No Easy Answer To the Democrats' Culture Woes, who lost on essential core values, by Al Hunt

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 11, 2004 | Albert R. Hunt

[Crawdad]

My God, this guy is stupid.

[NRA1995]

'Peter Hart, however, believes that central to this year's defeat was the fact that Democrats "failed to tell their story. It wasn't that they were at odds with voters, but they failed to express their values, it was hidden.'

They expressed their values repeatedly, IMHO....namely, "Bush is stupid", "people who vote for Bush are morons", etc, etc

[Ditter]

LOL! Can you imagine what would happen to "anyone" who slapped Teraza around?

"Off with his head!" LOL!

[Jim Noble]

Rather, it is about getting a respectable share of the small-town and exurban working- and middle-class folks, many of them regular church-goers, who should be aligned more with Democrats on economics and health care

When I went to high school, we were taught that economic determinism was a Marxist fallacy.

It's not, Al, that the voters you crave DON'T CARE about economics and health care, they do.

They just care about other stuff, the stuff that makes life worth living, more.

A lot more.

We love our families, we love our kids.
You know it's love that makes us all so rich.
That's where we're at, if they don't like it they can just
Get the Hell out. (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

[petertare]

No. Really nothing needs to change. Just continue to coarsen our culture with Whoopi filth and Moore mouthings. Everything is really fine, just tweak the packaging a little, and even SHillary become a Sweetie, and maybe the calm cool rantings of a tobacco al could join the ticket to win back those southern guntotin nascar Nazis. Thats the real deal ticket in 08.

[Between the Lines]

Democrats should have framed some of the economic debate more forcefully as moral choices: minimum wage, growing numbers of children without health insurance, companies outsourcing jobs and cutting health and pension benefits while executives enrich themselves.

The Dems bemoan the fact that they lost the election on the basis of moral values. This quote shows that they have no idea what moral values are. Economic values are not moral values.

[winner3000]

I can't believe that they believe their class warfare rhetoric can mascarade as moral values!

(Democrats failed to tell their story)
I hope they continuously talk about their story! Unfortunately what they try to do is to hide their story. That's how they sometimes win when they fool some of the people some of the time. Fortunately this is not sustainable.

[subterfuge]

Wow. Al uses a lot of words to say the Dem candidate sucked eggs.

[Billthedrill]

Democrats did tell their story. They hated Bush.

Absolutely. In a period of four interminable years they went from "Bush stole the election" to "Bush lied," a gamut of political virtuosity that ran from A to B. Rather than ignore or marginalize their wingnuts - Michael Moore, Al Franken - they embraced them and held them up as representative of their party.

And on "values" issues they displayed all the accommodation of fanatics, where moderation is a dirty word and "uncompromising" a virtue. Gay marriage? Inherently right. Abortion? Core value. Internationalist? That's the way the world is by God going to be run and you'd best get out of the way.

Unsurprisingly, this sort of hardness turned out to be brittle. I am surprised only that they got the votes they did.

[conservative_2001]

Al Hunt and these liberals don't get it. Issues like outsourcing, the minimum wage, and Iraq are not values issues. Democrats won't win the values issue by dressing up economic or international issues as values issues.

Abortion, gay marriage, and banning the Pledge of Allegiance are values issues. You win the values issues by coming down on the right side of Americans on actual values issues, not on the minimum wage.