Ripon College Days

Issue date: 11/17/04 Section: Opinion

I come not to bury John Kerry but to praise him. The simple fact is that Kerry did not lose the election- George Bush won it. Kerry kept his base, winning 90% of the liberal vote, and won self-described moderate voters by a whopping ten points, a pop-the-champagne, don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass-on the-way-out-George number in most elections. George Bush won because he won among conservatives, and there were simply more of them than there were of us. That's all.

So the concern for us Democrats lies not with quibbles over tactics, with what-ifs over Dean or Clark or Edwards, with recriminations over a sleazy opposition campaign. All things considered, we did about as well as we could. Our job is to figure out how to shift the political ground beneath us these next two to four years, while facing a larger Republican majority than before. There are plenty of issues involved, but one dwarfs all the rest, and it's something you, I, and our party leaders can do together.

We must be active, not reactive. George Bush is an execrable President by any liberal standard and a number of objective ones, and we should keep pointing that out. I certainly don't intend to deny myself the pleasure of teeing off on him in this space. But it's clear that Democrats can't win on that alone, and it's not going to do much good for us or our Congressional allies to throw tomatoes at tanks these next four years. If the Republicans really want something, they've got the numbers to do it.

So instead of talking about what the Republicans are and we're not, let's talk more about what we are and the Republicans aren't. Tax cuts for the rich are wrong from both a moral and economic standpoint, but the crux of the issue isn't that the rich don't need the money; it's that other people do. The crux of the issue isn't that this President is to the environment what General Sherman was to Atlanta; it's that our grandchildren deserve a safe and healthy life of their own. Democrats want those things, and the policies Republicans are now pursuing show that they don't. That's what matters.

Politics is cyclical. Right now we're in a conservative era, but this election isn't the beginning of the cycle, it's the crest. I see many parallels to 1964, when decisive winner Lyndon Johnson went on to govern as liberally as America had ever seen. And what did those four years of unchecked power bring about for Democrats? Richard Nixon and, eventually, Ronald Reagan, the yin to Johnson's yang and the Obi Wan to W's Anakin. Every political movement eventually exhausts itself, overreaches, and generates a backlash of equal or greater strength. A movement's greatest victory often heralds its greatest defeat, and chances are the walls are going to collapse on this conservative movement sooner rather than later.

When that time comes, I don't just want vindication. I don't want to show those voters who elected Bush that they were wrong, I want to show them what's right. So instead of simply decrying the travesty that will be these years of unfettered conservative governance, let's show Americans that a better option exists. When Bush unveils his ill-conceived social security privatization plan, you, me, and every Democrat in Congress should spend less time criticizing his plan and more time endorsing our own. When Bush blabbers on about killing the terrorists who hate freedom because they're a bunch of freedom-hating freedom-haters or something, don't mock his clumsy approach toward terror, argue that there's another, better option. We're not going to win these battles right now, and considering we don't have clear, agreed-upon alternatives for those two issues at the ready, our leaders have work to do and consensus to build. But if we make the effort, when the inevitable backlash begins we'll have laid the foundation for a progressive movement that can show how to achieve a cleaner environment, a more just tax code, a more effective war on terror and more, rather than just continuing to point out, as we will have seen under George W. Bush, how not to. Let's get working.

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