There have been a million columns written on what the Democrats need to do to get their "act" together. I will add to this chorus my own thoughts:

1). Ground game!! Democrats were bragging and the media was going on and on about how they had such an awesome ground game, but I saw this as a paper tiger from day one. Republicans were far more organized and far more motivated than we were at the precint level. They started the day after the election in 2000, finding every single voter they could. They outnumbered us in volunteers while we had hired guns. Almost every single American Republican must have voted in this election. Every single one..but did every Democrat or potential Democrat? Not hardly. How many times did you hear someone in a blue state say "gee I don't like Kerry..I think I'll just sit this one out" ..people in "red states" who like Bush didn't say that. They voted for Bush no matter what the number. Imagine how different we'd see Bush's "mandate" if Blue staters in comfortable states such as California, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York actually showed up in similar fashion as red staters in Utah, Montana, North Dakota, etc? We need a national ground game of volunteers, not hired mercenaries. We cannot rely on Move On and the rest..we need a centralized, organized team at the grassroots level that doesn't set "voter levels" per area. We met every level of voters in the areas we targeted. We need more than that.

2). Southerner? Northerner? Conservative Dem? Liberal Dem? Progressive Dem? The secret? it makes no difference! I'd prefer a blue collar Dem from a moderate state, but it really doesn't matter. You have Democratic governors in Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, NC, West Virginia, Virginia) Both the Senators of North Dakota are Democrats, and Russ Feingold is supposedly to the "left" of Kerry (being the only person in 100 smart enough to vote against the Patriot Act in the Senate), yet he outdid Kerry in Wisconsin. How do you explain this? People aren't all Republicans and people certainly aren't all Democrats. Neither party is so despised in the country that people are unwilling to ever elect them. Yes its bad for me, but I'd vote for McCain over Kerry any day though he's just as conservative as Bush. Why? because I trust him and I like him. Americans don't like people who are outwardly poll driven (which Kerry and Gore were). Yes Bush is poll driven, but he doesn't act the part.

That comes off as phony (and it is phony). Fundamentally, these guys have to be themselves and if they are, at heart, pessimists, we shouldn't be nominating them. Frankly, I don't want to spend 4 years with someone telling me how bad my life is.

Read a speech from the most successful Democrats (Truman, FDR, Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson). They were all well to the left of Clinton, Gore, or Kerry. They were in the fashion of the last TRUE Truman Democrat, Paul Wellstone (Zell Miller can kiss my ass because he isn't close to a Truman Democrat). But they knew what they believed in. They didn't try to "bridge any gap." They called racist as they were (mostly) and said what was wrong. Truman stood up for black rights in 1948 at a time when racism was more acceptable than gay bashing is today. He split the Democratic Party in three ways because of his support for Civil Rights. Truman ran against TWO other Democrats AND a Republican and still won 49% of the vote! People were shocked, but they shouldn't be. Americans love a fighter, we love an underdog, and we love someone who is sure of himself regardless of party.

People respected that and elected him over the technocrat Dewey because Truman was not only a man of the people, but he seemed like he was going somewhere. People don't want to vote for a bureaucrat..they want to vote for someone who seems like he's more than "competent." Clinton, Kerry, Gore..all the same policies virtually..but the difference is Clinton actually conveyed to us that he was going someplace visionary whereas Kerry/Gore seemed like they were going to audit your taxes with their laundry list of policy proposals. Barack Obama, a liberal through and through can win because he seems like he's going someplace.

3). Read a little history about Presidential elections..don't just look at the winners of the elections..look at the losers and ask these questions:

A). In terms of style, is the person we nominated closer to FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr or closer to Thomas Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Bob Dole, Bush Sr., Gerald Ford? The first group of men (whether we like it or not) were decisive, vicious, arrogant, tough, visionary and they defeated men who were (or became) technocrats. The only real technocrat to win and beat someone better than him in terms of style was Richard Nixon when he beat Hubert Humphrey. In terms of style, Kerry fell well into the latter group of losers than the group of winners. You can have a Senator run for President (Joe Biden for one would've been good), you can have a Governor, you can have a Northeast liberal Senator run, but he better be closer to Bush/Reagan in style than Michael Dukakis/John Kerry. I hate that style matters so much, but that is reality.

3). the values/morals debate stuff is nonsense. Democrats didn't lose because of gay marriage. In fact, in almost every exit poll, the majority of Americans supported either gay marriage or civil unions. But we are the party that wants to win because of who we are not. When 90% of the Bush vote is FOR Bush and 50% of the Kerry vote is against Kerry, we are in trouble. Democrat Joe Manchin wins the governorship in West Virginia while Kerry goes down in flames not because of gay marriage, but because Manchin doesn't come off as a politician, but as a simple American doing the best he can. Ditto North Carolina and Mike Easley. Easley painted his Republican opponent as a technocrat politician and swept this state while Kerry/Edwards were being decimated. Just look at "red" state Democrats who are popular in their home states (Brad Henry in Oklahoma, Phil Bresden of Tennessee, etc). They aren't more conservative or sell their souls down the river of conservativism. They aren't much different from Kerry, but they are populists and they speak their minds and don't come off as poll tested and driven.

