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Friday, Nov 19, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Why John Kerry lost

By Bhargavi Shiva

George W. Bush's re-election is a wake-up call to Democrats to strengthen and clearly define their policies on the economy and national security.

WITH GEORGE W. Bush back in the White House and John Kerry back in the Senate, demoralised Democrats are left to contemplate a host of unpalatable truths that buried them in this presidential election. An engulfing wave of anger and denial is slowly giving way to a process of clear-eyed introspection on the Democratic Party's seeming talent for self-destruction. In 2000, Al Gore ran on a record of unprecedented peace and prosperity and lost (thanks to a Supreme Court decision). In 2004, John Kerry has run against a record of unprecedented catastrophe and lost.

Kerry backers draw consolation from the fact that close to half of all voters rejected Mr. Bush, whose margin of victory at 51-48 per cent was the narrowest of any incumbent President. But there is despair in the awareness that, as in 2000, the Democrats ran a less than stellar campaign. This time, they were undone as much by their own failures as by the terrain. For all the trumpeted impact of the `moral values' vote, the Democrats lost because they came up short on three decisive factors: their response to the events of September 11 and the `war on terror,' their choice of candidate and their ability to turn out their base.

Of these, there is little dispute over Mr. Kerry's inadequacies as a candidate. It is a baffling trait of the American electorate, and one that separates it from most other voting populations, that the candidate for President must be likeable (never mind what he thinks and does) and look good on TV.

Even supporters of Mr. Kerry concede that, like Mr. Gore, he could never win the popularity contest, easily inviting descriptions such as wooden, lofty and lacking in the common touch. By contrast, Mr. Bush's persona, reviled abroad as gratingly tone-deaf and arrogant, won over millions of voters, Democrats among them, as that of a direct, honest man. Mr. Bush was packaged to appeal both to the super-rich, with his tax cuts, and to the rural poor and working classes, with his ranch lifestyle and overt and activist Christian faith, while Mr. Kerry came across as the elitist northeast liberal with a billionaire wife and no tangible links with the ordinary folks.

A thinking man, Mr. Kerry's penchant for nuance and elaborate explanations of his policy positions was lost in a sound-byte culture that felt more comfortable with Mr. Bush's simple and repetitive certitudes and obvious anti-intellectualism. As a result, as one commentator put it, Mr. Kerry won the debates but lost the campaign. The Democrats clearly need to match the Republicans with a candidate who can speak to voters across the geographic, economic and social spectrum.

Of course Mr. Bush's personality victory is not entirely accidental. On the stump and in the debates, he made it a point to remind Americans that as the leader of a country at war, he had to take unpopular decisions at home and abroad. This was an assertion that shrewdly played to the unease and anxiety of a country kept in a state of `terror alerts.'

Fear was the key, and the Bush campaign never let it out of their vice-like grip. In an election held under the long shadow of September 11, Bush voters went to the polls believing that the President made them feel `safer', thanks to the unswerving resolution he projected in the face of what he said was a monumental threat of terrorism.

Belief triumphed over incontrovertible facts — the patent falsehoods behind the invasion of Iraq, the unravelling of the American occupation, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the insidious erosion of civil liberties at home. Although Mr. Kerry was forceful and comprehensive in his critiques of these failures, he did not go further to offer an alternative course, whether in Iraq or dealing with Al-Qaeda. Playing up his prowess in the Vietnam war 30 years ago was not enough to convince voters of his ability to handle serious national security issues today.

The Democrats were also no match for the second potent weapon in the Republican arsenal, namely character assassination. The Kerry campaign faltered under a Republican onslaught that even conservative analysts decried as being without precedent for the depths it plumbed in viciousness and slander. The character attacks reached their nadir in August, when a Republican Party surrogate, a group of Vietnam war veterans, launched a scorching media and advertising blitz that questioned Mr. Kerry's record and the honours he received for serving with distinction. Mr. Kerry's response came too late, by which time the damage had been done. The Bush campaign had managed to sow doubt in the public's mind about Mr. Kerry's fitness to be commander-in-chief. Simultaneously, it erased Mr. Bush's nagging disadvantage as a son of privilege who had managed to evade combat altogether.

