The Solution to what is Wrong with Democrats
Hey... I am travel blogging (from the Lehigh Valley International Airport) so I won't have links in this post yet.

BUT... having read the internet to a detrimental level the last few day I have been reading various and sundry analysese of what went wrong with the Democrats.

I'll try to link to a few of the answers I have gleaned from the great jabbering mess that is he internet. It seems that everyone has a solution to fixing the Democrats, with most of the analysis coming from the right side of the political divide.

So I'll cut to the chase:

My fellow Democrats. It seems we were deluded in our beliefs. According to a great many if the backers of the winning team in this election, the solution to returning to relevance is...

...to become Republicans.

- posted by Samuel @ 11:39 AM

 
Wrong
That would be me. I'll no longer think that the election was won based on "morals issues". Andrew Sullivan says so as well as David Brooks so I'll just leave off with the me being wrong bit.

The new conventional wisdom (is the old conventional wisdom) that the election turned on terrorism and security. Fine, that is better that my origianl fears that hordes of bigots just selected the President, and would now demand their just rewards. I look for over pandering still though as there is not reason to burn any bridges.


- posted by Samuel @ 11:32 AM

 
Mandate and the Shaping of Government
Check out this article on Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall). Its what I was trying to articulate, but I lacked the proper way of saying it.

Oh... that mandate... seems to have not really been about gay marriage, securty, or terrorism. Since Bush has now moved privitization of Social Security to the front of the list, it appears to have really been about the rights major agenda. Expect vouchers, significant tax code reform (national sales tax anyone), and maybe even the destruction of a few pesky Departments to be mentioned soon enough. If you can stand the MSM for a bit, here is an article all about it.

And so it begins.

- posted by Samuel @ 1:52 PM

 
Ex-Marine's Blog
If you want to see some excellent still-connected former "boots on the ground"Marine pondering you should check out The Adventures of Chester. This is the kind of analysis Belmont Club used to present before he went all political.
- posted by Samuel @ 5:23 PM

 
A Bit of Response... A Dash of explanation
Sid, sorry to have made you mad. I had just been reading endless screeds about how the Democrats use fraud and the incompetent as excuses for wining elections. Then listening to the crowing about the mandate that was just delivered. And I assume that I interpreted your writing through the lens of the others comments. I was tired and I really knew better. Its like stepping on your cats tail. It hisses and bites at you, but still wants you to pet it soon enough. I think I am done hissing.

What my post was really about was that mandate I mentioned above. From my losing 49% side of the country it doesn't really look like a mandate. However I think I said that it was all the values voters. Maybe not as I think Ben wanted to discuss with me this morning. However the states that had referendums to change their constitution (always bad in Sam's book) to either affect same-sex marriage or abortion alone counted for 2 million of the 3 million vote spread. He received more than 1 million more votes in 2004 in those states alone over what he got in 2000. Maybe there are elements of defense and security. However I still wonder about that, since he did not win the states that had experienced the terror attacks firsthand.

I want everyone to read this little note by Bill Bennet in the NRO. And I do think this is a real issue. I am afraid of what Grover Norquist opined today. I am afraid that now they think that with 1.1% of America more on their side they have all the authroization "go to town" on their agenda. Please tell me what part of the GOP agenda that covers terrorism and security that would lead to the above comments? I tell you this in honesty, because that is what happened to the Democratic party in the 60s and 70s. Its why my party is so weak right now.

I fear it because that is what the state legislatures do when they change hands. And what is to think anything else might change. A lot can happen both good and bad in 2 years (until the midterm elections), so I hope the better angels of the Republican party are going to work overtime.

Now... back to other issues.

NO... I think I want to give you this UPDATE: Check out Laura Rozens blog War and Peace. She gives us the text from a Wall Street Journal article about just what I was afraid of.



- posted by Samuel @ 4:51 PM

 
So Kerry was the better man.
It is over. Kerry has conceeded and congratulated President Bush.

- posted by Samuel @ 1:53 PM

 
The Long Dark Winter of the Democratic Party
Well I'll call it for Bush. There is really no reason to think otherwise at this point. I would enjoy being wrong this time but honestly its not going to happen.

Two points I'd like to make:

Sid. Provisional ballots are not the same as those butterfly ballots. As we have all discussed the election went to Bush in the recounts and that was that. However your statement in the beginning seems to boil down to: If you can't vote correctly, you shouldn't get to vote. Maybe I am wrong in my interpretation. However I honestly find the thought that someone would be told your opinion doesn't matter because you are in the wrong place to be offensive. Here in PA. I was NEVER told where to vote, and only found out by asking EVERY person I meet until the next to last day when I found out. My apartment is 500 feet from a polling station; however it was not the one I voted in. So, since there were large numbers of first time voters, little good publication regarding locations, and poor preparation for the large turnout, I think the provisional ballots are a good thing. As a point of evidence, Donald Trump was mistakenly moved from his registration by the State of New York (look it up and you get the whole story). So he used a provisional ballot. Was he a fault? Should he have expected that things would change without him being told? Should his vote go in the shredder? Tennessee has early voting, which is a form of provisional balloting. A goodly chunk of the problems in Ohio are due to the fact that we seem to (as a country) need instant validation. So screw the slow, or mistake voter… Onward, upward, faster and faster.

I don't like vote fraud. But I also despise disenfranchisement. I will leave my comment on this thread with this: If you are legally allowed to vote, and for some reason (that is not illegal) you end up not being able to vote in the ideal fashion, you should be able to vote provisionally.

Secondly, one of my brightest and more moderate students and I were discussing the results last night around 2:00 AM. We were watching, in addition to the results, the answers to the exit polling questions. The issues I thought would be important were not. Securities, the war, the economy (all weakness for Kerry in many opinions) were not the clinchers. It was the vague "values" category that seemed to have a large upswing in the results. I'll couch this by the fact that if Bush was better in economics and security then he should have won the states with the most to lose. Sorry that didn't happen. What he did win was the "values" battle. I honestly cannot understand that since Bush is anything but a good guy on values, unless you ignore EVERYTHING before he was 40 and turn a blind eye to his haughtiness and behavior in office.

You might be willing to argue with me on this, but I ask you to look at Ohio. Read the constitutional amendment they voted for. It goes miles beyond gay marriage. So my honest feeling is that the main turning point in this election was the "eww ick" factor. If the larger upswing of voters were evangelicals, and it seems that Rove was correct regarding that, then the fact that gay people wanted to have a marriage/civil union got Bush elected.

Since I think the government should be out of the marriage business period, I am feeling extremely marginalized. I am afraid that since wining the White House again, controlling the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, the Republicans will do whatever they want now. I hope to be wrong again. I have been dreading this outcome all along because I really see no reason for any expectations otherwise.

So now it is time for me to tighten my coat and get ready to wander through the coming long dark winter of the Democratic Party. I don't see how we can come back from this, or what issue is going to change the partisan cementation of the country.
- posted by Samuel @ 11:52 AM