How refreshing to see this from mainstream conservatives! At the risk of sounding a bit triumphalistic for VFR, I would suggest that they get acquainted with the oncept of the Hegelian Mambo.

You can’t fight liberalism with liberalism lite - it will alway revert to form.

Now wait a minute… this is comparing apples to crabapples. McGovern and Mondale had enormous hills to climb— Nixon was at the top of his game in 1972, Reagan even more so in 1984. Kerry faced a mediocre president who’s shot himself in the foot a number of times, e.g. over illegals and postwar Iraq.

If you take out the ballooning nonwhite population, has Kerry done any better with white voters than McGovern or Mondale? I tend to think not… The acid-amnesty-abortion culture may have peaked among whites quite awhile ago. Other races are cynical enough to vote for whomever throws the most money their way.

PowerLine might be a bit upset because the GOP has lost their state’s electors for the eighth straight time!

I agree with Mr. Caesar’s comments. Democrats and Republicans keep seeing the weaknesses of the opposing candidate, and they are blind to their own candidate’s weaknesses.

This leads to Democrats saying things like James Carville said, along the lines of, “If we cannot beat a President with a stagnant economy and a war that is not going well, we need to rebuild the party from the ground up”. Meanwhile, Republicans say things like, “How can a traitor with no personality, who is the most liberal member of the Senate, run a tight race right down to the wire?” The answer to both sides is that they are both correctly perceiving the faults, but the faults are occurring simultaneously, producing a tight race.

In past elections, Democratic operatives often blamed the American people for losses. The people were so stupid that they were hoodwinked by Reagan, or they did not want to hear the truth that taxes must be raised and not cut, or the people are so stupid that they just want some folksy nitwit who “connects” with them, etc. Republicans tended to blame the mistakes of the candidate: Dole and Bush 41 were too wishy-washy on conservative issues; breaking the no-new-taxes pledge was a disaster; Watergate was a disaster; etc. But recent years have shown a trend towards Republicans and conservatives adopting the despairing, holier-than-thou rhetoric of the left: Clinton won because the American people are just immoral these days; the people must be pretty unpatriotic for Kerry to be so close; all is lost for this civilization, etc. I think this mentality is not only incorrect, but is a recipe for disaster in the future. If the problem is the voters, then why fight hard to get better candidates and better conservative policies? Just give up and wallow in self-righteous doom and gloom. (“Self-righteous” because the Cassandras are always above the judgment being passed on the majority of the people.) In particular, the paleocon rhetoric about the stupid American people voting for Bush is on a par with anything the left ever said.

Reg Cæsar writes:

“If you take out the ballooning nonwhite population, has Kerry done any better with white voters than McGovern or Mondale?”

Might be true, but also irrelevant. OpenBorder fanatic’s chickens are coming home.

Mr. Coleman is right. One hears from talking heads all the time: Kerry campaign was terrible and candidate is not great (yet they lost by 2% only), Bush campaign is superb, Karl Rove is a genius, Bush connects to real Americans, etc (yet they managed to beat Kerry by 2% only).

And yet, somehow I think that a smooth candidate who relates, doesn’t flip-flop and doesn’t have Vietnam baggage but has all of Kerry’s liberal positions (Clinton-lite, Edwards with some gravitas and foreign policy experience?) would still have lost to Bush. Dems do have to rethink their elistists positions and return to their JFK/Jackson/Nunn roots.

“One hears from talking heads all the time: Kerry campaign was terrible and candidate is not great (yet they lost by 2% only), Bush campaign is superb, Karl Rove is a genius, Bush connects to real Americans, etc (yet they managed to beat Kerry by 2% only).”

LOL. This sums it up well.