Very late post-election comments

This was originally started way back in mid-November, and just got lost. Thought I'd at least get it up in the blogosphere.
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Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) was on "The Daily Show" last week (this was actually on November 3 or 4), right after the election. Jon Stewart asked him about what the Dems did wrong to lose the election. He said the Democrats needed to "clarify their new programs better" and that would have made the difference. I believe that this illustrates the exact problem that the Democrats had. No one is really interested in the details of the plan, and no one believes that the plan makes all that much difference, do they?

The reaction of the people I know to the election was "how could so many people be so dumb?" And I don't mean the religious right. In fact, the religious right is the only group that had a legitimate reason to vote for Bush, given his opposition to abortion and his litmus test for judges. What makes us wonder, though, is the moderate Republicans who voted for Bush. The segment on This American Life was exemplary. Dr. Gig Hackett disagreed with every one of Bush's policies, with the war, with the huge deficit, with the way he's fighting the war on terror, and with his stance on abortion and gays. But he still voted for Bush.

And I think that indicates a deep structural problem that the Dems have to grapple with. With the immense tilt to the right of the Republican party, the Democratic party has to figure out how to recapture the votes of the "moderate" Republicans. They aren't represented by their party, but their party long-term strategy has done so well at demonizing liberals that the moderates don't realize their interests are better served by the liberals.

So one question is are liberals really liberal any more? I think you have to say that one many fiscal issues, in particular, Democrats are really Republicans -- fiscally conservative in that they want a balanced budget and want to pay for what they buy. The differences are that Democrats are willing to spend to help people, while Republicans aren't, and that Democrats are possibly more likely to reduce the huge defense budgets. Are the Democrats any less corrupt than the Republicans as regards pork barrel projects? No, of course not. That may be an intrinsic problem with representative democracy.

In order to win elections in the future, the Democrats need to turn the moderates in the Republican party against the far right nut cases who believe the world is going to end and they are all going to be pulled up to heaven leaving their shoes, and all the non-saved, behind.