This year’s US presidential election was not a landslide or realignment. But it was decisive, and it is impossible to read President Bush’s re-election as anything but a clear-cut victory for Republicans. Despite great organisation, record-breaking fundraising, and a vulnerable president with a bad record, Democrats were unable to make the case for firing the incumbent and replacing him with one of their own. For the second straight cycle, Republicans have majorities in both houses of Congress, they have the majority of governors, and they control a majority of state legislatures.
The election revealed deep divisions in American society, splitting citizens by region, gender, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, values, and education level. Some feared a threat to ‘traditional values,’ though the definitions of these differed from red states to blue. Voters approved constitutional amendments in 11 states banning same-sex marriage, and more said their main concern was morality than any other issue. Others feared job loss and economic disruption. A majority thought the economy is in bad shape, and nearly half said the employment situation had deteriorated in the past four years. And nearly everyone feared terrorism. Three-quarters of voters – supporters of the president and John Kerry alike – said they were worried there will be another major terrorist attack in the United States.
Clearly Bush benefited more than Kerry from the crosscurrents of fear. By 54 per cent to 42 per cent voters felt safer from terrorists since 9/11 and, of those who did, 4 to 1 voted for Bush. The president enjoyed a 17 percentage point advantage when voters were asked who could be trusted to handle terrorism, far broader than Kerry’s advantage on the economy. Voters considered Bush the stronger leader. Asked what issues mattered most to them, 41 per cent cited moral values and terrorism, two areas Bush had made central to the campaign with promises to protect the country and to defend the institution of marriage. By contrast, only 35 per cent cited the economy and Iraq, the two areas in which Kerry stoked voters’ fears.
Bush turned a 500,000 popular vote defeat in 2000 into a 3.5m popular vote victory. He won majorities not just of white men and evangelicals, but of white women, married people, couples with children, people over 30, voters who make more than $50,000 a year, high school and college graduates, and regular churchgoers. He increased his share of the vote among women, Hispanics, older voters, even city dwellers; and made gains among Catholics and Jews.
For the better part of three decades, Democrats have struggled to remain competitive in elections where most voters thought they were out of step on national security and values. Without neutralising those concerns, Democrats have little chance of once again becoming the majority party they were from Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal to Lyndon B Johnson’s Great Society.
The narrowness of Kerry’s electoral college defeat may keep many of the party faithful from realising how deep that problem really is. To lose an election when the party base was united and voter turnout was at a 36-year high means that there are simply not enough Democrats to carry a presidential candidate to victory. Indeed, the last Democrat to reach 50 per cent of the vote was President Johnson in 1964.
In the intervening years, the Democratic party has watched a steady erosion of support from voters who once made up the heart of the New Deal coalition: blue collar, less-educated, and rural whites. What remains is a bicoastal party that has an ever more difficult time competing in the industrial heartland and has collapsed in the South. Continuing to wallow in nostalgia and trying to reassemble the New Deal coalition relegates Democrats to long-term minority status.
Democrats must come to grips with the reality that they are increasingly on the losing side of America’s cultural divide. In this election, millions of voters in America’s heartland rejected Senator Kerry because they felt he did not share their values on issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action, from guns to gay rights. More than two-thirds of churchgoing Christians, including millions who disapproved of the president’s handling of the economy and the war in Iraq, nevertheless voted for Bush. The cultural divide cost Kerry dearly in states he badly needed to win, such as Missouri, Iowa, and West Virginia.
Complicating Democratic comeback efforts is the spectre of terrorism. In two elections now – 2002 and 2004 – Republicans have successfully used security fears to beat the opposition. The Democrats’ weak-on-terrorism label goes back to the Vietnam era and its aftermath, when the party was perceived to be soft on defence.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, Democrats thought they had escaped the old stereotype. But Bush effectively painted Kerry as an anti-defence, anti-intelligence liberal trapped in a September 10 mindset. The attacks on Kerry’s Navy service and subsequent Vietnam protests hurt him badly among blue-collar voters and military families. Despite Kerry’s vow to fight‘a smarter war on terror,’ Democrats lost substantial ground among older men who remember the nuclear anxieties of the Cold War, not to mention anxious ‘security moms’ who fear attacks.
Democrats urgently need to craft a new identity as a party that is strategic, not tactical; that conveys a comprehensive message, not just targeted appeals to narrow constituencies; that is national, not regional; and that is based on ideas and hope, not just on opposition and anger. Above all, Democrats need to clearly stand for values, principles and ideas that will earn them the opportunity to become the majority party of the future.
Doing so will require that the Democrats bridge the trust gap on national security by offering a real alternative vision for American global leadership in the struggle with Islamic extremism and against proliferation, the other great threat that faces us today. Democrats need to dispel lingering public doubts about their party’s willingness to use military power in America’s self-defence and to make it clear that they know that our multilateral diplomacy will be more effective if it is backed by the credible threat of force.
Moreover, Democrats need to lead, not follow, in the family values debate. Overcoming the cultural trust gap is not just a matter of carefully recalibrating positions on specific issues like guns, abortion, or this year’s big wedge issue, gay marriage. The problem is that many voters simply do not believe that Democrats take their cultural fears and resentments seriously, and that Republicans do. Democrats must adopt a stance of cultural empathy to the problems that people are suffering all across the nation without embracing cultural conservatism.
In the 1990s President Clinton was able to link economic and moral concerns with his narrative of personal responsibility, rewarding families who worked hard and played by the rules, opposing unearned privilege, advocating welfare reform and national service, giving something back, striking a balance between rights and the duties of citizenship, and trying to ground public policy in an ethic of reciprocal responsibility. By speaking in such terms, Clinton was able to carry ‘red states’ both in 1992 and 1996.
In this election, Democrats tried to convince Americans that this administration’s failures were reason enough to change course. While the public largely agreed with Democrats about the president’s shortcomings, it was not enough to overcome their doubts about us. With Bush’s second term up in four years, the 2008 election will be a campaign about the future, where ideas will matter more than opposition. The best thing Democrats can do is come up with bold ideas to tackle the substantial challenges facing our country – from the war on Iraq to our image abroad to a slew of problems here at home. If we give voters a compelling reason to vote for us, campaign tactics will take care of themselves.