squidpants

so the Democrats got pretty thoroughly trounced. My first reaction was "I want to see some heads roll," namely the Democratic leadership, and I was glad Tom Daschle lost, since to me, an outsider, it seemed like he didn't do much. The Democrats kept losing and losing, and I think we need a change. But this is tough stuff, what is the party going to do? I think they should sharpen their agenda and make a "Contract for America" type of thing like the Republicans used so effectively in '94. One of my biggest complaints (echoed by my roommate) was that there wasn't really a vision in this election, it was "George W. Bush is bad." And while that's true, and Kerry did propose some stuff, I don't think that message is going to get any more voters who weren't already voting for Kerry because they hated Bush. Kerry isn't somebody people would support in a vacuum, which is unfortunate, since he's a good and smart man and I am sure would have done a good job as president. So barring a charismatic, Clinton-like candidate (maybe Obama or even Dean), the Democrats need a solid, simple, well-articulated platform: we stand for better environment, taxes on rich people, no go-it-alone foreign policy, etc, taking a page from the Republicans book and repeating the hell out of it. Of course, there are some things that people apparently dislike Democrats for, like gay marriage, which to me is honestly shocking that people oppose it, since so many states voted to ban it. Maybe that's something gay groups should work on, educating people about gays and gay marriage and why it's not bad. There can't be that many fundamentalist Christians out there to result in 70-30 votes in all those states. And I've also heard that a lot of fundamentalist Christians think that Democrats look down upon them, which is pretty much true, me included. So maybe that's something we should rethink: we disagree with your values, but that doesn't make you morons (even though I am still out on that issue). We also need to do something about the South, it seems like, as we got thoroughly trounced there, and many Southern states set records for voter turnout. The population of Southern states is going up to while the Northeast and Rust Belt is declining. The only bright spot I can see is that most young people and most first-time voters were for Kerry. Hopefully we can keep them.