This same moment of utter vacuum occurred in December 2000. Democrats were so filled with sef-loathing and anguish. we didn't know what to do or how to continue.
I wrote a post then that I did not fully develop -- it was and had to be naive, because it was a big dream about what we all want. But let me walk through it again.
We here at dKos love politics, or love some aspect of it -- for me it is the good guys vs bad guys theme. But other people, around the country, do not get that at all. Why? Because we do not seem like good people to them. We seem self-indulgent, self-righteous, antagonistic to actually good people, etc. We seem juvenile.
I think our hour as New Deal Democrats may be over. May have been over with the Nixon administration, in fact. All this time we've been flailing, wondering what a "people's party" does when its people get sucked away by a clever strategist like Buchanan or Atwater or Rove.
Are we doomed to be picked clean by our enemies? (Hubert Humphrey himself said, Yes -- it is a sign that Democrats are succeeding that their members become Republicans!)
So the grand coalition doesn't hold. "Populism" ebbs as the other side steals our exhortation points. Leaving us wondering who the hell we are.
What if we are the people who tell the truth, who do not stoop to fearmongering?
I liked John Kerry, but I could feel my red light blinking when he would manipulate voters at the end -- about the draft, about Medicare, about terrorism. There was some logic to it, but it was transparent, too,in its desire to twist and deceive.
What if we were no good at that? What if we laid it on the table and became a genuinely virtuous party, not one forever posing as one?
Democrats are the party who live by Christ's Beatitudes -- we should be more serious about that.
If the future is a neo-theocracy, as I think it will be, we must adapt to that. And maybe the place to start is in our own hearts. Are we "good" because we think we are good, or because we are certain the other guys are very, very bad?
I think we do have some magnificent people and examples on our side. I always loved Mo Udall and Jimmy Carter -- it killed me that they had to run against each other. I always admired Hubert Humphrey. Not a great politician, but he understanood service, and he had a terrific "for the people" ethic that no one seems to remember.
I remember Robert Kennedy's fascinating evolution from a jerk into a good man. And people got that -- they lined the highways to see a man who understood change because he himself was changing.
We should be the party of good men and women, trying earnestly to do right by one another, a step or two beyond what the "ins" want.
Make that contrast stick. Have a code about telling the truth, so every speechwriter for every candidate at every level gets it. When a Democrat gets too tricky, turn our backs on him or her. Be true to something ... anything ... and the thing we pine for so -- connecting with our bothers and sisters in America, from whom we feel so alienated -- might actually happen.
I know it sounds like Frank Capra ... and I know, Karl Rove would blush with pleasure at the prospect of us laying down our arms.
But shit, if you can't aspire to goodness from the slough of defeat, when do you? And what good is this defeat if we don't learn from it?