John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, authors of the 2002 book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" have written their analysis of the 2004 election in the American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=8955
(As many of you know, Teixeira also operates his own blog:
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/index.php )
The piece in the American Prospect has a lot of interesting demographic data on the election. To a large extent, though, J&T affix blame for the Democrats' loss on Kerry himself:
"...a deeply flawed Democratic opponent"
and
"To make matters worse, Kerry was also incapable of articulating a clear economic message. According to exit polls, while just 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush to handle the economy, only 45 percent trusted Kerry with the job. Kerry's health-care program was incomprehensible except to policy wonks. And he embodied an austere, upper-class New England liberalism that turned off many voters. He lacked a popular touch.
Kerry's failure as a candidate was evident to us in two visits we made to Martinsburg, a small, blue-collar town in West Virginia. We first visited Martinsburg in July, before the Democratic and Republican conventions. At that time, knocking on doors in a working-class neighborhood, we discovered considerable dissatisfaction with Bush over the war in Iraq and the economy. Few people knew Kerry, but they said they were considering voting for him. Visiting Martinsburg two days before the election, we discovered that most of these voters had decided to support Bush. They often mentioned gay marriage and "family values" -- the area is dotted with churches -- and feeling "safer" under Bush. They also thought Kerry was too "liberal," a comment about his "values" rather than his program.
Most of these voters were registered Democrats who had voted for Clinton in '92 and '96. And many of them told us, and Democratic canvassers, that they would have voted for Clinton this time, too. Typically, one voter, who faulted Kerry for being "too liberal" on "family values," said Clinton had been "dishonest," but that he was "an excellent president." When these voters talked about the economy, they were clearly closer to the Democrats than Republicans, but they expressed confusion at what Kerry wanted to do. One older voter said, "Of all the countries today, we are the only one that doesn't have any sort of health-care plan." That sounded like a line from a Democratic ad, but the voter added that he couldn't figure out how Kerry's health plan worked."
As much as I would like elections to be strictly about policy alternatives, I think style, personality, and ability to "connect" with voters is important. Although we don't know how large and/or scientific the set of interviews with WV voters was, I too suspect that a Clinton-type candidate could have won for the Democrats.
I also concur that Kerry didn't express many of his policies with clarity. I followed the campaign extremely closely and if you asked me what Kerry's health care policies were, the most I can come up with is that people could purchase coverage of the same type that U.S. senators and representatives have and that Kerry wanted to move toward universal coverage of children. If I (someone who lives and breathes politics) can only come up with these skeletal concepts, I can see where casual voters would be lost.
Although many of us Democrats ridiculed the '94 GOP "Contract with America" (aka, the "Contract ON America"), having an insert in TV Guide that concisely expresses a list of ten policy stands (as the Republicans did) actually seems like a really good idea.