Going Into the 2004 Election

So what are the Democratic party's chances going into the 2004 elections? Very mixed, as a cursory view will show.

The Democrats haven't been good at playing offense against the Republicans this year. The Grand Old Party has been effectively tenacious at undermining the Democrats and the democratic (lowercase "d" intentional) process with congressional redistricting in Texas, the California gubernatorial recall, and race-baiting in the governor's race in Mississippi. Needless to say, the GOP won all these contests. (They won the governorship of Kentucky, too - and for the first time since 1971.)

The GOP resorts to dirty tricks for one reason and one reason only - they work! Along with the Florida recount of 2000, these egregious attacks on democracy by the Republicans have been part of their modus operandi since Richard Nixon perfected dirty tricks and smear campaigns in the White House. True, the bugging of Philadelphia mayor John Street backfired on the GOP, but the fact that the mayoral election there had been close at one time shows how vulnerable the Democrats have become. The mayor's office in Philadelphia is an office Democrats are supposed to win; Republicans haven't won it since 1947. Sam Katz should have been token opposition at best.

There's still some hope for the Democrats, though. Polls show as many as 44 percent of registered voters strongly opposed to a second term for George W. Bush. Along with the Philadelphia mayoral election, which Street won handily in the end, the Democrats expanded their majority in the New Jersey state Assembly and took effective control of the state Senate. (Before Tuesday's vote, the state Senate had been evenly divided between the two parties.) And they pulled this off despite the overwhelming unpopularity of the state's Democratic governor, Jim McGreevey. It makes the party bosses look like geniuses! (This should at least help McGreevey gain some traction for the state gubernatorial election in 2005.)

Meanwhile, in the presidential sweepstakes, Howard Dean is getting pretty tenacious himself, suggesting that the party reach out to poor and working-class Southern whites who display Confederate flags to keep Republicans from exploiting the race card in the South and also refusing public financing for his presidential campaign. Dean is willing to take risks to expand his support base and present a formidable challenge to his opponents for the Democratic nomination and, hopefully, to Bush. Granted, Dean fumbled on the Confederate flag issue somewhat, but he demonstrated that he's willing to step on toes if he feels it's important for the public discourse.

Maybe that's the attitude Democrats need.