What's Next for the Democrats? Our Party Needs to Embrace Tax Cuts...
Why did the Democratic Party lose so badly last week?</br></br>It's simple. We didn't give people any real reason to vote for us and we gave them far too many reasons to vote against us. We set ourselves up to be taken down by a popular president who figured out a way to exploit both of those weaknesses.</br></br>Look at what the campaign became in the last week, played out live on the evening news. First, we saw President Bush, flying from state to state urging Congress to make his tax cut permanent and to create his homeland security department, and accusing Democrats of foot-dragging or outright opposition to both. Then we saw former President Clinton and Vice President Gore, flying from state to state, urging the old Democratic base to get out and vote against Mr. Bush . . . or in the case of Florida, against two Bushes.</br></br>At a time when people are hurting, we Democrats some how managed to turn an election that should have been about making people's lives better into a grudge match between our aimless opposition and Mr. Bush's vision.</br></br>We lost the Senate, big. Why? To start with, we didn't get anything done. After all the noise in the 2000 presidential election, we still don't have a prescription drug plan. More than a year after the terror of Sept. 11, we still don't have a Department of Homeland Security. Nearly two years into an economic downturn, we still don't have a clear economic agenda and -- when we're not opposing tax cuts outright -- our party still doesn't have a clear position on tax relief.