Sure, this information is a little dated already, and we’re all trying to move on (no pun intended) and put the election behind us, but for what it’s worth, here are a few links to articles that try to make sense of the Republican victory:
Money and Politics: It’s all about money.
Kerry Advisers Point Fingers at Iraq and Social Issues – from the New York Times
Simple but Effective: Why you keep losing to this idiot – an editorial from slate.com that doesn’t try to hide its bias
To appeal to middle America, Democratic leaders don’t need to carry guns to church services and shoot grizzlies on the way. But a starting point would be to shed their inhibitions about talking about faith, and to work more with religious groups.
In nearly every election since [1968], liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank “values” as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.
And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they “triangulate,” they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the “liberal elite” undiminished by the Democrats’ conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.
Throughout the campaign, voters told reporters and pollsters that they wanted a change, but didn’t “know what John Kerry stands for.” Our response was to churn out more speeches outlining the details of policies that Senator Kerry would then deliver in front of a backdrop that said something like “Rx to Stronger Health Care.” Of course, it turned out that Americans weren’t very interested in Mr. Kerry’s campaign promises – perhaps because they no longer believe politicians will follow through on their commitments. They wanted to know instead how he saw the world. And we never told them.