I don’t believe the Democrats are capable of introspection at a national level; they’re too deep in denial. Zell Miller is not the first, or even the latest, to castigate them for their arrogance, reactionary attitudes and moral confusion. Self-examination just doesn’t seem acceptable to them. Nationally, they appear too corrupt, too cocooned and too captive to big-money special interests to embrace the changes confronting them. Think about this - whose candidate campaigned on returning to the America of the 1990’s, and who articulatied a vision for the 21st century?

I think if change is to come to their Party, it must come from the state organizations; from the bottom up. In the meantime, their Titantic has hit the iceberg and is taking on water. I suspect they’ll replace the Captain (throwing the old one to the sharks) and attempt to convince the passengers that isn’t seawater swirling around their ankles.

Expect the real moonbats to jump ship.

I agree, the Dems are to arrogant. They believe and think that way. They won’t change, they have to be made insignificant (and they are doing it to themselves). They are wired to think differently, and I doubt the hardcore left will ever surrender. Let us not forget, these people, including Kerry truly believe that the communists had it right, just didn’t have enough time or the right leaders to make it work. They deeply want the US to be just another country. The whining about "reaching out" is a load of balderdash to get us to drop our guard. This is the problem with Republicans/conservatives. They are truly good people that want to reach out and include everyone and don’t have the hardball attitude to press an advantage for the big picture. Look at what happened in ’94 with the government shutdown. The House had the advantage and squandered it because they did not know how to exploit a win. This is a problem, because to beat them you have to play their scurrilous game by their win at all cost rules. And that makes us as bad (or maybe even worse than)them. A conundrum, to be sure.
As for Obama, no thanks, just a slicker more dangerous version of the above. Ambassador Keyes really had no chance. He is a deeply honest man, a stirring speaker and a brilliant intellect. But he was abysmally under financed, and having to "play the game" as stated above is something he won’t do.

Bush had substance and a plan.
Kerry had slogans
-WRONG WAR, WRONG TIME (but I support our troops and will defend america)
-4 MORE YEARS OF THE SAME THING (and my option with you is "We can do better")
-ANYONE BUT BUSH (how about this one
" Don’t like neder so i’m voting nader"
-VOTE OR DIE (can anyone say gangsta)
-ROCK THE VOTE (free concert)

I think the media will be spinning for weeks trying to figure out what went wrong with THEIR RIGGED CAMPAIGN, or am I the only one who realized that everyone but the actual american people wanted to get Bush out of office.

I personally voted for Bush because I felt i could trust him. When I listened to Kerry all that flashed thru my mind was a used-car salesman

"Don’t like neider so I’m voting Nader

The continued zombie-like obedience of Senate Democrats to the abortion lobby’s demand for scorched-earth tactics against Bush’s judicial nominees is a case in point.

Bush wrapped this issue around their necks in 2002 and it helped him to run the table and pull off the stunning feat, against all conventional wisdom, of helping his party actually gain seats in a midterm election.

Did Leahy, Daschle, Schumer, and the rest of the "in the pocket of Planned Parenthood" crowd learn anything from that debacle? Plainly not, and so we see Daschle cleaning out his desk courtesy of the SD voters.

How many blue Senators from red states will be up for these tricks when Bush sends over more nominees--esp for the SCOTUS? I can think of at least four such Dems--Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Bill Nelson--who should consider long and hard whether they want to keep this filibuster strategy going.

The bold nader comment should not have been on the end.
Please excuse the first time user mistake.
Love the website and Blog,keep up the good work.
I can’t believe I’m in the majority.

This election boiled down to a battle between the past and the future. Unfortunately for them, the Democrats are a party trapped in the past. They continue to look at the US as if it were the same country it was 40 years ago. Their policies--centralized government, wealth redistribution, regulation, etc.--are really only applicable to an industrialized society. But today the US is an information/technology society which lends itself more to decentralized goverment, wealth creation and deregulation. The Republicans and the American people understand this. The Democrats don’t, which is why they will continue to lose and lose badly.

Obama is not a moderate. He’s just as liberal, if not more so, than your average Lefty. His voting recordin the Illinois Senate bears that out (his proposed health care plan was more socialist than Hillary’s). The only thing Obama brings to the table is more leveled rhetoric to his liberalism than the Michael Moore’s of the world. But make no mistake, his values are very much in line with the far left of the party.

Ditto on Obama. That guy is as left as they come. He’s just smarter about it. That in and of itself demonstrates the problems with the modern Democratic Party. Are you a socialist, but one who does not believe in the armed overthrow of the ruling class? Well then, you must be a "moderate."

