If you compare the exits polls of 2000 and 2004 they're remarkably similar -- but the difference that pushed Bush over the edge is this: In 2000, exit polls broke down the electorate this way: 21% liberal, 50% moderate, 29% conservative. In 2004, some moderates moved rightward: 21% liberal, 45% moderate, 34% conservative. This a large and dismaying shift but not earth-shattering considering 9/11 and the incumbency (and there's also the possibility that many moderates weren't as motivated to turnout as conservatives and liberals, thus decreasing their share).
Trying to win over the conservative 1/3 of voters is a lost cause and playing down your differences with the hope that some of them with stay home seems naive. Where the Democrats lost this election was by carrying moderates by only 9%, 1% less than Gore. If the Democrats were able to make the case about just how radical, ideological and fundamentalist the Bush administration really is and just what is at stake with them taking over all three branches of government I'm confident enough moderates would have broke towards Kerry to carry the election.
The reality is that while the "nascar dads", "soccer moms", blah, blah may be socially conservative and instinctively distrustful of Democrats, many if not most are not fundamentalists and don't want government butting in their lives.
If this analysis holds, the path forward for the Democrats seems clear: to become the party of the not-Fundamentalists, the party of freedom and pragmatism and paint the republican party as one of dogmatism and social control. If voters see that as the choice, Democrats will win by a landslide. They'll have to get good at the politics of fear, but I don't have qualms about that if the fear is well-founded. Find some wedge issues that the republicans, having been taking over by the religious right, won't be able to shake -- stem cell research comes to mind. And one benefit of this strategy is that it avoids the traditional conflict between energizing the base and appealing to moderates -- demonizing extremists will rally the base too.
-- adam
On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:28:35 -0500, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [I agree with this up to a point. But we can't duck on the "cultural
> issues." "We" might be able to win a few elections narrowly by
> pursuing a more populist economic agenda - though the capacity of the
> right to red-bait that stuff is still considerable - but it's not a
> guarantee. "We" have to take on the Christian right if we want to
> make this a better country. I don't know how, but just changing the
> subject isn't enough. RIght-wing populism, which has deep roots in
> America, has long hated elites for some bad reasons, like their
> cosmopolitanism and Jewishness. Rove didn't invent this stuff; he's
> got lots of raw material to work with.]
>
> New York Times - November 5, 2004
>
> Why They Won
> By THOMAS FRANK
>
> The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes
> over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the
> culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon
> championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro
> Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every
> election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning,
> treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed
> to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even
> the war in Iraq.
>
> And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting
> this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they
> "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to
> the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and
> welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican
> militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in
> Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury
> at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory
> gestures or the passage of time.
>
> Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is
> rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people
> whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the
> already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are
> rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call
> into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make
> mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow
> the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.
>
> Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It
> presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a
> haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our
> newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the
> bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives,
> without any consideration for our values or traditions.
>
> The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the
> ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans
> to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems
> for their core big-business constituency.
>
> Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the
> Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism,
> creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to
> antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really,
> at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an
> enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation
> before it started.
>
> Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class
> victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some
> time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been
> enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the
> party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and
> embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new,
> business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from
> idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They
> imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in
> some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the
> "retro" Republican Party.
>
> Yet this would have been a perfect year to give the Republicans a
> Trumanesque spanking for the many corporate scandals that they have
> countenanced and, in some ways, enabled. Taking such a stand would
> also have provided Democrats with a way to address and maybe even
> defeat the angry populism that informs the "values" issues while
> simultaneously mobilizing their base.
>
> To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents,
> Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues
> with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own
> majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the
> distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them;
> emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of
> ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses
> from conservative economic policy.
>
> What is more likely, of course, is that Democratic officialdom will
> simply see this week's disaster as a reason to redouble their efforts
> to move to the right. They will give in on, say, Social Security
> privatization or income tax "reform" and will continue to dream their
> happy dreams about becoming the party of the enlightened corporate
> class. And they will be surprised all over again two or four years
> from now when the conservative populists of the Red America, poorer
> and angrier than ever, deal the "party of the people" yet another
> stunning blow.
>
> Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with
> Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America."
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