Democratic Burial Rites

From every corner of the media empire, the explanations come fast and furious:

The Democrats were clueless on moral values. John Kerry was a lousy candidate. A northerner can't win anymore. The Bush team was better at manipulating the press. No one trusts the Democrats on national security. The gay marriage issue badly hurt the party. The Democrats need to move right, or left, or south, or undergo a personality transplant, or change the Constitution so Bill Clinton can run again.

But if 70,000 votes had shifted in Ohio, wouldn't journalists be floating similar theories about President Bush and the Republicans?

"We love doing the death of the parties and the death of great movements," says Roger Simon of U.S. News & World Report. "It's just a good, sexy story to say, 'Are the Democrats through?' If we didn't write about process, my God, we'd have to start writing about policy."

Jonah Goldberg of National Review says, "There are three or four days after every election where the clay is still malleable and everyone wants to pound it before it hardens into conventional wisdom. There's this furious battle for everyone to impose their own meaning on the election returns." The less glamorous reality, he says, is that "Bush got more people to the polls and no one thought he could."

Given Bush's comfortable popular-vote victory and the Democratic losses in both houses of Congress, it was inevitable that the media would shift into What It All Means mode after Kerry conceded. The search for cosmic meaning, ultimate truth and second-day headlines is encoded in the journalistic DNA.

What gets "overwritten," says Time's Karen Tumulty, "is whether it was this pollster's advice or that strategist's advice that sunk the guy. It's a story that's just impossible to resist. It is catnip to a political reporter. The gold standard in our business is the untold tale."

But although journalists differ on whether the post-election analyses are overblown, some believe they fell short in one key respect.

"Bush did a very good job of creating some wedge issues on the moral values front," says CBS correspondent John Roberts. "That was a real surprise, something we didn't catch on to until late in the game. We all kind of missed the boat on that."

Journalists "don't understand red-state America," says Newsweek's Howard Fineman. "I'm an indicted co-conspirator. . . . Most people in what is left of the big media live and work in blue-state America, and that shaped our view of the election."

The sudden focus on "family values" comes from the 22 percent of voters in exit polls who named that as their top issue, followed by 20 percent who chose the economy. But as Simon notes, "all that is based on the same flawed exit polls" that journalists are criticizing for a tilt toward Kerry. And how many are willing to tell pollsters that moral values aren't important?

Goldberg, a card-carrying conservative, says that since his side won, it's pundits on the left who are taking their hand-wringing to a higher level: "Liberals need to come up with grand theories. Their explanations are far more existential. They get to be very literary and metaphorical and Freudian and flowery."

Throughout the long season, journalists were viewed very differently by each campaign. The Bush team was a relentlessly disciplined outfit that excelled at returning phone calls but gave reporters little of the whispered sniping or backstage color on which the media thrive. The president did few interviews, in keeping with his record low number of televised news conferences, and advisers objected to fact-checking pieces by major news organizations. His operatives put out releases criticizing individual journalists. Vice President Cheney, who barred New York Times staffers from Air Force Two, called one Times report "outrageous" and said the press is "oftentimes lazy."

In the New Republic, Bush adviser Mark McKinnon likened the media to "dangerous zoo animals."

"We just didn't get the sense that the press was ever going to be our friends," McKinnon says in an interview. "We were not going to get more mileage out of going out to dinner with reporters, hanging out in bars and doing more schmoozing." Citing the botched CBS story on Bush's National Guard service and the Times report on missing Iraqi ammunition, McKinnon says they concluded "that we weren't going to get a lot of breaks."

The Kerry campaign was friendlier to reporters but, for months, more disorganized at responding to queries. Tensions simmered over the summer when the candidate went six weeks without answering questions from his traveling press corps. Endless pieces were written about strategy debates and power struggles within the campaign, often fueled by unnamed aides.

"There was a presumption from August on that Bush would win the election," says Joe Lockhart, one of several Clinton White House veterans hired for the final stretch. "And what comes with that perception is a different way of looking at the candidate and how you cover him. If you think Kerry is going to lose, then if three or four new people are brought in, the story will be written as a staff shakeup out of weakness, as opposed to a strong campaign adding new talent. He was treated as someone who was a long shot."

When Kerry spoke to a group, Lockhart says, he would be depicted as trying to compensate for lack of support. "It's very important in a campaign not to be perceived as a loser," he says.

Now that Kerry is officially a loser, the can-Democrats-survive pieces will fill the headlines for some time, competing only with the Hillary-in-'08 speculation.

