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A Stunned
Party Looks to the Internal Debate Ahead
By JAMES
BENNET - The New York Times
November 4,
2004
Democrats
began turning Wednesday to the fight that some in the party fear they wage most
consistently: with one another.
Democratic politicians and operatives said the defeat of Senator John Kerry and
the loss of seats in the House and the Senate were likely to fan internal debate
over everything from overarching ideology to on-the-ground tactics to the
qualities to look for in a candidate.
The recriminations began even before Mr. Kerry's concession, with leaks to the
news media about which Democrats had given what valuable but unheeded advice to
him. While condemning any acrimony, several Democratic leaders said the party
would benefit from a substantive internal debate.
''You always take stock after a loss like this, and it was a big
disappointment,'' said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the
longtime House Democratic leader who ran against Mr. Kerry for the presidential
nomination, only to see his labor ties fail to bring him the Iowa victory he had
hoped would propel his candidacy.
Mr. Gephardt argued that the Democrats' failure appeared to be more of tactics
than of programs -- that Mr. Kerry's proposals were popular but that the
Democrats' organization, while impressive, paled beside the Republicans' machine
for turning out votes.
''They used the infrastructure of gun organizations and religious organizations
to get that done,'' he said, ''and we've got to grapple with that.''
But Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who also sought the presidency but who
dropped out before a single primary, said the party had to address some basic
positions as well.
''We ought to debate what our strategy should be in the war on terrorism,'' Mr.
Graham said.
''We also ought to have a debate,'' he said, ''on how we can move the debate on
values beyond God, guns and gays to tolerance, concern for others, love.''
The Democratic Party appeared Wednesday to be trying to find God, or at least to
find a way to talk about him. Several Democrats said their candidates needed to
reach evangelical Christian voters, who on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported
President Bush.
''Our failure -- or our 'drawback' is a better word -- is, sometimes, to speak
to our faith, and to relate to people that we share their faith,'' Mr. Gephardt
said.
One senior Democratic official suggested that the problem was deeper than
communicating.
''I do believe there is a cultural shift going on in this country,'' he said,
speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the
intraparty debate. ''I think the country is becoming more conservative. I think
their base is growing.''
Douglas Sosnik, who was a counselor to President Bill Clinton and who advised
Mr. Kerry, said that contrary to the aftermath of the muddled 2000 election
results, the Democrats now needed to accept that they had become -- ''no ifs,
ands or buts'' -- the opposition party.
''As we go prospectively forward -- to the question of 'now what?' -- to me it's
all going to be stuffed through the prism of what does it mean to be an
opposition party,'' Mr. Sosnik said. ''And to me, being more effective as an
opposition party means being grounded outside the Beltway, through the
governors.''
''We've got to build the party back up from the ground up,'' he said. ''That's
going to require some bloodletting, and a rethinking on substance and style.''
Some argued that the party needed to embrace policies that would appeal to
voters in Southern states and across the country.
''We need to put ideas first,'' said Al From, founder of the centrist Democratic
Leadership Council, which was close to Mr. Clinton. ''Over the last 40 years
we've seen the turf that we compete on shrink. We've got to be a national
party.''
Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster from the same centrist faction of the party,
said, ''The Democratic Party, in terms of security and values, has to be more
competitive with the Republicans, and in that sense the party is going to look
for ways to rebrand itself.''
But Representative Jan Schakowsky
of Illinois said the problem was the Democrats' communication rather than their
traditional platform.
''I don't think we need to trim on the social and economic justice principles of
the Democratic Party at all,'' Ms. Schakowsky
said.
''We can do a better job of connecting that with people's lives, not just their
economic lives but their spiritual lives as well,'' she said. ''It doesn't have
to be in religious terms so much as value-laden terms.''
She said, for example, that she expected that Mr. Bush would now try to
''privatize'' Social Security, and that the Democrats should respond by
emphasizing that they wanted to preserve a ''safety net'' because ''we care for
you.''
Democratic officials seemed stunned by Tuesday's vote. They said they had
thought that for once they had the unity, the money, the organization and a weak
enough Republican opponent to win the presidency and at least hold their own in
the House and the Senate.
''With 120 million people voting, at some point it's got to settle in with us
that there are just more of them than there are of us,'' one Democratic
operative said of the Republicans, adding, ''My greatest fear now is we're going
to turn the guns on each other.''
Several Democrats noted that the party, in belated imitation of the Republicans,
was now building its own infrastructure of policy institutes to generate its
positions and messages. John Podesta, the president of one such organization,
the Center for American Progress, said he hoped that the party would not become
bogged down in its long-running fight over moving left or center.
''There has to be a rearticulation in the party of a sense of core principles
that I think people are confused about,'' said Mr. Podesta, who was chief of
staff in the Clinton White House.
In one Senate race, in Republican-leaning Colorado, Ken Salazar, a Democrat who
supports abortion rights, managed Tuesday to dispatch the beer magnate Pete
Coors. Jim Carpenter, Mr. Salazar's campaign manager, said the candidate, a
Roman Catholic, was ''very clear that his faith was very important to him but he
disagreed with the church on the issue of abortion.'' He said Mr. Salazar's
roots in Colorado as a rancher, his personal success story and his service as
state attorney general had earned him voters' trust, insulating him from
attacks.
''It's difficult,'' Mr. Carpenter said, ''for an East Coast senator to get the
trust of the voters out here.''
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