4). We need to get serious about foreign policy. I hate to say it, but in the age of terror, just as the age of WWII and the early years of the Cold War, people aren't going to vote for men and a party that degrades the troops and sound a defeatist alarm. Kerry and Democrats didn't understand that the reason so many Americans have bought into this collosal failure that is Iraq is that Americans don't want to think they made a mistake. It took us 13 years to figure out Vietnam was a mistake. We don't like to lose and we hate nuance. Kerry's message should've just been he supports the war (and voted for the $87 billion), say the intelligence was wrong, and say he wanted to fix Iraq. If he didn't support the war, he should've voted against, but once you vote for something this serious, but vote against funding the soldiers, it makes you look comical and worse, political.

He should've taken the Biden position that while he supports the war, he thinks Bush has blundered badly. I think attacking Iraq was a strategic mistake, but Kerry and we Democrats need to put together our own vision of the world and not come off as "hippy isolationists." We shouldn't go on and on about how "Bush bypassed the UN" because sad as it is, the UN is wrong alot of the time. We don't want to be beholden to a body that consists of alot of thugs and tyrants. Clinton bypassed the UN in Kosovo and Bosnia and he was right to do so. We need to promote a vision of the world that tackles terrorism not solely through force and war, but also diplomacy and taking tough stances against our allies there.

So in conclusion, fix our ground game, nominate people with vision, and clarify our foreign policy position. Lastly, we must realize that we aren't that far from victory. Its amazing that Kerry even came this close to Bush and while every age group went narrowly for Bush, young folks went whoppingly for the Democrats (this may bode well for teh future). Had the Democrats focused on getting blue state, as well as swing state voters out, and blue people in red states out, I don't think we'd be talking about a Bush mandate.

Progressives and liberals have been upset over the results of this election. We desperately wanted to punish Bush for his multiple failures (and rightfully so) but ya know, in many ways its our own faults for sitting on our asses after the 2000 election. The election of our lifetime was not 2004, it was 2000. While Democrats shrugged their shoulders at a potential Bush
victory, Republicans went to the streets to intimidate, harrass, and spin the country into believing Gore was a sore loser and Bush was the legitmate winner.

Its clear that if all the votes in FL were counted, Gore would've won. The people of Ukraine are not sitting idly by as their country is stolen, but we Democrats did just that in 2000. I dreaded the 2000 election far more than this one, because I realized that in four years, McKinley and Mark Hanna in 1892 made America into a Republican fortress for more than 30 years. Just as FDR in 4 years after 1932 made America into a Democratic fortress until really 1980.

Its important that Democrats never ever take any election for granted nor any state. Clinton competed and won plenty of "red" states (Georgia, Colorado, NM, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Arizona, Florida, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, etc.) and came within a point or two of winning Texas in 1996, North Carolina, Virginia, etc. I mean Clinton won Louisiana in both 1992 and 1996 by 10 points. Its entirely possible for Democrats to win across the nation, but they have to try and be willing to compete and nominate people who can speak to the entire American people, not just a few swing states. But this is the past, and we must now talk about the future.

Ha! DeLay tries to cry politics, so Earle, the prosecutor pursuing the DeLay case, hits 'em where it hurts--right in the testicles of that precious moral values mandate. Here is a taste:

There is no limit to what you can do if you have the power to change the rules. Congress may make its own rules, but the public makes the rule of law, and depends for its peace on the enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy at the highest levels of government is toxic to the moral fiber that holds our communities together.

Note: The word moral appears in this piece nine times, count 'em, or roughly once per paragraph. Ha!

There are no red or blue states, only shades of purple. The fiction that has been created by the media and the chattering classes is that we are a thoroughly bifurcated nation, take a look at this and keep in mind that the reddest of the red still have enough blues in them to shade the spectrum. Looks like only Massachusetts is pure enough to call itself either red or blue! We are not alone, and we just have to work harder to start intensifying the blue tones in the states where we can really have an impact. The Mississippi Valley is a good target area...
It serves the religious right's purposes to paint a divided nation, we need to constantly point out there is no mandate! More people oppose the war in Iraq than support it, keep the faith!

Dallas Morning News says they are going to publish that letter for all of TX-32 to see. Bwahahahaha!

By the way: the streaking, sign-stealing Pete Sessions' staff in both Dallas and Washington still has "no idea" how he voted last week on the DeLay Rule as of 1:30 EST today. I prodded a little this time-- because I am like that now after a stolen election, an upsurge in patriotism that only helps half of the country, a war that morphed unnecessarily into Vietnam II and an election in which any non-Republican was a gay terrorist-- and suggested that the $10,000 he received from Tom DeLay's HammerPAC might have predisposed the good Congressman to support the DeLay Rule.

They had no clue about that either.

Then I got a bright idea: why not call Martin Frost (Sessions' defeated opponent), who is finishing up 22 years in the House, and ask the folks in his office if he plans to speak out against the first post-election action of the Republican Party? So I did. And a secretary took notes and blew me off. Fine, but at least I tried. But really, why aren't Democrats just going crazy over this? Especially defeated Democrats who were quite clearly victims of DeLay's corrupt machine?

In fact, extrapolating from some reporting by the Dallas Morning News, it seems entirely possible that Frost could have won if Dallas congressional districts didn't divide and dilute the minority votes. Check out these two competing articles from the same day, here and here. Hrmm...Dallas getting blue enough to elect a lesbian to county-wide office, but not blue enough for a single Democratic Congressperson?

Martin, I love you, but please deFrost and get on with the criticism...