The defeat of John Kerry, combined with the Republican advances in the House and Senate, has unleashed waves of dismay and perplexity within liberal and progressive circles. What happened? Why did so many voters embrace a President whose Iraq policy was paved with lies and deceptions, who has shown contempt for science, the rule of law and many of the principles of the Enlightenment, and whose economic policies favor the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans? What lessons do we draw from Kerry's failure to win over the electorate in spite of the Bush Administration's conspicuous failures? Are the Democrats crippled, or merely wounded, and is the party really out of touch with "mainstream" values? Finally, what should the priorities of the progressive movement be in this era of Republican dominance, and what is the best formula for future electoral success? The Nation asked some of the country's leading political activists and intellectuals for their thoughts on one or more of these questions. Their brief essays follow.   --The Editors

ROBERT COLES

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 the Kerry-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:

I went to vote and I wasn't sure I'd end up deciding--that's unusual for me; usually I know in advance. I wanted to vote for the Democratic side, but it was hard for me to go along with it. Kerry, he's stiff, and he puts you off (me anyway). I don't like some of the things his wife said--I couldn't imagine her being our nation's First Lady without a shudder. Edwards--he's a ham--lawyer, feeding off the trouble people get themselves into.
   The Democrat Party is different than it used to be; it's become highfalutin, my daddy says. (Truman was his favorite President--"no airs about him.") President Bush, you could sit in a regular place and have a beer with him, and like the time spent--you'd like him and like his wife a whole lot. (You talk about having a drink--with the Kerrys, they'd be ordering some fancy stuff I've never heard of, in some ritzy place.) The Bush family, they're high up, but they're our kind of people. The Democrats, they're "cross-towners"--I just don't get them, what they believe and want, other than to win.
   Sure, Bush and Cheney want to win, too [I had observed]; but somehow you get more connected to them, what they believe, who they really are (what they'd go to bat for, win or lose, heart, mind and soul). I guess that was my opinion--all these thoughts running across my head, until I stopped them and did my voting!

Robert Coles is the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University.

DANNY GOLDBERG

THERE WERE TWO CAMPAIGNS that supported John Kerry in 2004, the official campaign and a cluster of unofficial progressive campaigns.

The official campaign gave us a candidate who said he would still have voted for the war resolution, who posed for photographers as a windsurfer and a goose hunter. It made TV spots less memorable than Bush's. Although Kerry would have made a fine President, he was unable to convey who he was. When Time magazine asked voters which candidate was good at "sticking to his positions," 84 percent said "yes" about Bush and only 37 percent said "yes" about Kerry.

The unofficial campaigns, while loyal to Kerry, were driven by passion on issues, the war, civil liberties, the environment, and economic justice. They focused particularly on younger voters. The best description of the result is posted on the Music for America website (www.musicforamerica.org/node/view/67061), where you can see what the electoral map would look like if people under 30 had determined the election. Kerry would have won 375 electoral votes. The newly blue states would have included not only Florida and Ohio but also Virginia, West Virginia, Nevada, Missouri, Arkansas, North Carolina and Mississippi!

Kerry himself was no Goldwater, either in the magnitude of his loss or in the passion he inspired. But the unofficial campaigns gave America, for the first time in a quarter-century, an organized, impassioned progressive voice. The Nation finally has institutional allies like MoveOn.org, Air America, numerous new think tanks and organizations large and small. Finally there is a pulse. It is now our job to build on what was accomplished, first by protecting it against inane negativity by official Democratic political losers, and more importantly by doing the painstaking work of building a political future, as conservatives have done since the 1960s.

The most effective line from George Bush's stump speech was, "Even when you disagree with me, at least you know what I believe and where I stand." As George Lakoff has written, we need a progressive philosophy expressed in relationship to core moral beliefs. We also need candidates who understand that part of the job description for political leadership is fluency in mass American cultural language, a language in which, for example, the word "cowboy" is a compliment, not an insult.

Danny Goldberg is the author of Dispatches From the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit (Miramax Books, paperback to be published in the spring by Akashic Books).

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