Try running that guy nationwide, with his voting record under public scrutiny. He won’t last a week.

First off, the Democrats need to purge the party of kooks like Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter and all those others who hate America and turn off the American people.

Second, they need to stop running liberal candidates from Massachusetts or other Northeastern states. I think they should also avoid liberals from California, Washington or Oregon.

Third, they need to run a candidate who has some executive branch experience as a governor who has been around a while. Senators are bad candidates, period.

Fourth, they need to pick a candidate who understands the South. Edwards may have been a Southerner but he certainly didn’t understand the South and the southern states saw right threw his perfect hair and toothpaste smile. Edwards and BIll Moyers may be Southerners but they don’t understand the South. If they didd this they would be able to peel off a couple of Southern states.

Finally, they need to back off offending the vast majority of religious people. They need more people who are pro-life and more religion friendly. They also need to really think about gay marriage and try and steer the decision to the people rather than the courts. In my opinion, that is what really cheeses people, the courts making the decision about this issue and other issues. I think the abortion issue would have been essentially settled if the Supreme Court left it up to the states to decide. I think the death penalty, which arouses just as many emotions as abortion is pretty much a settled issue and doesn’t pop up too often as a national issue.

Continuing my previous post, my thoughts are not incredibly insightful or inspired; anybody with a bit of common sense could figure them out. All in all, I just don’t see the Democrats doing any of these things.

This is not to say that the Democrats will morph into the Republican Party. They could still have different ideas about domestic economic issues, some social issues and even foreign policy but there would be a few issues where the parties would be the same. It might drive out a sizable minority of leftists but I think they would make up for those loses with the new members.

The Democrats need to look into the history of the Republican Party in the 1930’s. At that time the Republocans refused to take seriously the two defining issues of that decade: the depression and its effects on working families and the rise of fascism in Europe that eventually led to WWII. In each case the Republicans, especially those in the Senate, refused to confront those issues and continually pestered and hasseled FDR who, at least saw the wisdom of dealing with American’s economic problems (even though some of his solutiions were whacky) and that (like GWB today)fascism had to be confronted if America were to be safe. For their obtuseness on these matters the Republican Party was marginalized for the next two generations. Yes, the GOP elected two presidents (Ike and Nixon) during that time (1932-1980), but the Democratic Party actually set the national agenda and developed programs to carry it out. Now the Democrats find themselves about to be similarly marginalized because they refused to take the war on terror seriously. They blew it in 2002 when they viewed the Homeland Security legislation as another opportunity for log rolling pork. That cost Max Cleland his seat. This time around they lost five more senate seats. It could be quite a while before American is ready to trust the Democrats with such serious matters as national security. And because the only Democrats with national reputations are in congress, they really have little bench strength from which to produce a credible presidential candidate. They will be a long time in exile and until the baby boom Democrats leave the stage I doubt that any of them will do the soul searching that will be necessary for any kind of comeback.

Chicago Guy,

I hear you on Obama. I know he’s a lib. But that’s kinda my point. He’s all they’ve got and that won’t get them too far. If he’s at all successful, he’ll have to stay as measured in his rhetoric as he has so far and he probably won’t be able to do that and get through the primaries. They are between a rock and a hard place. Plus they have the added problem that guys like us will not allow another slick Willie to get through disguising his underlying liberalism. The blogosphere and the new media will expose the lies and the deceptions. It’s a new day!

Bruce, your comments and generalizations frighten me. To say that all Democrats are arrogant and that all Republicans are trying to reach out and help people is ridiculous. Yes, some crazy radicals believe that communism was the "way to go", but just because the majority believe in things like government-run social security and a lot of them like universal health care, doesn’t necessarily make them all socialist bastards! Many people make these sorts of insane generalizations. Democrats do it too. It is not because the Democrats truly want to "make America a different county" or because Democrats won’t change their way of thinking that is keeping America polarized. It is because there are people like you, who make irrational, illogical, and unbased comments in blogs (that I pray you really don’t believe) that help to fuel this great divide in our country. Way to go . . . *sigh* . . . I wish I was old enough to drink . . .

Matt, stop working on that fake ID, step away from the bottle, and don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

PS: While I’m also not sure I’d endorse everything that Bruce said about communism and so on, there is nonetheless some evidence that Kerry and his Vietnam Veterans Against the War group acted as a communist "agents of influence" on behalf of the North Vietnamese regime and its Viet Cong affiliate.

You can review some recently unearthed documentary evidence of the relationship between the VVAW and the communists who were killing American soldiers at https://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=puppets