From where I sit, one of two things is going to happen in the coming months: the Dems/left will be so disheartened by yesterday’s results that it will send them into an indefinite funk, or the Dems/left will see this as a unique opportunity. Not surprisingly, I’m hoping for the latter.
Looking back over the past year or so, we said this was the biggest, most important, most life-changing election of the generation. We insisted that if we gave up our time, invested our money, and put everything on the line, Kerry would win and we might even take back Congress. We lived up to our end of the deal; the rest of the voters seemed to have other ideas.
Losing the be-all, end-all election suggests catastrophe, and in a way, that’s a reasonable assumption. Bush has done a lot of damage to this country in four years — and that was after he came in second in the last election. Now the guy not only has bigger majorities in Congress, he has something even scarier — a mandate. Everything we’ve seen since 2000 will likely be amplified and politics will probably get worse before it gets better.
But the left didn’t just create a campaign operation over the last year; we’ve built a progressive infrastructure for the first time. We lost yesterday, but we’ve developed a network that can win elections far into the future.
Just 12 years ago, Dems had won it all — the White House, the Senate, the House, and a majority of governors. Republicans did not start thumbing through their atlases, looking for conservative countries to which to flee. They had an infrastructure in place that advanced their agenda, regardless of individual election results, and laid the groundwork for long-term success. It included prolific think tanks, foundations, publications, media outlets, and grassroots organizations, working cohesively for a misguided agenda. Republicans, in other words, could take solace in the election results of 1992 because they knew better days laid ahead. In fact, they were just biding their time for a breakthrough, which as it happened, came two years later.
The left has never, ever, had anything resembling this kind of infrastructure — until now. Whereas the right created institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority in the late ’70s/early ’80s, we’ve had competing factions, disorganized state operations, empty campaign coffers, and vicious in-fighting for the better part of a generation. When Will Rogers said, “I don’t belong to an organized party; I’m a Democrat,” he wasn’t kidding.
And yet, despite the party’s history and all that happened yesterday, the Dems have created — with incredible speed and unprecedented efficiency — an impressive infrastructure that bodes well for the future.
The Center for American Progress, MoveOn.com, America Coming Together, Air America Radio, dozens of hard-hitting blogs with growing audiences and influence, Democracy for America, Media Matters, 21st Century Democrats — yesterday wasn’t the culmination of a failed effort, it was the start of a movement.
Yesterday was the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.