BOSTON -- SURROUNDED by tens of thousands of boisterous Kerry supporters, Jon Bon Jovi strummed a sweet rendition of "living on a prayer." Unfortunately, by the end of the night, a prayer appeared to be all John Kerry was hanging on to. While at press time (about 4:00 a.m.) the exact outcome of the election was unknown, Ohio looks to tip in Bush's favor and give him the election. Compounded with the multiple Democratic Senate and House defeats, the question must once again be asked: What went wrong?
Ohio is an interesting case study, because a state which has lost 230,000 jobs over the past four years and has been the target of exceptionally heavy Kerry campaigning looks as if it is going to rebuff every Democratic advance. Yet those jobs were lost in the urban centers of Ohio, in Dayton and Cleveland, not the rural areas which seem to have voted in droves for the president. There must be something fundamentally unappealing about a Democratic candidate in these areas, and the evidence for that may be found down South.
The entire South invariably votes Republican. As a result, the GOP candidate starts with nearly 100 electoral votes in his column almost automatically, putting the Democrat at a huge disadvantage. Behind this trend is a deeper issue: Rural whites (which heavily populate the South and key areas of states like Ohio) perceive the Democrats as dovish, equivocating, immoral liberals who want to take all their money and use it to sanction gay marriage. The Democratic Party cannot afford to completely write off these sections of the population, because those people are killing them at the polls.
There is no longer a problem of firing up the base. The cheering crowd braving the sporadic rain to come out and support Kerry was enough to restore one's faith in democracy, and certainly spoke to the strength of the core. This defeat -- or, if Kerry pulls it out, incredibly narrow victory -- must prove to the Democrats that the 2002 drubbing was not a fluke, and that they must develop a new doctrine for a new era. Tucker Carlson, bowtie and all, made one good point: The Republicans wandered in no-man's land for a dozen years after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, but it forced them to develop a concrete ideology. The Democrats face slightly different problems, but a re-examination of the party's values and how it packages them must be undertaken. If the inability to unseat an incumbent carrying around his neck a war based on misleading intelligence, sputtering economy and general inability to form a coherent sentence is not enough of a wake-up call, the party may be doomed.
Ohio should never have even been competitive. Given everything that Kerry had going for him and everything that Bush had going against him, the fact that the state is decisive is a harbinger of the Democrats' continued plunge. Moreover, Ohio is only playing the role it is because Kerry could not secure Florida. Nearly across the board, Kerry did worse than Gore in 2000; considering the train wreck that has been the past four years, that's pathetic.
What are the possible solutions? Not allowing the Republicans to set the terms of the debate would be a good place to start. They want to talk about gay marriage? Fine. Democrats should talk about college loan subsidies while the compassionate conservative is railing against a loving couple seeking survivor benefits. Similarly, making arguments couched in terms of self-interest would do much to shed the negative image of liberals run amuck. Foreign aid, never a popular proposition at home, should be talked about in terms of spreading freedom and thereby preventing terrorism. Instead, Democrats inevitably talk about our duty to be the beacon for liberty abroad.
If there was one thing we learned last night, it was that democracy is alive and well. It was truly heartening to see a nation that cared, a nation that realized how critical politics can be to our daily lives. Still, the silence that descended upon Copley Square after NBC called Ohio for Bush was as if the Red Sox had suddenly not won the World Series -- a disquieting, queasy feeling of "how could this have happened?" If the Democrats don't take this experience and use it to foster change, the chances are good of a repeat performance come 2006.
Elliot Haspel is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached ehaspel@cavalierdaily.com. He was in Boston for Election Day.
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