Finally, Reflections on an Election Lost 

Finally, Reflections on an Election Lost

For various reasons, not the least of them a balky computer, I've not before now had a chance to post here my thoughts on the election. Some of the things I would have written would have been driven by emotion more than by cool rational analysis, and I'm glad now that I was unable to get them up here. I hate eating my words.

I want to write first about John Kerry. A year or so ago, when there were still ten Democratic candidates, Kerry wouldn't have cracked my top four. When it became clear that he would be the nominee I was a good deal less than thrilled. As he struck me as far too cautious as a candidate and moderate as a Senator, I found it ironic that the Republicans went to such great lengths to successfully paint him as the most liberal member of the Senate. If only it were so, I thought.

I came to have a great deal of respect for him, though, as a man, as a senator, and as a candidate. He has, as an adult, done everything you could ask of a man in public service. He served honorably and bravely in a war he did not believe in, displaying courage and leadership under pressure. When he returned from the war he followed his conscience to expose the horrors of that war to Congress and the American people. Efforts to paint that as a politically opportunistic act are simply absurd. There is no way anybody at that time could have viewed a floppy haired veteran very publicly speaking out against a war we were still fighting as a calculated step towards some time in the future building a political career. It should have been political suicide. But because it was not a calculated move, because it was the act of a man following his sense of duty and his conscience, it came to fit neatly into his life of public service, along side his tours in Vietnam and his investigations of Iran-Contra and BCCI in the Senate.

I heard a caller on AirAmerica the other day say that, coming from a place where she felt the same reservations I did, she came to love John Kerry. I'm not going there, but I came to respect and admire him as a man and as the Democratic candidate for President. John Kerry would have made a good president. He still is a good man. Let's not denigrate him for what he wasn't. Let's appreciate him for what he was and is. Let's thank him for putting himself out there for us.

There are some who believe we need to learn better how to play the Republican leasdership's game. That we should get down there in the shit with them and lie and cheat and steal to win elections, as they do. I don't think we need to. I don't know if Republicans can win national elections by telling the truth and being honorable, by addressing the American people with facts and honest arguments about what they have done and what they intend to do. Apparently they don't think they can. I believe we can, though. Because, quite frankly, we are better than they are. We have faith that what we are doing and what we believe in is right and that if we honestly present that to the public we will win. The Republicans know that too, and that's why they lie about what they are up to as well as what we are about. They know that they cannot win a battle of facts, that they will lose if the truth prevails. We have to insist, at all times, on speaking the truth, on believing that what we are doing is right and acting accordingly.

I don't know how we go about convincing a majority of Americans of this, but I think we need to bear in mind that despite what conservative pundits from George Will down to Adam Yoshida want us to believe, those of us who supported and voted for Kerry are not the lunatic fringe. There were fifty five million of us, more than ever voted for a candidate before this election. We were devastated by the results of this election not because we lost badly, but because we lost an election we thought we would win. We were close. We still are close. It's not that big a gap, and we can and will close it by being who we are.