Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Since Election Day, there have been no shortage of folks offering the Democratic Party advice on how it can get out of its current mess.

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek begins her latest column with what sounds like good advice — emulate the late Paul Wellstone. Clearly, there are many Republicans and independents who disagreed with Wellstone but still appreciated his steadfast and consistent dedication to liberal principles.

But Quindlen’s prescription quickly devolves down into a vague call for “unconditional authenticity” and “authentic leadership“... The specifics deteriorate as she berates those obsessed with “image, tactics, communication,” without naming names. From her praise of Wellstone’s vote against the authorization for the Iraq war, we can assume she’s angry at the votes of Kerry and Edwards in support of the Iraq war. But telling the party what it should have done in late 2002 doesn’t really help it figure out what it should do now.

She calls Mario Cuomo’s 1995 post-defeat book, “Reason to Believe,” “an apt playbook for the Democratic Party in the years to come.” The money quote that she selects:

“In those instances where interests collide, the flash points where those who have a little feel threatened by those who have less, we Democrats have not worked hard enough at finding ways to harmonize the competing interests.”

Okay… but what does that mean? Democrats should have embraced welfare reform earlier? They should have embraced a tougher approach to crime? They should have listened to low-income whites who felt threatened by affirmative action, instead of dismissing their concerns as racism? “Harmonizing competing interests” is a terrific buzz phrase that one could see cropping up in one of Office Space’s TPS reports.

But then Quindlen writes that Cuomo “skillfully dissects the opposition” with this assessment:

When they shift from propaganda to policy their proposals are inadequate and in some cases demonstrably harmful. For the most part, they seek to evade the nation’s problems rather than to solve them.

Translation: “Those who disagree with me seek to harm others and aren’t interested in solving the nation’s problems.” This kind of attack on the intangible motives, rather than the tangible and quantifiable effects of GOP policies, is what constitutes a “skillful dissection” of Republican thinking?

Every Democrat is going to offer his or her take on how the party can start winning again, especially as the race for DNC Chair heats up. But can we leave one bad argument behind? Can we toss aside the feel-good argument that Kerry would have won and the Dems would have picked up seats in Congress if they had just attacked Bush and the Republicans more?

As the Washington Post recently calculated, Kerry and his Democratic supporters spent $1.08 billion during the campaign. (Republicans outspent them by only $60 million.) This does not include Michael Moore‘s films, Air America, or the New York Times editorial page. The Democrats had their best communications effort ever, and there was no shortage of attacks on the president.

“We didn’t win because the other guys are nastier” is a cop-out, and a false one at that. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be surprised to see some on the losing side embracing an excuse that reinforces their sense or moral superiority.

[Posted 01/04 11:01 AM]