Better organization aided Republicans

Let's clear something up. The Republicans kept the presidency and gained seats in Congress not because John Kerry is a bad politician -- stiffness aside, he's not. It wasn't because the Democratic Party has lost touch with Middle America -- a few wedge issues aside, polls show that most Americans still favor Democratic policies. It wasn't even because of particular strategic mistakes. The Democrats didn't lose this election; the Republicans won it, and anyone serious about Democratic politics should take a hard look at why.

Long story short, the Republicans are substantially better at the fundamentals of electoral politics that go beyond any single campaign. They have a more efficient party organization, they have more creative policy ideas (though not necessarily better ones), they have a more consistent message and they have more effective external institutions.

First, the vaunted Democratic ability to get out the vote was beaten by perhaps the best Republican Party voter turnout effort ever. The Republicans executed what New York Times Magazine contributor Matt Bai called in an April 25 piece, "the multi-level marketing of the President." The "72 Hour Taskforce," as the Republicans called their political pyramid scheme, had each level of volunteers responsible for recruiting the next tier of workers to find and then mobilize potential Bush voters. It was field-tested in the 2002 midterm elections and swept Republican voters to the polls last week.

Republicans also have been better at generating "big ideas" -- wide-ranging, transformative, philosophically coherent policy proposals that constitute a broader vision. While John Kerry had some really good plans -- for example, community service for college and having the federal government take on catastrophic health insurance costs -- that he spent more time criticizing President Bush's record than touting his own innovations says something.

Now, this may be because Bush has squandered record budget surpluses by which past Democratic ideas would have been funded, or because Bush's ideas, like his plans for Social Security, don't account for fiscal reality. However, in the wake of Bush's re-election, the need for innovation is greater than ever.

Democrats also suffered from the lack of a coherent message. It may sound crass to true believers, but the strength of ideas is not enough on its own; you must market these ideas to win. "Stronger at home, respected in the world" is a nice thought, but it's still about the other guy. Gore's "practical idealism" was little better. By contrast, Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and "ownership society" frame sets of policies across issue areas in a way in which Democrats have regularly failed. Democrats must find a theme that connects ideology to policies, policies to people and people to the party. Otherwise, Republicans will keep winning.

Finally, there is the question of organization outside the party. Campaigns are bad at changing people's minds. They can mobilize voters and change vote intentions on the margin, and that is often enough to win elections. But any pollster will tell you that most people will vote at the end of a campaign for the candidate they supported at the beginning. This is why conservatives have been, over the last 30 years, organizing outside of the Republican Party.

They built institutions including think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute. They created media outlets at the national level like Fox News and Rupert Murdoch's other corporate offspring, not to mention local talk radio and even conservative alternative campus newspapers funded by the Leadership Institute.

By researching and developing new public policy within a consistent philosophy, packaging this policy into a marketable message and spreading this message far and wide, these ideological institutions set the public agenda and lay the groundwork for conservative victories in state and national elections. The recently created Center for American Progress and Air America Radio aside, there is little equivalent infrastructure on the Democratic side.

True, the public still polls favorably toward Democratic proposals. But as Bai wrote on Oct. 12, 2003, in another must-read Times Magazine piece, "asking voters how they feel about the party on a bunch of individual positions ... is not the same thing as having a coherent idea of where you want to take the country 10 or 20 years from now."

Re-engineering the Democratic Party organization is perhaps the easiest of these tasks, if for no other reason than that Democrats can largely copy the Republican blueprints. Creating new ideas, messages and institutions, however, will take far more time, creativity and dedication. But it can be done -- it has to be. Otherwise, we will see Karl Rove's dream of a 50-year Republican majority realized.

What can we do? Cheer up, and buckle down. A chance to unseat Rick Santorum and take back the Pennsylvania General Assembly is only two years off. And as I've argued, campaigns are only the tip of the electoral iceberg -- the movement underlying them is far more important, and that movement needs our help. From college students to veteran operatives, Democrats need new ideas and organization at every level of the political process. So organize, innovate and imagine. Above all, never stop believing that you can make a difference.

Only then would we truly become the authors of our own defeat.

Kevin Collins is a junior Political Science major from Milwaukee. ...And Justice For All appears on Tuesdays.

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