Wow. It's not that often to read an opinion on '04 similar to ours. Good read.

[beachmom]

http://www.leftinthewest.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1910

4 years ago, the Democrats had a candidate for President who would be considered terrific by almost any metric. Multiply decorated war hero, eloquent speaker, intelligent, life devoted to public service with a metric buttload of experience under the direct tutelage of a Democratic party icon. He had solid credentials on most every issue supported by the Democratic party. John Kerry should have creamed W. He obviously didn't.

After the month-long shock wore off for most Democrats, the dissection began, and we all got to watch damn near every Democrat on the continent convince themselves that John Kerry was a weak candidate. 'He was tepid' (the word I was most astounded by), 'he didn't fight back when attacked', 'he didn't campaign hard enough' I don't believe any of those accusations to be true or factual. There are reasons that John Kerry lost (failure to run a 50 state campaign, shenanigans in Ohio, ...) but the weak blame laid in his lap by Democrats struck me then as now to be little more than CYA. for the last several years, a collective amnesia seems to have taken hold, where John Kerry will take a strong stand on something, and Democrats will say, "gosh, where was that John Kerry when he was running for President?" That was the John Kerry that ran for President, we were just focused on the gotcha instead of the winning. There are things that John Kerry could have done better, but there's one helluva lot that Democrats could have done better.

Ya' see, The republicans were right about one thing. Most Democrats were clearly focused on "anybody except Bush". I think if we'd have nominated a platypus, the polling likely would have remained the same. (Yes, I know that's an exaggeration.) In the actual analysis of the election, what swung the vote for Bush were the so-called "Security Moms", women who self describe as Independents or even Democrats, but just didn't trust John Kerry to defend Precious Q. Snowflake from the 'terrists'. The funny part is, I don't think those people, because it wasn't just women who voted on that weak distrust, needed John Kerry to convince them of his strengths. They wanted their Kerry-voting neighbors to show the confidence in the candidate that they themselves lacked. Sadly, we were all either sharing their distrust or too damn busy attacking Bush (ANYBODY BUT BUSH!) to actually, you know, support our candidate. That's why Kerry lost. Not because he was a tepid candidate, but because we Democrats showed tepid support. Our support of our ideals was plenty strong, but in a Republic, if you don't imbue those ideals into a candidate, you lose. And we did.

The question remains, did we learn anything from that. Some of us did. Howard Dean formulated the 50 state strategy, which Barack Obama effectively used to defeat a very powerful primary opponent. I think most of us learned that the change we want and need isn't going to happen overnight. It will take more and better Democrats, and that's a long hard slog.

Some Democrats, on the other hand, don't seem to have learned a damn thing. They are still fixated on ideas that don't work; thinking that one candidate with the proper party credentials will 'win the game'; thinking that America boils down to Ohio, Michigan and Florida, and thinking that anything is better than a Republican in the White House. In other words, they are fixated on an ideal of the Democratic party and it's candidates that has shown a remarkable aptitude for failure, (even in the primary just past.) And in the most remarkable of almost Republican twists, they project their own short-sighted idealism onto their opponents.

It is my opinion that it is well passed the time for Democrats to wake up to few realities. No candidate will embody everything you want and more. The realities of politics are not such that each person gets what they want. Seemingly since Ronald Reagan, Americans have carried a national delusion that our President needs to be just like us, and give us everything that we ask for, or that person is unworthy of our support. Our sense of individualism appears to overridden our reason, at which point all we have to hang onto is our idealism. That is a national zeitgeist custom made for Republican victory and service to those most well heeled to manipulate that idealism. The reality is that we are not special little snowflakes. We won't get everything we want, and our desires for ourselves cannot trump the good of the country as carried out by the candidates we elect. Speaking personally, I don't want politicians who 'feel my pain'. I want politicians who will do something about it ... for all of us. Those are the people to whom I will give my whole hearted support.

Which brings us to the present. The Democrats have another candidate who is, by most metrics, terrific. He has a track record of building consensus. He is possibly one of the best public speakers of modern times. His ideas are soundly in the camp of the Democratic platform. He has international appeal as well as an appeal to minority voters. He is young, attractive and energetic. And he's running against a lobbyist- gelded dinosaur that he should quite easily crush.

However, Democrats being Democrats, we're already looking for ways to snatch defeat from the angry jaws of victory. .....

[MBS]

1. oh, this looks terrific.Thanks. n/t

[Luftmensch067]

2. Manna in the desert...

It still makes me cry when anyone "not in our group" recognizes the truth about JK and how excellent he was and is. It just seems like more people should care enough to "get it" and when someone does, it's like a miracle!

[wisteria]

3. Nice find. It is good to know we are not alone in knowing JK was a great candidate

and it was the party that in many ways let him down. It still hurts to think what might have been. Lets hope that many Democrats learned a lesson from 2004 and recognize how important it is to support our candidates and fight hard for them.