The single most devastating strategy of the Republican propaganda machine was to label Mr. Kerry a flip-flopper. Mr. Bush's relentless use of this epithet, over one year, to define his opponent achieved two ends: it kept the focus on Mr. Kerry's character while avoiding a discussion of the issues he raised. Mr. Kerry's alleged flip-floppery quickly became part of the election lexicon in the mainstream press and radio and TV talk shows, and was seized upon with delight by the right-wing pundits and hugely popular late-night comedy hosts.

The Republicans' success with this message was borne out in interviews with voters towards the end of the campaign and in exit polls, where even those critical of Mr. Bush on a host of issues from Iraq to the economy were persuaded that Mr. Kerry was an unreliable alternative. Better to be consistently wrong than indecisively right, they seemed to be saying. Mr. Kerry's ability to remain steadfast and calm throughout this assault did not earn him enough points. In a rare and incisive analysis of Mr. Kerry's flip-flops, Jonathan Chait in The New Republic has shown that they were not so much reversals as evolutions of his positions, and that Mr. Bush was a clearer offender in this regard.

The salience of the flip-flopper charge points not only to the power of the Republican spin machine, but to a Democratic dislocation whose roots run deep. When Bill Clinton took back the White House in 1992, ending nearly three decades of Republican dominance, he did so by embracing a number of trademark Republican issues such as tax cuts, welfare reform and going after threats to national security. As the party has shifted right under a Clintonian centrism, it has taken on Republicans on their domain, but also diluted its distinct and alternative positions. By adhering to an anaemic centre, the party has failed to galvanise its traditional left flank without pulling over disaffected voters on the right.

Mr. Kerry in his campaign pitch dwelt on taking care of the middle classes, but did not speak for the poor. Although African-Americans continue to vote overwhelmingly Democrat, because they have nowhere else to go, the new poor among Hispanic immigrants are being won over by Republicans. Mr. Bush increased his share of the Hispanic vote to 44 per cent, the highest polled by a Republican President in three decades. The Kerry campaign also failed to get enough young voters, who lean towards the Democrats, to the polls.

Much has been made of the `moral values' vote that propelled Mr. Bush to victory. But the issue is less clear-cut than early estimates suggested. It is undeniable that the Bush campaign used opposition to abortion, gun control and gay marriage, issues on which Americans remain deeply divided, to secure the support of right-wing evangelical Christians. But, as The Economist has pointed out, at 22 per cent, these so-called moralists' share of the vote was less than in the two previous elections.

Instead, what seems to have changed in the religious vote — and should be cause for deep concern among Democrats — is that traditionalist church-goers of all Christian denominations, and not just the evangelical right, appear to have voted two-to-one for Mr. Bush. Democrats, historically reluctant to breach the separation between church and state, have to contend with the reality that America is the most overtly religious country in the Western world, with more than half of Americans believing that churches have a role in politics. Americans seem to be saying that they will punish politicians who do not make faith a part of their political calculations.

As the party revises its strategy for what is now a Bush era, it will face competing pressures. It can veer further right, pander to the narrow ethnocentrism of `the heartland,' try to unite church and state — and lose to Republicans every step of the way. Or it can openly oppose the radical right-wing Republican agenda and define `moral values' in terms of reprehensible lies about war, bringing about thousands of violent and needless deaths, curtailing dissent and civil liberties and disenfranchising the poor. Mr. Bush's re-election is a wake-up call to Democrats to strengthen and clearly define their policies on the economy and national security, while educating Americans about cultural and religious tolerance and compassion. It is only through vigorous opposition and distinctive stances that Democrats can return to the White House.

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