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The turning point for the beleaguered Democratic party came one week before the election when Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, one of the Senate's most-liberal voices, died in a plane crash while campaigning for reelection. Democrats, worried that they might lose the seat to a strong Republican challenge from the mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, Norm Coleman, turned to their old warhorse, Walter Mondale, to run for the Senate in a one-week campaign.
The picture and image that dominated the public perception of the Democratic party as voters went to the polls was, thus, the aged Mondale, a tax-and-spend liberal, who had been badly defeated by Ronald Reagan in the election of 1984, 18 years ago. Gone was the centrist party of Bill Clinton. Faded was the Democratic image of youth and energy. Walter Mondale, old, doctrinaire, liberal, and humorless, came to the fore as the poster boy for the Democrats. Meanwhile George W. Bush laid it on the line as he campaigned frenetically for Republican candidates, visiting ten states in the last three days of the campaign. Acting as if he were on the ballot himself, Bush barnstormed the nation asking for support as he faced the global showdown with terrorists in the Middle East. Still at war, shaken by 9/11, apprehensive about Iraq's and North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, Americans turned to their president and gave him the thumping affirmation he did not get in the 2000 election. For his part, Mondale couldn't even carry his native Minnesota (one of the two states he managed to carry in 1984). Shocked at the exhumation of the Democratic party's liberal past, voters turned to Coleman and delivered the Senate to the Republicans. In the election of 2002, George W. Bush defeated Walter Mondale. The media was caught by surprise. Constantly, endemically, underestimating George W. Bush, the establishment of American journalism never realized the extent of the president's popularity or the degree of national support he commands as America faces its first real threat to its domestic security in four decades. Bush has emerged as a strong wartime leader and Americans have come to count on his steadiness, coolness under fire, and determined resolve to conquer the forces of evil. Uncomplicated, Bush sees the world as black and white — and most Americans agree with him. In a side note in the 2002 elections, the Kennedy dynasty finally came to an end when Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest daughter of former Senator Robert Kennedy, failed to win the governorship of Maryland, a normally solid Democratic state. After forty years of domination of the political process, the Kennedy era came to an end — at last. Does the victory of 2002 auger a Bush reelection in 2004? Not necessarily. Bush is determined to bring Iraq to heel and will likely do so in the winter of 2003. After American and British troops have occupied Baghdad, the terrorist nations can be expected to scramble to adjust to the new world order. Already, North Korea is asking for talks, Iran is expelling al Qaeda operatives, and Yemen is letting American planes kill terrorists within its territory. Bush will likely win the war on terror. But he'll win it in 2003. What will he do for 2004? By then, he'll have run out of countries. Bush has no real domestic agenda beyond his tax cuts which are already part of the law and unlikely — especially now — to be repealed. All the other issues, apart from terror, work in the favor of the Democrats. The Wall Street scandals, global warming, environmental pollution, health care for the elderly, and Social Security are all Democratic issues. Bill Clinton's legacy is that he solved the major Republican concerns — crime and welfare. Without issues, Bush may not be able to control the dialogue as 2004 approaches. He will run Washington for the next two years as the Democrats lick their wounds. But he may have a tough road in 2004. — Dick Morris is president of vote.com. |
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didn't win the popular vote in 2000, but George W. Bush scored an historic
and impressive victory two years later in capturing the Senate for the
Republican party and preserving his control over the House of Representatives.
Not since 1962, in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
has an incumbent president done as well in a midterm election. 
