>I do not think it is the issue of leadership or at least leadership
>alone. It is the question of the majoritarian system that favors the
>lowest common denominator approach to public policy and effectively
>excludes minority interest representation.
>Republicans have been very successful in tying their narrow pro-business
>agenda to those issues of personal concen (security, quality of life,
>economic prosperity etc.) - the only personal concern issue that they
>did not exploit so well was reproductive freedom.
Plenty of minorites get their views heard in our politics-- the Christian Right is a minority but get representation through the GOP. Pluralism allows all sorts of bargaining by different factions, so I don't buy that as an answer.
Elections tend towards appealing to the undecided, so there is a safe option of mudding your message, but the Dems hardly sounded factionalized in the key elections, just incoherent without a clear message. Instead of running on a promise of prescription drugs, jobs programs and other concrete majoritarian gains for the public-- and admitting that cutting back on some of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy would be necessary over time-- they chose to run a largely negative campaign, hoping that if people were pissed at the GOP, they would vote Dem by default. McBride in Florida was the purest example of this strategy but others were similar.
It might have worked marginally. Despite pundit pronouncments, we are talking less than a hundred thousand votes nationwide deciding control of three or four Senate seats the GOP won. So it could have gone either way.
But for any serious gains, the Dems needed to make a case for a positive alternative to mobilize its base AND win over frustrated undecideds looking for concrete things. The Dems didn't deliver.
-- Nathan