Congrats to Republicans

While the Dems will have lots of new governorships to celebrate, the night belonged to the GOP. I sincerely congratulate them -- they clearly waged a better campaign than anything the Dems were able to put together.

The Dems adopted a strategy of appeasement, and then watched Bush stab all of those Democrats that supported him on the tax cut, or on the Iraq war. All early indications are that the Dem base did not turn out. In NH, Shaheen couldn't even win Manchester! Gov. Barnes of Georgia -- often talked about as a future VP nominee -- lost what seemed like a safe seat to his GOP rival.

And why should the base turn out? Many on this site (not me) were concerned about the Dems' reliance on GOTV. There was no message, many Dems were falling over themselves attempting to appear friendly to Bush's agenda. So the question was, why would the Democratic base -- those most likely to turn out in a midterm election -- go out to vote if their party's candidate was doing his (or her) best to wear Republican stripes?

Perhaps the stars were simply aligned against the Dem, perhaps they would lose regardless their tactics. But they surrendered their agenda and identity and lost as imposters.

All you Republicans who hang out here, here's your chance to crow, but please be respectful. You earned your victory, but there's nothing worse than a sore winner.

As for Democrats, we need to regroup, assess what went wrong, and reorganize for 2004.

I'm signing off for tonight. I am emotionally exhausted. But tomorrow is a new day, and in politics, you never know what tomorrow will bring. The pendelum will swing back our way. But before that happens, the Democratic Party needs to clean house and start over, and it should start with Gephardt and McAuliffe.

Posted November 05, 2002 09:19 PM | Comments (144)