All the analyses floating around say John Kerry lost the election because people "morally" identified with Bush. Why? It goes back to the same problem we had in 2002. Democrats are trying to convince middle america that we match up to and share their "morals," when we need to be out there pointing out that their "morals" are pretty fucking immoral.
I will proceed to get increasingly incensed about this after the break.
Number one case in point: John Kerry says gay marriage is a state issue. All of his advisors tell him it's a nice way to nuance the issue without alienating any voters. Here's the thing, though: it's complete bullshit and anyone who believes it is 150 years behind the times. We fought a fucking Civil War over this issue, and the 14th Amendment states pretty clearly that denying rights to certain classes of citizens is not a fucking state issue. And the Republicans can't very well deny it, when their platform implicitly assumes that marriage rights are guaranteed by the Constitution (otherwise, why would you seek an amendment).
Here's an idea for a campaign: when someone uses the phrase "activist judge," confront them on it. "I want judges who are active in upholding the Constitution and your constitutional rights. My opponent wants passive judges [what else should we construe as the opposite of activist?] who will let your rights be trampled and the Constitution be shredded."
Here's the thing, John [and now to get really melodramatic I'll rhetorically address Kerry directly]: I was really excited about you, and I fought hard for you, and I thought you'd make a great President. You've made the right decisions throughout your public service and you have the capacity to be a great leader. But you ran a terrible campaign. Your problem was, you don't really trust or respect the American people, and they can sense that. A candidate that respected the American people wouldn't set out to conform to the opinions of the middle, but instead would set out to CHANGE those opinions. I'm not saying Bush did, either. It's a terrible problem with our whole system. No one's willing to say, the polls indicate a majority of Americans are against gay marriage, but it doesn't matter, because it's the right thing to do, and HERE'S WHY... I think the American people would respect that, and what's more, we would create a national dialog that would lead to substantive change in the coming years.
So here's my point for the future. In the past couple elections, we were confronted with an increasingly tight race, and we responded with the strategy of "let's be as much like the other side as possible, but with enough little changes that we can swing a few voters in the middle." So did the other guys. In fact, that's been pretty much the way of elections since the Reagan years. And we're going to have a tight race again in four years. But let's not take our lesson from the Clinton/Bush model of "pick the right message to swing that one pocket constituency of soccer/security moms and get that 50%+1 voter." Instead, lets take our lesson from Harry Truman. Faced with what seemed like an impossible reelection battle, he created the most progressive platform seen to date (go back and read the '48 platform, it's still inspiring: the first civil rights promises, universal health care!, etc.) and took it around the country with his whistle-stop tour and convinced Americans one-on-one that he had the right plan for America. That's what I want to see from my next candidate.
The wrong way to go about it is to pick the group of voters we want to capture first, and then tell them what we think they want to hear. The right way to go about it is to pick our issues first, based on what is RIGHT (and don't be afraid to say it that way: the American people aren't afraid of our values, they're afraid that we don't have any), and then set about convincing the voters that our values are the right ones.
Give 'em hell, Harry.