Uncomfortably Numb
Some part of me had always believed that the Bush presidency was an aberration, a blip, a four year mistake, that the American voters would realise the need to remove him from office and that come January he would no longer be in the Whitehouse, but he will be. He is going to be there for another four years with an increasingly hawkish and hardline administration.
The electoral process cannot be faulted this time round � Bush won both the electoral colleges and the popular vote. His very narrow majority, (3.5million out of a turnout of approx 120million and a population of nearly 300million) has done two things:
1) It has highlighted how divided, how polarized American society is;
2) It will be taken as a mandate for the neo-cons and their religious right supporters to pursue the worst excesses of their agenda.
�I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. . .�
Yesterday was I numb, today I�m angry.
Where do the Democrats go from here? Like the Labour Party in the 1992 election, they�ve snatched defeat from the jaws of the victory. The party system in the US is not as structured or rigid as it is in the UK, but there are two individual parties and the Democrats need to take a long look at how it is that they managed to loose. For Labour this introspection brought Blair and the New Labour project, and the landslide victories in 1997 and 2001. The extra five years of the Conservative administration hardened and crystallized the anti-Conservative vote; the Democrats can only hope that another four years of the Bush administration will do the same and that 2000 did not demonstrate and 2004 did not solidify a sea change in American society, but the evidence suggests it did.
For the Democrats to stand a chance of winning in 2008 they have to understand the opposition, to understand the religious right; 22% of voters said that �moral values� were the most important issue in the election, that�s more than put either the economy of the war on terror first. The Democrats have to find a way of communicating to this section of society and they have to do it without moving to the right. The have to find and clarify what it is that they stand for and convince a significant part of the 51% of Americans who do not agree with them to come over to there side.
If you think we�re in trouble now imagine what a Republican victory in 2008 would be like, let me just repeat that a Republican victory in 2008, and who would the candidate be? Traditionally it is the incumbent Vice President who receives the Party�s nomination - Dick Cheney for President in 2008. Are you terrified yet?
November 5th, 2004 at 9:55 am
Cheney is too old, too sick and too unsuited to run for President. Unfortunately the only other obvious people I can think of are all pretty horrible too- either senior leaders in the House\Senate (Tom DeLay, argh!), or a successful governor of a reasonably large state (think Jeb Bush.)
It is really too early to tell what a second Bush term will look like- over the next 3 to 6 months we should get some idea of what he’s actually going to be like. If he fires people like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, or maybe even Cheney then that should show that despite the campaign need to present an ‘all is well’ appearance, he’s aware of the mistakes that have been made. Of course if everyone stays the course, it’s a pretty good sign Bush and his advisors are completely out of touch.
On the morals issue, the Democrats shouldn’t be in such a poor position next time round. There will have been a continuing demographic shift towards increased tolerance and four years of gay marriage in Massachusets should undercut some of the anti-gay hysteria. That said, I think the Democrats need a candidate who can comfortably talk about morality and fairness in a way that isn’t reliant on extremist free market values or conservative theology. The obvious person would be John Edwards.
Edwards also highlights an interesting parallel between the Republicans after 1996 and the Democrats now. In 1996 the Republicans had just run a respected Senator (Dole,) who took a beating in the primaries from various challengers. As a result they spent the next years planning for Election 2000 and grooming a candidate (Bush) as challenger. They also cleared the field as best they could and got as many senior kingmakers behind him as they could. This meant Bush had money, unity and organisation behind him. The Democrats need to do something similar now.
I think it is probably dangerous to conclude that 2004 signified a sea-change in US society- what was unusual was the degree of polarisation and the extent to which voters were mobilised, not neccessarily the extent of the bigotry those voters subscribe to. Whether they’ll ever be as motivated as in 2004, especially given the degree to which there is a cult of personality focused on Bush amongst the hard core of the right wing.
In conclusion- it is really awful that he won (and swept the other branches of government,) and I think the next four years are going to be pretty crappy, but the US has managed under Reagan and Nixon before and can manage under Bush. There are also a number of material constraints (such as the overstretch of the US army,) budget deficits and the like that should act as constraining factors for anything too grand. So, it’s pretty depressing overall (particularly the hate expressed towards queer folk by so many Americans) but it’s not completely bleak.