Tuesday’s midterm elections made the country and state’s political situation crystal clear: the Democratic Party is floundering, stuck without a galvanizing leader or a clear message for wavering voters. After the party’s inability to capitalize on conditions normally favorable to the party not occupying the presidency, Democrats were dealt a rare political fate: they lost seats in both the United States House of Representatives and Senate during midterm elections. In what is traditionally an overwhelmingly liberal state and despite an overwhelming Democratic majority in both the state’s legislative bodies, the party lost a chance to retake the Massachusetts governorship, making for a string of four straight Republican occupants of the Corner Office.
The 2002 general elections should be a wake-up call to the Democratic Party: Democrats must regain direction and coherence quickly if they expect to challenge in 2004 a man who is currently a very popular president.
The environment was favorable this summer and fall for the normal run of midterm election political activity. Democrats’ traditional bread and butter issues seemed to be problem areas for the Bush administration, with raising unemployment and general unfavorable economic conditions. Spring and summer headlines were dominated by more and more revelations of corporate executives’ misdeeds and the blue-collar Democratic base seemed to be feeling the brunt of the country’s economic problems. The Republicans were presiding over a weakened economy that had been strong for eight years under a Democratic administration.
But the results of Tuesday’s elections show clearly that Democrats were unable to focus the country on its domestic shortcomings and failed to offer an attractive alternative to Republican leadership, as Republicans did successfully during former President Clinton’s first round of midterm elections in 1994. Instead of running on positive solutions to the nation’s problems, the party chose to run a predominantly negative, anti-Republican campaign. They seemed to care only about running against a popular president and party, rather than running for the sake of promoting their own policy alternatives. Their message was muddled and unclear. And the next two years are the price all Democrats will pay.
The time before the 2004 presidential election is the Democratic Party’s test. The party’s leadership must find a positive and consistent message and an engaging leader to deliver that message. They must decide in which direction the party is headed will it continue its sprint toward the center or will it realign with the values of its traditional base?
If Democratic Party officials want to continue offering a clear alternative to Republican leadership, they must think long and hard about answers to the party’s crucial questions. Another election full of attempts to appease the center will be another election rife with negativity and absent of a major alternative to Republican leadership.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
