I’m surfing around looking for commentary and sane analysis. Sorry, but I’m steering clear of the pro-Bush blogs. Don’t want to hear any lectures. Like this one from Michele Catalano.
Kevin Drum says the youth vote fell through. What Rock the Vote didn’t mobilize drunk college students? Shocked.
Great column by Kristof in the Times. Democrats really need to do a better job connecting with average Americans. One-third of Americans are evangelical Christians, and many of them perceive Democrats as often contemptuous of their faith. And, frankly, they’re often right. Some evangelicals take revenge by smiting Democratic candidates. Republican have done a better job reaching the guy in Kansas, even though their economic policies do him no good at all.
Random thought: This election is bad, bad news for Hillary. Because isn’t she just Kerry II. She suffers from the same problem of seeming elitist. In 2008, we need a liberal with a populist touch. Hillary doesn’t have that.
The Pollster Scorecard: They were right that this election was going to be a squeeker. They screwed up the exit polls. They didn’t get until too late that this election wasn’t about terror or the war. It was all social values.
Apt. 11d 
Funny — that last line of Kristof’s on the Democrats being thwarted by the very people they’re trying to help. That, in itself, seems imbued with an elitism that is so repugnant to the Red states. That and the bit about looking down on Evangelicals. That’s a real problem. Religious fundamentalism is hard for many people — even people who are themselves religious — to swallow. I know it is for me. I always thought that the Christian God wanted people to do things like loving their neighbors as themselves, turning the other cheek, and not advertising their faith. Yet those things seem to disappear in the literal interpretations of the Evangelical right. If the Democrats decide to start infusing their rhetoric with faith, I hope they do it in an equally literal fashion, but focus on the social justice issues currently omitted from political discourse.
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I’ve no comment really… just a need to share my deep, deep disappointment with the election result. I understand Kerry wasn’t the ideal candidate. But I still can’t believe GOP gained. I fear the judicial decisions that will be handed down once Bush & co. start appointing their own to SCOTUS & to federal courts all over the country. Things are going to get ugly – ironically, mostly for the very people who voted Bush in. I’m also very concerned about the intensity of anti-Americanism world-wide. Sixty years ago, the U.S. was the mythical Uncle Sam, feeding Europe after helping rescue much of the continent from Hitler. Today, the U.S. is the Evil Empire with a xenophobic, intellectually-limited president at its helm. The world’s biggest debtor nation, one that imports more than it exports, has alienated much of the planet. This doesn’t bode well.
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I’m with you on the futility of a Hillary campaign in 08. In addition to the elitist tag, she is perceived by many as immoral and uppity, for lack of a better word. At this point, I’ve pretty much lost my idealism and am hoping for a pragmatic, electable Dem in four years. And Hillary ain’t it. (Never mind the fact that our first woman prez is far more likely to be an R than a D.)
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