I remember, a few years ago, flipping through the stations on my TV and pausing when I saw Bill Clinton speaking. I've long since forgotten where he was, and when it happened, and even most of what he was saying, but something stuck with me. He was talking about how to run against an incumbent president.
Clinton said that you've got to do two things:
- You've got to take a stand against. Convince the voters that he's doing things wrong. It's pretty common sensical. And Kerry did this, loudly and strongly, after some prodding by Howard Dean. Attacked his economic record, his record on terrorism. The vigor with which he assailed Bush during the debates made this Deaniac proud.
- As important as standing against the incumbent is, standing for something yourself is just as vital. It gets overlooked, Clinton said, but it's true. I think this second part is where Kerry failed. For months we heard how people were getting chilly towards Bush, but that they weren't willing to commit to Kerry. We just sort of assumed that in the end they'd come to him, but they didn't, because Kerry didn't stand for anything.
It's behind the idea of Anybody But Bush. That worked well enough for people on the left so appalled by Bush that they'd be willing to accept a (relatively) centrist Democrat who didn't share their beliefs on gay marriage, trade, etc. But why did we expect that to persuade moderates? They didn't hate Bush like some of us did. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw, that read: "Anybody But Bush... you mean anybody?" No, of course not just anybody.
Kerry stood against Bush. But he never really articulated what he was standing for. There were catch-phrases, of course. And we were told over and over again that he had "a plan". But in the end we didn't hear how he was going to get us out of Iraq or how exactly he was going to manage to get us all good health care. Maybe that was because he couldn't. You can't blame Kerry for there not being any easy way out of Iraq, any cheap way to fix the health care system. But no matter who's fault that was, it meant Kerry had no real positive message.
A big problem is that a lot of the things Democrats do stand for are a difficult sell. Democrats believe in tolerance, which the Republicans like to spin as loose morals. Democrats believe in helping out the disadvantaged, which the Republicans like to call communism. I can understand Kerry being afraid of these issues and the Republican response to them.
But...
What is the Democratic party? What do we stand for? And is what we stand for the same thing as the platform we're running on? When we reject our more liberal values, are we replacing them with anything at all?
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((By the way, this is my first diary entry, so I hope I'm not doing anything wrong. If I am, just tell me and I'll fix it!))