Facing Up
The fix the Democrats find themselves in cannot be attributed to the evil, tricky genius of Karl Rove or the ignorance of the American people. The Democrats face big problems of their own making. Here, Prospect writers look at how the party has mishandled four important issues and suggest new approaches. Self – Interest Heal…
An Uncertain Trumpet
Whatever pundits say, this election was not a wholesale repudiation of liberalism.
All Action, No Talk
A California Labor Union leader once described to me the 1966 campaign to re-elect Democrat Pat Brown as governor. “We had a massive campaign to identify our voters,” he said, “we contacted everyone at least twice, and we did a tremendous job of getting them to the polls on election day — where they voted…
Staying the Course
This one hurts big. But progressives have little time for grief or recrimination. George W. Bush claims a mandate for his radical domestic agenda and for his preemptive foreign policy. The dollar has already begun to fall and interest rates to rise. The evangelical right is clamoring for advancing the jihad against gays and choice.…
God and the New Deal
So the Democrats are having trouble with the politics of cultural traditionalism? So what else is new? To be sure, the gap in the electorate between the observant and the secular is widening. But it’s just one part of a larger cultural rift that the Republicans have long realized (as far back as Richard Nixon)…
Wedding-Bell Blues
On October 28, as Democrats scrambled volunteers to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, Philip Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, was so confident of victory that he wasn’t even in the state. Burress had championed Issue One, the anti–gay-marriage amendment, and had secured a place for it on the ballot just as the…
Choice Language
Ok, I’ve unlisted my phone number, changed my name, and moved to a different (red) state. Now I can safely say it: The Democratic defense of abortion makes me cringe. It’s the stridency, the insistence, the repetition of a “woman’s right to choose.” It rubs me the wrong way — and I’m one of those…
Insecurity Blanket
Anyone purporting to tell you the reason John Kerry lost the election is either fooling himself or fooling you. The origins of any close defeat are necessarily multicausal, and any number of different things could have won it for Kerry. The media chose to focus on the party’s “values” problem. To be sure, that problem…
Heal Thy ‘Self’
It’s time for the Quadrennial Democratic Lament about the false consciousness and dismaying distractibility of the poor. “John Kerry’s supporters should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting — utterly against their own interests — for Republican candidates,” wrote Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times…
Operation Save Face
There is nothing about the present U.S. strategy in Iraq — if indeed the Bush administration’s ever-shifting plans can be called a strategy — that suggests more of it will work. On January 31, national elections are scheduled in Iraq. Except when viewed through George W. Bush’s perpetually rosy lenses, these elections seem likely to…
Mind the Gender Gap
The erosion of the gender gap in this election starkly illustrates Alan Brinkley’s insights regarding how issues of class and values pose challenges for progressives and the Democratic Party. In the last two presidential elections, the Democratic candidate won among women fairly decisively, by 16 points (Bill Clinton) and 11 points (Al Gore), respectively. In…
Think Globally
The 2004 election results carry especially profound implications for the Democrats on foreign policy. John Kerry’s defeat means that the party must develop both new voices and a broader vision of America’s role in the world. It will not be sufficient to argue merely that the Republicans have bungled foreign policy. (If that message didn’t…
Conviction Politics
It may be a bit much to begin my remarks by putting pressure, like a deconstructionist, on a single word — a word that may have been just a throwaway — but I’ll take the risk. Near the beginning of his thoughtful essay, Alan Brinkley writes, “[I]t’s not hard to imagine centrist Democrats winning presidential…
Voting Alone
Alan Brinkley has done an admirable job thinking through why George W. Bush won. I particularly agree with his analysis of the damaged state of the Democratic Party’s infrastructure and aim here to deepen our understanding of what needs fixing. Let me start with myself as one type of Kerry supporter to illustrate the problem.…
Opportunity Knocks
Alan Brinkley’s illuminating piece is right in concluding that the “only real option” for Democrats is to convert Republicans (and, presumably, independent voters) into Democrats. He sees years of hard labor before this can be accomplished. I am more optimistic. I think that the lethal Republican combination of hubris and incompetence will expedite matters, but…
What’s Next?
This time there are no excuses — no thwarted popular majority, no fatal butterfly ballots or hanging chads, no renegade Supreme Court decision, no Nader factor. This was a defeat, pure and simple — not a landslide, not an unambiguous mandate for the policies of the Bush administration, but unmistakably a defeat. So where do…
Big-Box Battle
Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart By Liza Featherstone • Basic Books • 336 pages • $25.00 When Betty Dukes, a 56-year-old African-American Wal-Mart worker in Pittsburg, California, first read about Sam Walton, the founder of the world’s largest retailer, she felt inspired. “I learned…
Then Came the Hammer
The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress By Lou Dubose and Jan Reid • Public Affairs • 306 pages • $26.00 On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences, 1948–2000 By Julian E. Zelizer • Cambridge University Press • 376…
What’s Up, Docs?
“Who knows?” Ken Cordier asked, by way of an answer. It was a moment of uncharacteristic uncertainty for the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth member and former Vietnam War prisoner of war, who had just been asked by an audience member whether there are any POWs remaining under Vietnamese control. Cordier and his…
Clothes Call
At midnight on December 31, Americans will toast the new year with a drunken round of “Auld Lang Syne.” On the other side of the globe, China will be celebrating by opening new factories — more than 3,000 new textile and apparel factories that will begin their work as decade-old quotas are lifted on China’s…
Life After Yasir
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Yasir Arafat’s death is a historic milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a new starting point in the efforts to resolve the decades-old holy-land feud. It presents an opportunity to resolve the conflict, but lots of political determination and skill are needed from the dueling sides, the United States, and the international…
Keeping the Faith
Once again, Democrats are “rethinking” what they stand for. After previous defeats, such “rethinkings” resulted in rightward drifts. Democrats courted upscale suburban swing voters and steadily distanced themselves from the party’s working-class roots. They urged tax cuts for the middle class, welfare reform, and fiscal responsibility. After John Kerry’s defeat, though, moving right could take…
Tax Missimplification
Two days after his re-election, President Bush offered the public some guidance on what he says will be a central goal of his second term: “tax simplification.” Bush said he wants to “encourage people to invest and save,” i.e., he favors still more tax cuts for the rich. He added that he’ll propose a tax…
An Uncertain Trumpet
Whatever pundits say, this election was not a wholesale repudiation of liberalism.
Morals of the Election
What has the past half-century of our history achieved if not a moral transformation? Equal rights and respect for black people have been a moral cause. So, too, have equality for women and open acceptance of gays. Liberals have advocated each of these causes, often turning to the courts when elected leaders were slow to…
