votes (yea or nay) for any part of the Bush agenda, they should avoid the media like the plague (or the flu) and wait patiently for the sheeple to wake up to the disaster that they voted for. If Dems contemplate restructuring more to the right, they will validate the repuke MO; if they mount efforts at resistance, they will be will blamed and scapegoated. It's a no win situation. If, however, they sit back, the repukes will overshoot and be revealed as the manipulative frauds they are.