Think about why you lost

This is dedicated to Democrats who are wringing their hands right now.

It's now time for liberals who invested so much emotional capital in this campaign to stop bemoaning their luck or lot in life. Democrats lost. They lost the White House with a majority for the first time since 1988. Instead of taking back the Senate, they lost four seats. Instead of making gains in the House, they lost four seats. What's more, Bush made gains in the margins of 34 states. Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus. The problem for liberals is that right now, Republicans are more numerous and hold higher political ground.

This election revealed some big problems for the DNC. Here they are:

Strong South: Republicans have a base of support in the south that is nearly impenetrable. Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia will vote Republican from now until Armageddon or the Democrats drop their fanatical support of abortion and secularism. The path to an electoral victory for a Democrat without being competitive in the South is so difficult, it allows Republicans to focus on the few states they need. Of course Clinton got around this, but now that Republicans have consolidated the statehouses and delegations of almost every southern state, there's no real DNC farm system in the South anymore.

Republican Ground Game: How many times did I hear network anchors and Terry McAuliffe talk up the vast network of Democratic GOTV efforts? For all the talk about America Coming Together and the labor unions and how good the Democrats ground game was, it's now clear that the GOP's GOTV, which flew way under the radar, proved the equal or better of the Democrats' GOTV. This has been an area where Democrats have traditionally beaten Republicans handily. If Rove has found the formula for GOTV on the Republican side, they party may not make appeals to independent voters until repudiated.

Self image: For some reason, Democrats still see themselves as the party of moral authority. This often translates into Democrats acting as if they're in power even if they're not. Look at the convention. The Democrats acted snub as the party in power, instead of the minority railing against the corruption of the majority. Why did the Democrats give Bush such easy treatment during the DNConvention? A true minority party would have latched on like an attack dog. Contrast that to the Republicans, who still act as if they're the party out of power. Ever vengeful, ever opportunistic, ever aggresive. Didn't anyone see Zell Miller? It's Republicans, not Democrats, with a chip on their shoulder.

Culture War: If you trust exit polls (which I don't necessarily), the Culture War was more on voters’ minds than even the War in Iraq. Democrats may feel that they are on the right side of the abortion battle or the gay rights battle, but the majority of Americans now disagree. Democrats need to see the brilliance of how Republicans have turned abortion into a winning issue. It's not the Republicans who are, in practice, extreme on abortion. The GOP has very astutely embraced the general consensus in America that abortion ought to be legal, but restricted. That's why the GOP will win over voters again and again every time Democrats or Democratic judges shoot down a PBA ban. On gay marriage, it is practically insane for Democrats to allow some fringe members of their party to make it seem like the whole party is in favor of gay marriage. It is a losing issue right now.

Blindness: Democrats reaction to this will show how quickly they come back from this loss. If they think they can win without competing in the South, they will continue to lose. If Democrats think they can base their party in the Northeast instead of the Midwest, they are wrong. (An aside: winning in the Midwest means the Democrats will have to become more socially conservative). My guess is that Democrats will soon move left as Republicans moved right after 1960. In 1964 after Goldwater got thumped, the GOP sat around and figured out a winning strategy that endures today. Republicans in '64 saw that, despite supposed intellectual superiority, folks in the nation just didn't like them very much. Democrats will be heading for more losses if they take from 2004 that they have a winning formula because they earned 48 percent.

Audacity: On so many important to social issues, Eastern elites have no idea why conservatives or traditionalists believe what they believe. It is counter productive to chalk up the differences to stupidity or ignorance as some liberals do. If Democrats continue to portray people who believe in God as simpletons from the boondoggles, they will even start losing states like Minnesota and Wisconsin and further alienate the South. This God Gap could not be better represented than by the fact that Kerry, a Catholic, lost the Catholic vote. The fact that Kerry thought he could sway religious people with weird and awkward references to scripture is frankly offensive. The fact that Howard Dean thought he could win over votes in Southern primaries by talking about the Confederate Flag and pickup trucks just shows Dean's ignorance. The blue-blooded Kerry's appeal to sports fans and gun owners was even more patronizing. Who did Kerry think he was fooling by staging ridiculous photo-ops playing football, wearing camo and shooting geese? How Condescending. Like children (as a former camp counselor, I can't tell you how true this is), the American people pick up on phoniness and condescension. The Democrats either/or game on gay marriage (either you support it or you're a homophobe), abortion (either you're for abortion rights in all instances or you're opposed in all instances), guns (either you want to ban assault weapons or you're for free reign of weaponry), science (either you believe we've evolved from monkeys or you're dumber than an ape) and environment (either you fall in line with the Sierra Club or you're for making the earth one giant parking lot) – these false dichotomies are losing propositions for Democrats.

Here's a key indicator of how Democrats will respond to their 2004 thumping. Will Democrats who insist on bipartisanship demand that Republicans come around or admit that they, as the party out of power, are the ones out of step with the people of America? Here's some free advice to Democrats in Red States: Help your party by trying to find out what makes Republican voters tick. You'll never convince any of them unless you understand and respect how they think.

UPDATE: How clueless is CNN when considering the God Gap? Their guests next segment will be Jesse Jackson (groan) and Jerry Fallwell (double groan). What CNN may not understand is how insignificant Falwell is in the religious community. Of course, you wouldn't know that from TV interviews...

UPDATE 2: Nader was just on Anderson Cooper saying Republicans fooled a lot of people into voting for them. The idea that Republican voters are either stupid or ignorant is not a winning strategy and not a way to win them back. ...