Why am I, an ardent bleeding-heart liberal, so content with the defeat of the Democrats? How can I accept that the Republicans have won without asking for a recount (as has been requested by a democrat in Alabama)? Well, it's this simple: I'm hoping this serves as a wake-up call for the Democratic party. But, if this does, in fact, serve as one, it certainly shouldn't be the first.
Somehow the Democratic leadership forgot about their loss to W in 2000 by simply blaming it on Ralph Nader. It sure looks like Nader got the last laugh, though. Now the Democratic party is reeling, trying to find new leaders and reassert what used to be Democratic issues-just as Nader suggested they should be doing two years ago.
It's not a real surprise to me that the Republicans won the 2002 elections; in fact, it's a testament to the weakness of the Republican Party on issues like the economy that the elections remained so close. After all, the Republicans faced a group of candidates so inept, backed by a party so equally inept, that anything but an utter and complete annihilation of Dems has to have Karl Rove crying behind closed doors. The examples of poor tactics by the Democrats are remarkable. How Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia lost predominately because he was called unpatriotic (this is a man who lost three limbs in Vietnam), is still a bit beyond my abilities of political analysis. Remember that in Maryland, a state in which Democrats are usually favored, a bungling Kennedy descendant lost to Bob Ehrlich, whose voting record shows strong support for relaxing gun laws; this only weeks after the sniper episode had Marylanders up-in-arms about gun control.
In the end there were two key factors to the Democrats' hearty dismissal from control of the Senate: themselves and W. Credit is due to the President (as well as to his political strategist, Karl Rove) for laying himself on the line and spending days campaigning for his party. Last second stops in Georgia and Minnesota may have been instrumental in swaying the outcomes of both races. But the greatest obstacle the Democrats encountered was plainly themselves: an issueless, follow-the-leader group, happy to run a "sure we support the same issues but they're not as good people as we are" campaign.
In fact, the Democrats really did run on very few issues. Most Democratic senators and members of Congress supported the tax cut, attacking Iraq and the President. It makes you wonder whether Ralph Nader's concern over the limited choice available in a two-party system should be upped to concern over a one-party system.
The biggest problem is that, despite the Democrats' apparent absence from all meaningful debate, the issues were very much present and important. Even Jeb Bush flatly declared after his reelection that the nation's economy is weak. Polls showed that the economy was the most important issue for 50 percent of voters on Nov. 5. You'd think that the Democrats might be able to suggest their own economic package to counter the failed Bush Administration's; yes, you would, wouldn't you? But from prescription drugs to social security to education to the war on terror, the Democrats refused to do more than condemn the Republicans for being corrupt while nodding their noggins in agreement on policy. Democratic strategists are befuddled as to why Democrat voter turnout is weaker than Republican turnout: well, when you don't have issues to excite your constituents, they're not motivated to come.
In the next few months, the Democratic party will have some important decisions to make. The first will be on a new House Minority Leader, since Dick Gephardt has (finally) officially stepped aside. The Gephardt/Daschle duo appears to have come to a tragic-or not so tragic, depending on how you perceive it-end. While Daschle has not officially stepped down as the party leader in the Senate, there are rumors that he will either retire or relinquish his Senate seat in order to run for the White House.
Once the bedroom is cleaned out, the Democrats will have to pick out some new furniture. There has been a long list of names tossed about to represent the Democrats in the next two years and more importantly, in the 2004 election: John Edwards, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Clinton (yes, Hillary) and even Al Gore, again. But, unfortunately for the Democrats, none of the big names has truly stepped up to the plate yet. After the elections, Kerry, who has taken exciting positions against the Bush administration on both economic and foreign policy fronts, immediately stated in a recent Seattle Times article that the Democratic party must work toward reasserting themselves: "We Democrats must have the courage of our convictions," he said. Kerry went further by declaring that the Democrats must work actively to "stop the new Bush tax cut." But an occasional statement isn't just what the Democrats need-they need unified action and an effective mobilization of their party.
The time has come for a change in the Democratic party. If the problems in the party weren't glaringly obvious in 2000, it's hard to ignore them now. And this shouldn't just be the perspective of a Democrat; it should be the belief of all Americans. Within a one-party system there is little meaningful debate and a clear lack of voter representation-no one denies that Americans have many different political ideologies. The Democratic party cannot be allowed to continue on its current course or the result will be both a loss of an effective party system and a greater loss of debate in American politics. Hopefully this election loss will help redirect the current, before it's too late.