"History is on our side"

A blast from the past: 9 November 2004

I just came across this email I wrote in response to a friend's despair in the aftermath of the reelection of GW Bush. I shared his disappointment, but, apparently, not his despair.

"... their (Gore's and Kerry's) defeats should not be taken as a repudiation of the Democratic view of things. After all, we on the left labor -- and will always labor -- with this important inherent disadvantage: we are open, non-ideological, and reasonable; our very identity as a party is bound up in that; our message is naturally less amenable to simplification. I happen to really like and admire Kerry and have been surprised at how so many -- even among his supporters -- found him annoying and weak as a candidate. But the irony is that the weaker Kerry was as a candidate, the stronger is the case for the Democratic way, since it was far from being repudiated. I mean, it could have been a landslide for Clinton.

This is all not to say that I'm not scared about what the next four years will bring. But I think it's going to be difficult for this administration to sustain its prevarications (to use the nicest word that comes to mind) and wool-pulling for another four years, and I do still believe that when the reality is exposed most Americans will reject the policies and world view of the extreme right wing of the Republican party.

The fanatic forty percent may be with us for a long time to come, but I don't believe they are or will become a majority. Let's hope (and pray) that the Democrats don't start trying to win them over with conspicuous public displays of worship and other forms of pandering to the ignorant or willfully blind. We have our own civic articles of faith; we have our own values; we have an agenda that still represents the needs and desires of most Americans -- we need to stay faithful to who we are. This defeat has been hard, and I do fear that there will be disasters to come (Iraq, the Supreme Court, the environment, our relations with other nations, etc...) but I really do believe that not only are we right, but that history is on our side."