Democratic soul-searching overdue . . .

5 November 2004

Massachusetts really is different.

Here Democrats dominate. Elsewhere the Republican Party continues its apparently inexorable ascendance.

You've got to feel sorry for Gov. Mitt Romney. He sets a modest mission for himself: Add a few friendly faces to the state Legislature. Certainly he could have used them. With only 23 Republicans in the House and seven in the Senate, he wasn't even close to being able to sustain a veto. Plus, the chattering classes all thought it a good idea. One-party government isn't healthy, they said. A re-energized Massachusetts GOP would make for better politics and policy.

And so, backed by party money and Romney's personal influence, more Republican candidates ran this time around than have since 1990. And the result?

A loss of one seat in the state Senate; a loss of two in the House.

Blame Romney's inattention if you want. On the hustings for George W. Bush, he didn't spend enough quality time with the boyos (and goyos - there were Republican women running as well). And the GOP's TV ads were hardly big motivators, either. They sounded like promo pieces for Romney - a nice set-up for his anticipated 2006 re- election bid, but not much use right now.

But none of these really explains why Romney's mission failed. The fact is, here in Massachusetts we like Democrats. Romney's agenda - anti-gay marriage, anti-tax, anti-Beacon Hill - inspired few. Yes, we do keep electing Republican governors, largely because they serve as a check on all the Democrats we also put in office. But we don't particularly buy into the Republican line.

The rest of the country does.

There will doubtless be a slew of excuses forthcoming for John Kerry's failure to win the presidency. His pollster, Mark Mehlman, argued this week that it's pretty much impossible to defeat a wartime incumbent - and anyway, he noted, the economic misery index under Bush wasn't all that bad anyway. (Too bad Mehlman didn't point this out months ago; we could have avoided the pesky Democratic National Convention altogether.)

Others will lay the blame on Kerry himself. He wasn't charismatic enough, they'll say. Unlike Bush he couldn't connect with ordinary people. On top of that, Kerry really was wishy-washy. Even Democratic loyalists had a hard time figuring out where he stood on Iraq. And what exactly was his domestic agenda?

And then there are the if-onlys. If only college students had shown up. If only poll watchers hadn't been able to intimidate minority voters. If only provisional ballots had all been counted.

All true. Bush had an incumbent's advantages. Kerry wasn't a particularly compelling candidate. Small changes in turnout could have swung Ohio. But all of these excuses avoid the real issue, one which Democrats are deeply reluctant to acknowledge. Voters in Massachusetts may genuinely share their values. Voters elsewhere do not.

To me, the truly striking result on election night was not Kerry's loss but rather the GOP's congressional gains. Instead of losing the Senate, as was once widely predicted, Republicans added four seats. In the House, they added three more; the GOP now enters the second decade it has controlled that body. Democratic luminaries like Senate minority leader Tom Daschle lost while Republican loonies like Jim Bunning won. Democrats had assured us that new voters were just itching to vote their way. Well, those new voters came out in droves and guess what? Bush and Cheney received 8.7 million more votes than they did in 2000 and Republicans won office most everywhere.

Face it, Democrats. The country has gone GOP. Without a president and without the Congress, the Democrats are now more marginalized than ever, cast in the role of mere observers to the Republican show. If the party wants to do more than run the politics of Massachusetts and a few other states, Democrats need to do something beyond sitting around and hoping the Republicans mess up. The party needs to rethink who and what it is.

What magic do the Republicans have - and what magic are Democrats missing? How is it that Republicans created such a nice, big tent while that of the Democrats is in tatters? How is it that the party that thinks of itself as representing the common folk is so soundly rejected by those same common folk? What drives them away? Economics, morals, libertarianism, religion? Michael Moore or MoveOn.org? Al From or Al Sharpton?

Addressing these questions will be hard, wrenching work. It will mean developing a vision that is something more than another shopping cart full of goodies for various constituencies. It will mean challenging - and sometimes upsetting - long-time supporters. It will require reaching out to those who think the party has abandoned them.

It's not impossible. Tony Blair managed it brilliantly in England when he transformed the Labor Party. But time is short - there are now just four years until the next presidential election. And answering these questions means first acknowledging that something is deeply wrong.