Arianna Huffington
… In 1992, the Republican Party found itself in very much the same position as Democrats do today…
And then, just as now, a sense of long-term gloom and doom hovered over the losing side. “All that is clear about the GOP’s future,” forecast the Los Angeles Times in November ’92, “is that its comeback trail will be long and rigorous.”
It turned out to be short and sweet. Just two years after being given their political last rites, Republicans rose from their deathbed and seized control of both chambers of Congress…
But if they are going to achieve a similarly spectacular reversal of fortune, the Democrats need to take a page out of the GOP playbook and ignore all siren songs urging them to lurch toward the victors. Instead, they must reclaim the Party’s true identify and return to the idealism, boldness, generosity of spirit and core values that marked the presidencies of FDR and JFK, and the short-lived presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy.
They also need to take a number of practical steps:
For starters, they need to make sure that there is never another election held with electronic voting machines that don’t leave a paper trail, or voter suppression caused by long lines and not enough polling places in poor neighborhoods.
Next, they should — to paraphrase Shakespeare — kill all the consultants (and, while they’re at it, do away with the bullheaded pollsters, too). The Party needs to find and develop campaign teams that can run winning races in the 21st century, not keep rehiring the same professional losers election after election. Shouldn’t there be an “eight strikes and you’re out” rule?
Democrats also need to retool their party infrastructure. Conservatives have spent the better part of the last 30 years building a potent message machine — a network of think tanks, policy centers and media outlets — that spends more than $300 million a year to promote its agenda. Instead of sitting around complaining that the big, bad GOP has them overmatched, Democrats need to open their wallets and build their own well-funded message machine.
A key part of this apparatus will inevitably be the Internet, which must now assume a central role in all Party efforts…
Democrats have got to nationalize the 2006 Congressional races — just as Republicans did in ’94. They don’t necessarily need their own version of the Contract with America, but they do need to make their stands on the crucial political battles of the day — including taxes, the environment, the war in Iraq, Social Security and the Supreme Court — part of a larger narrative and not just a laundry list of policy positions and four-point plans.
And, finally, Democrats need to forge ahead with nascent efforts to recruit, train and fund a better crop of candidates…
So, Democrats, stop moping, whining, picking at the scabs left by Nov. 2 and trying to forecast the length of the coming long, cold Republican winter. There’s much work to be done — and then, many victories ahead. Remember the past, but let it be prologue.