After Fox News called Ohio for President Bush on Election Night, John Kerry's aides began phoning top executives at the other networks to urge them to hold off, while White House adviser Karl Rove pressed them to join Fox in making the call. CBS, ABC and CNN made no projection in Ohio, and NBC had called Ohio before the Democrats reached the network.

"It's perfectly appropriate to call a network and make that case," says Kerry adviser Howard Wolfson, when "we have a set of facts and figures at our disposal to help them make the right call."

Rove, as first reported by the New York Times, urged Fox analyst Michael Barone after 2 a.m. to persuade Fox to call New Mexico for Bush, which would have given him enough electoral votes to win. "It had no effect at all," says Fox News Senior Vice President John Moody.

After NBC awarded Ohio to Bush, says political director Elizabeth Wilner, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill called to say it was "a mistake," and Bush campaign chief Ken Mehlman called to say NBC shouldn't back off its projection. It didn't.

Spokesmen for the other networks say the lobbying changed no minds. "Both campaigns called, and we didn't pay attention to either of them," says CBS News Vice President Linda Mason, citing concern about 250,000 provisional ballots in Ohio.

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto is showing no remorse for an on-air crack about Osama bin Laden wearing a Kerry button that infuriated John Kerry's campaign.

Cavuto told viewers last week that his "thin-skinned" and "humorless critics seem to have selective memory." Recalling all the Democrats he's had on his show, Cavuto dismissed "threats from Democrats who now say they will boycott my show. I say, go ahead. Boycott me. Fair and balanced, I'll continue to invite you, and I'll let my viewers know when you decline -- each and every time you do."

Jimmy Breslin, in his last regular column for Newsday on Nov. 2, on a Kerry victory: "I am so sure that I am not even going to bother to watch the results tonight. I am going to bed early."

Meanwhile, have you noticed that every day the papers have been writing some version of the same story: Are the Democrats brain-dead, or just dead?

"The Democratic Party emerged from this week's election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance," says the New York Times.

"Democrats said President Bush's defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes had left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008."

None of this is helping Hillary, says the Los Angeles Times:

"Reeling from their party's loss in the presidential election, some key Democratic financiers and strategists say they have learned a clear lesson: Next time around, no Northeasterners need apply.

"The blue-state party needs a face from a red state if it is going to expand beyond its base on the two coasts and preserve its hold on the Upper Midwest, where its long-standing appeal to voters has become tenuous, these insiders say.

"Their voices -- if they become ascendant as the Democratic Party undertakes a round of soul-searching after Tuesday's losses by presidential nominee John F. Kerry and key Senate candidates -- could dampen prospects for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has been frequently mentioned as a prominent White House contender in 2008.

"The concerns about the party's direction also could lift lesser-knowns such as Govs. Mark R. Warner of Virginia and Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, who are widely seen as effective communicators of a populist Democratic message in Republican-leaning states."

A few, like the Boston Globe, are gaming the prospects for the second term:

"Bush's full-speed-ahead approach, despite his strong victory last Tuesday, has yet to take into account serious hurdles that may be beyond his control. The deficit is soaring. Some congressional Republicans are less eager to reorganize Social Security. The continuing combat in Iraq, not to mention the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks, threatens to consume much of the political oxygen he might need to push a bold agenda across Capitol Hill."

The Philadelphia Inquirer examines the new '04 shorthand:

"For the better part of a year, the presidential campaign of 2004 was all about Iraq, terrorism and jobs. Then came Election Day.

"Suddenly, it's all about the 'values voters.'

"The conventional wisdom was transformed - and a new buzz phrase created - by a single exit-poll question.

"Voters were asked which of seven issues was most important to them. Twenty-two percent chose 'moral values,' more than any other option. And 79 percent of those people backed President Bush. Now comes the battle over how to interpret that result."

Weren't those the same exit polls that had Kerry by 3?

The New Republic's Michelle Cottle nails the hype factor:

"The bigger annoyance was the media's predictable, tedious insistence on painting Tuesday's events in the most earth-shattering terms imaginable.

"With media types, no event is self-contained or mundane. It must be a watershed moment or part of a burgeoning trend or the sign of something monumentally sinister to come. Even a truly seismic event like September 11 can't be allowed to stand on its own. It must signal 'the end of irony' or some incredible horse [feathers] like that. Thus, Tuesday's Very Bad Day for Democrats can't be just that. It must have some sort of historic, enduring import that will give the chattering class something to chatter about for at least another few weeks.

