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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (20357)	11/5/2004 12:29:33 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 90947

rarity - an honest Democrat: Why Dems failed; why they'll recover By CHARLES R. STITH Published on: 11/04/04 ajc.com For Democrats, election 2004 ended the same way as election 2000. We lost. The question haunting the Democratic Party on the morning after a night that held such promise is — what went wrong? Some in the party will be tempted to conclude that despite the loss, we are still smarter than everyone else and the rest of the country just doesn't get it. Not! There are several fairly obvious reasons why we lost the election. First, we lost on the war issue. Our candidate and party spent 80 percent of the time talking about 20 percent of the battle plan in the war against terrorism. Winning the war against fanaticism in the form of terrorism is about substantially more than "hunting down the terrorists and killing them." It is also about more than bringing our allies back into the fold. What's more, once you get beyond the "wrong war, wrong time" rhetoric, Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) position on these two things was not substantively different from President Bush's position. The major strategy question that was all but ignored during the campaign was this: What do we do to expand the circle of support beyond the allies we already have? Let me use an example that I know best — Africa. Since Sept. 11, we have seen extremists infiltrate Kenya and attempt to shoot down a couple of airliners. We have seen extremist elements instigate trouble in Nigeria and Angola, two countries from which we intend to import more oil because of the unrest in the Middle East. All three of these countries are predisposed to trying to make democracy and free-market reform work. What do we need to do to make sure countries such as these succeed? Eighty-nine percent of the countries in Africa have a substantial Muslim presence. If we can't make democracy and free-market reform work in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria, then how do we expect to make it work in Iraq and Afghanistan? If our candidate and party had spent more time talking to the American people about this, we might have been able to give voters something to be for than simply something to be against. The second reason the Democrats failed to capture the White House is the obsession that we've developed about the importance of money in campaigns. At the end of the day it's not money but message that matters. We need a message! And a message is not a platform built with a hodgepodge of platitudes to placate disparate special interests. A message is something that appeals to the best within us and inspires us to pursue the highest ideals that are the bedrock of our country. The third reason the party lost is leadership, or lack thereof. Let's face it, the present crew leading the Democratic National Committee has been a disaster. Despite the moaning and groaning about having had the 2000 election stolen from us, we've lost the White House twice under near-ideal conditions in which to win. We've lost ground in the Senate and the House. The present leadership of the DNC should do the honorable thing and resign, or they should be given the boot. The best days of the Democratic Party over the last 30 years were when the late Ron Brown was at the helm. If the Democratic Party wants to recover, maybe it needs to look for another Ron Brown. Single-party dominance is not good for the nation. Revival of the Democratic Party is critical not only for the party but for the nation. Lord Acton was right: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Having said that, the revival of the party won't happen by fiat. What I've outlined isn't all that the Democratic Party needs to do, but it is certainly the place to start. • Charles R. Stith was U.S. ambassador to Tanzania during the Clinton administration. Charles R. Stith directs the African Presidential Archives and Research Center in Boston.