{"id":134,"date":"2004-11-04T23:26:10","date_gmt":"2004-11-04T23:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2004-11-04T23:26:10","modified_gmt":"2004-11-04T23:26:10","slug":"postelection_flotsam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2004\/11\/04\/postelection_flotsam\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Election Flotsam"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I stopped at the liquor store last night to pick up a bottle of Jameson<\/a>. Not to be too melodramatic about it, but after the day I’d had, I needed — hell, I deserved! — a good stiff drink. The grog shop was unusually busy for a Wednesday night in Sandy, Utah, and I found myself wondering if the people in line around me were also disgruntled Democrats in need of a belt. There was no way to tell, of course. The guy in front of me looked like he’d just turned legal, and from the way he gingerly placed a single Smirnoff Ice on the counter in front of the cashier, I gathered he was experimenting with his new-found right to get potted. The woman behind me, meanwhile, was loaded down with a half-dozen bottles of wine and looked to be in a hurry. I guessed she had a dinner party to get back to. And right after I made that guess I started thinking that maybe everything in the universe doesn’t really revolve around politics after all. After all, the election of George W. Bush didn’t stop the sun from rising, the college kid from getting his first drunk on, or the wine lady from cooking a meal for her friends. Life continues. And realizing that little fact left me feeling much better about what happened on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A lot of folks in the liberal blogosphere haven’t made this realization yet. There’s a lot of anger out there, some of it justified, in my opinion, some of it not. There’s also a helluva lot of self-pity. Both reactions are understandable, if not terribly productive. Mostly there seems to be a lot of the same disbelief I wrote about yesterday. Those who voted for Kerry (or at least against Bush) simply don’t get<\/i> those who did vote for Bush.<\/p>\n

Of all the ideas flying around out there, I think I’ve been most interested in what people are thinking about this fundamental disconnect between “reds” and “blues.” Over on the letters page of Salon.com<\/a>, one person wrote:<\/p>\n

“[The problem is] that we don’t have thoughtful, intellectually honest discussions with people who think differently. The candidates don’t, the pundits don’t, the activists don’t, and the voters don’t. Instead, many of us dig in, use only facts that support our views, jump to conclusions without clear evidence, oversimplify, dismiss those who disagree, and then complain that democracy is in serious trouble.<\/i><\/p>\n

“But democracy depends, at least partly, on being able to listen and discuss with eyes, mind and heart wide open.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Others, however, think there’s no point in even trying to talk to the other side. Another letter to Salon:<\/p>\n

“Those of us with blue state values have to accept that some Americans have very different values than ours and are not necessarily receptive to our attempts to ‘understand’ them.<\/i><\/p>\n

“It’s only by gravitating to people who do share our views, online or off, that we can work together to bring about social change. And keep our sanity.” <\/i><\/p>\n

While these folks debated why the two sides just can’t seem to connect, others tried to make the point that the two sides aren’t as far apart as we may think. Over at Boing Boing<\/a>, for instance, I found a map<\/a> that supposedly better represents the distribution of votes than the familiar red-and-blue winner-takes-all of the electoral map. Basically, the thesis here is that most states contain a mixture of blue Democrats and red Republicans, which results in the whole country being colored in varying shades of purple… aside from Massachusetts, which this map depicts as 100% blue, and my own home of Utah, which shows up as red as my grandpa’s union suit. (Apparently, this map’s creator is unaware of the handful of liberals who do exist in Utah. There aren’t many of us, but the state is NOT 100% Republican, no matter what the brochures may say. I don’t know if the reverse is true of Massachusetts.)<\/p>\n

Thanks to Boing Boing, I also found another map<\/a> that’s making the rounds. This one depicts a new vision of North America that would probably please a lot of folks on both sides of the political spectrum; it shows the West Coast, Great Lakes states, and New England allied with our northern neighbors in the new “United States of Canada,” and the Midwest and Southern states renamed, “Jesusland.” I laughed when I saw this, but a lot of people seem to be taking it quite seriously. I’m thinking there may be a whole new nickname developing for the red states.<\/p>\n

Continuing to scan around the ‘net, I see that some folks stubbornly refuse to admit defeat<\/a> while others warn of the hell to come<\/a> over the next four years.<\/p>\n

Most people, however, just seem to want to tell Democrats how they screwed up. For example, the wonderful Bull Moose Blog<\/a> notes<\/a> that, while John Kerry “ran a hard and admirable campaign,” “endured the vicious and ferocious Republican swift boat attack with dignity,” and “came this close despite the incumbent’s clear advantage of leading a country at war,” he ultimately lost because he “never develop[ed] a compelling theme. When incumbents have been defeated in the recent past (Ford, Carter and Bush I), their challengers offered a distinct vision as well as a biting critique.” I agree, and plan to write more about this in an upcoming post.<\/p>\n

The best bit of analysis and advice<\/a> that I’ve encountered, however, comes again from Salon.com, where Democratic media consultant and Boston Globe<\/i> columnist Dan Payne lays out a strategy for how to handle the next four years:<\/p>\n

1. Forget the unity stuff. When Republicans lose, they set out the next morning to challenge, undermine and overthrow the Democrats. Democrats are no less united against George Bush than they were the day before Election Day. Stay unified; stay on Bush’s case.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. Hire a strategist, not a fundraiser, to run the Democratic National Committee. The ability to raise money is valuable, but the ability to design and execute a strategy is crucial.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. Develop values issues, such as Internet censorship, the export of white-collar jobs, stem cell research, etc. The DNC should send every Democratic official “What’s Wrong With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank. Learn how the Republicans ate our lunch, using values issues to smother economic self-interest.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. Target baby boomers. This cohort is anti-authoritarian because they grew up during Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate. Now, this demanding audience is facing retirement pretty much clueless. They need (and expect) economic protections, like long-term care and a solid Medicare.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. Get thee out of Washington. Move the party apparatus out of D.C. Democrats are cut off from the real world and talk to each other too much.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. Admit Karl Rove beat us. He outsmarted and out-organized unions, 527s and party organizations. Getting anti-gay marriage measures on 11 state ballots didn’t hurt either.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, something that just made me smile, somebody’s signature line from a message board, which only a handful of people are likely to get but is pretty funny if you’re in on the joke:<\/p>\n

Vote Cthulhu<\/a> – for when you’re tired of the <\/i>lesser of two evils.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I stopped at the liquor store last night to pick up a bottle of Jameson. Not to be too melodramatic about it, but after the day I’d had, I needed — hell, I deserved! — a good stiff drink. The grog shop was unusually busy for a Wednesday night in Sandy, Utah, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}