"By far the most annoying post-election line I'm hearing over and over again is how remarkable it is that George W. Bush managed to become the first presidential candidate since 1988 to win a majority of the popular vote. Oh my God! How remarkable! Let's see: This means that, with his 51 percent of the vote, W. managed to break the long, non-popular-majority string of exactly two presidents--Bill Clinton and himself. Of course, to make the comparison meaningful we need to factor in that, unlike 1992, 1996, and 2000, this year there was no serious third-party challenger peeling away votes. But still, W. managed a better electoral margin than one whole president other than himself. How ever will he handle the burden of it all?

"Then there's all the gasping about the Republicans gaining seats in the House. How on earth did that happen? Well, since several of the seats were gained in Texas, it probably has something to do with Tom DeLay's spending the past couple of years bending laws in order to carve up the Lone Star State into congressional districts more twisted than Bill O'Reilly's fantasy life."

Josh Marshall says Bush will dictate the pace:

"For at least the next two years, the President can get passed almost anything he wants to. His congressional majorities are now sufficiently padded that he can even afford a few Republican defections. He simply doesn't need Democrats for anything.

"And that means approaching most legislative battles not with an eye toward preventing passage or significantly altering legislation, but placing alternatives on the table that the party will be able use as contrasts to frame the next two elections. In other words, their only remaining viable alternative is to be an actual party of opposition."

Dan Kennedy is on about Step 2 of a twelve-step process:

"For a while I kidded myself into thinking that George W. Bush wouldn't be able to nominate just any right-wing lunatic he pleases to the Supreme Court. After all, the Republicans' 55-44 edge in the Senate is short of the 60 votes it takes to end a Democratic filibuster. Besides, moderate Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island (who may become a Democrat), and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are presumably not going to stand by while Bush tries to use the courts to undo Roe v. Wade.

"Well, that was yesterday. Charlie Savage reports in the Boston Globe that Specter has backed off his earlier threat to block any anti-choice nominee after his fellow Republicans threatened to deny him the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee...

"And Josh Marshall notes that the Bushies are already talking about getting rid of that little old 60-vote impediment. Marshall is way too easy on these thugs, writing that the 60-vote rule is 'subject to a lot of very valid criticism.' Come on, Josh. The rule is there for a reason: the idea is that neither side gets to do anything and everything it wants unless it has an overwhelming majority, which the Republicans clearly do not have. If the Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster, let them elect five or six more members in 2006. (I shouldn't have said that. Maybe they will!)

"We live in a constitutional system. The rights of the minority are supposed to be balanced with the will of the majority. If Bush is going to use his very real but very slim victory to take away our civil and personal liberties, it's up to the Democrats - and to the few remaining Republicans of conscience - to fight him and his allies like crazed weasels."

Think that anti-gay marriage amendment will fade with the election season over? Not so, reports the Washington Times:

"The Bush administration and Republican leaders yesterday signaled that a domestic agenda including a constitutional amendment on marriage will dominate the congressional calendar, even though foreign policy and the war in Iraq dominated the presidential campaign. . . .

"Karl Rove, senior White House political adviser, said 'absolutely' Mr. Bush will continue to push for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. 'We cannot allow activist judges to overturn that,' Mr. Rove told 'Fox News Sunday.' 'We cannot allow activist local elected officials to thumb their nose at 5,000 years of human history and determine that marriage is something else.'"

Slate's Tim Noah strains for a touch of bipartisanship:

"Today is Say Something Nice About Bush Day. The American people have spoken, and today all must pay homage. (Tomorrow -- next week at the latest -- we can go back to insulting him.) Characteristics that grated throughout the election and much of his first term are today redefined in more positive ways. Is Bush ideological and stubborn? I saw Tom Brokaw on NBC praising Bush for his manly 'resolve.' I've thought hard all day about how I might contribute to this round-robin of reconciliation without completely sacrificing all self-respect. Here goes.

"I like the fact that Bush, whenever he has occasion to invoke America's tradition of religious tolerance, always has a kind word for atheists. I am an atheist. (Please, no e-mails in response trying to save my soul. I consider my atheism to be a personal matter between me and my nonexistent Creator). . . .

"If today weren't Say Something Nice About Bush Day, I might wonder how praising the patriotism of people who 'choose not to worship' became part of Bush's boilerplate. I might wonder whether Karl Rove slipped that in subtly to remind the Christian right that there are a lot of brie-eating, New York Times-reading non-churchgoers out there, and that they always vote for Democrats, and that that's a good reason to give your all for the God-fearing Republican you see before you."

And if you've OD'd on politics for awhile, the LAT has an amazingly detailed reconstruction of how the Kobe Bryant case fell apart.