Abstract

Robert Coles

The article focuses on the Democratic Party in the United States, following its defeat in the 2004 elections. I spend a good deal of my working life talking with ordinary working people in various parts of this country. Well before election day, I heard from factory workers, office workers, truckers, social workers, nurses, doctors and lawyers about their dilemmas on voting--most of them, like me, registered Democrats, yet not sure they wanted to vote for the John Kerry-John Edwards ticket. Let this remark by a woman, a nurse who works in a North Carolina hospital emergency ward (her husband is a truck driver), be an answer to the question of "what just happened," and maybe to some other questions posed. The Democrat Party is different than it used to be. The President George W. Bush family, they are high up, but they are our kind of people.