Most of the hand-wringing on the left over the past few days has been about how/whether we lost this election over values, how we can re-frame our issues as being about values, whether the values frame is a winger plot, etc.
But forget about values.
What about national security? The war in Iraq and the war on terror were at least as important, if not more so, in this election, and Kerry's loss doesn't portend good things in the short or long term about how those issues will affect Dem prospects.
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Bush defied both evidence and logic when he conflated the war in Iraq with the war on terror. Even for folks who thought the war was a good thing to start, it would seem that Bush screwed it up so badly as to deserve the boot. But John Kerry already made those points, effectively if not perfectly. And he lost.
So for the short term, what are we left with: to keep harping on those losing points? To hope that something even more horrific happens, and wakes folks up? And if the Iraq war didn't cost Bush the election in 2004, it's hard to imagine it hurting the Republicans more in 2006 and 2008, when the US is sure to be pulling out (even if it's a very sloooow pull out).
As for the wider war on terror, Kerry failed to make the sale there as well, and that issue will clearly be with us longer than the war on Iraq. The problem here is that national security has, since the beginning of the Cold War, been a stronger issue for Repubs than Dems (even tho there have been plenty of hawkish Dems). Arguably, Bill Clinton--the only Dem we've put in the White House in 25 years--was able to win in 1992 partly because Americans didn't feel security worries so acutely after the end of the Cold War. So here, too, the longer term prospects look pretty glum.
If I'm wrong here, somebody please tell me--because otherwise, this just looks like another reason to move to Canada.