[Reader-list] (fwd) A new minority

[sanjay ghosh]

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A new minority: liberals all at sea in a divided America 

Kerry called for unity, but living with the enemy is not easy for his followers 

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday November 6, 2004
The Guardian 

In the coming days, millions of Democrats across the US, who wrote cheques, manned phone lines, knocked on doors, or merely voted in the most intense election season since the Vietnam generation, will struggle to come to terms with defeat. 
>From the liberal bastions on America's two coasts, to the cities of the heartland, Mr Bush's re-election victory confronts Democrats with two harsh facts: they are fundamentally different from their fellow Americans, and they are in the minority. 

Dealing with that reality, as Democrats move through the layers of grief from denial and anger to acceptance, is proving to be a painful, self-lacerating process. 

For some, the implications of Mr Bush's victory are only now beginning to sink in. "First, I'm numb. It is like a weight of reality crashing down on me, that I'm in a minority and that the rest of the country is uncritical, fooled by hype, fooled by righteousness," said Joan Bechtold, who works in orthopedics research at the University of Minnesota. "I am most disappointed, I guess, in what seems like a total change in the direction of our country." 

Others lashed out in fury, not only at George Bush, but at their party's failed standard bearer, John Kerry, who conceded the election - too early in their view - and then compounded the insult with a call for national unity. 

"This is a symbol of my disunity," said Mitch Hampton, a jazz pianist from Boston, tapping on the badge at his lapel, which showed a picture of President Bush with a red line through it. "If we want to work together, we have to work with the enemy, and the enemy is in the White House." 

To Mr Hampton's mind, reconciliation with the right would destroy an entire way of life. "Americans need to embrace their inner warrior, to become competitive," he said. "I'm going to try to fight a cultural war." 

Seasoned political operatives, such as Ann Lewis, a former adviser to Bill Clinton and current chair of the Women's Vote Centre of the Democratic National Committee, consoled themselves by taking the long view of history. 

On Wednesday night, she went home and re-read a book on the struggle for women's suffrage. By Thursday she emerged with a crisp analysis of what went wrong: the Republicans outdid the Democrats in expanding their existing base, they maximised Mr Bush's strengths despite a dismal administrative record, and they dominated the conversation about values. 

"We defaulted to wonks. We need to make of an effort to remember that most people don't think of policy in those terms. They need to know what we stand for based on shared cultural values," she said. 

But political newcomers are much less hardened to defeat. 

Tanya Erzen, a recent transplant to Columbus, Ohio, from New York, plunged herself into the drive to register new voters as a way of meeting people in her new home. Now she finds it difficult to even look at her neighbours, knowing that they voted for George Bush, and for a ballot measure to ban gay marriage that is credited with driving up the Republican vote. 

"I am completely discouraged. It is completely devastating for me to have to live here knowing that 62% of people voted against gay marriage and that we lost Ohio to Bush by 100,000 votes," she said. 

Like many Democrats, Ms Erzen's immediate impulse was flight - in her case it would mean sacrificing a job at Ohio State University to return to a big city - but she has now moved on to thinking of remedies. 

An expert on religion and rightwing politics, she argues that the left must recapture the territory of "moral values" from the right, making issues of war, poverty and healthcare. "We have to take back that language," she said. "Otherwise, we are going to live in a theocracy in the US, and that's terrifying." 

More frightening perhaps is the window that opened on the American psyche. 

For four years of this Republican administration, Jim Goodman, a fourth generation dairy farmer in south-central Wisconsin, had consoled himself with a single fact: that Mr Bush was never really elected by the American people, he was appointed by the supreme court. 

Black Wednesday forced Mr Goodman to face up to an unpalatable truth. "It shows, I guess, that people really do believe in what he is doing," he said. "Obviously, the American people really do support the current administration so we have to be responsible for what it is doing. We can't go on saying we didn't elect him, so it's not our fault."