Start The Bellows...now.

Over the past six days, there's been an epidemic of hand-wringing among leftist pundits over how the Democrats lost America, how they lost touch with the red states, even, as Slate (ironically?) put it, "Why Americans Hate Democrats." I think one excellent answer is that after Democrats lose, they spend months in weepy self-examination asking themselves why Americans hate Democrats. Were the Republicans to lose, they no doubt would travel the country asking why Americans hate freedom, or they'd just spend the time more usefully stacking the deck back in their favor, but they would never ask what they could do to win more votes, especially not publicly.

As a Democrat, it's maddening to me to see the party repeat after the election the very mistakes that cost them the Presidency, as well as shots at the House and Senate. As a party, Democrats consistently fail to define issues on their terms, and they consistently fail to sell those terms. When faced with difficult issues or questions, Republicans will, nine times out of ten, simply avoid the accusations or create an alternative truth; they will never attempt to address such hackles on their merits. Perhaps the admirable thing to do in such situations is trust the voters and answer tough questions with truthful detailed answers, but that really seems to have screwed us so far. Given this, it's especially frustrating, particularly after such a hard-fought, passionate campaign, to see Democrats accept that Bush has a mandate, accept that they're out of touch with America, and go about publicly trying to find a solution.

This is an epidemic problem for the left. Democrats have allowed late-term abortions to be called "partial-birth," they have allowed the estate tax (which wildly favors the extremely rich) to be dubbed the death tax, they allowed Bush to sell Kerry as an ultra-liberal, and they are allowing the right to sell this election as a rout for the GOP. If there is one easy answer to the election loss, it's that the Democrats cannot play hardball, not just in elections, but in the constant political day-to-day that defines election year issues.

If there is a second answer to the Democratic loss, it is in the party's choice of candidates. Now, I'll admit that Bush has never been a great candidate; only his talented political advisors and the weakness of Democratic strategists have saved him from his unimpressive, elite past and his bumbling persona, but given said weaknesses, couldn't the Dems find someone to nominate other than an unimpressive elite with a funerary persona? I liked John Kerry, and was very happy that he wasn't Al Gore. As the campaign went on, I even felt that Kerry was a better choice than my personal horse, John Edwards (who lost me more and more on trade issues, and on his maturity). Is it really, though, that difficult to nominate someone with a modicum of charisma who does not fall into the most easily caricatured categories of the Democratic Party? Well, yeah, I guess so. And it's not clear that Republicans will do much better next time around. Good candidates are hard to find; Clinton does not come along every day. Which is why it's so important to have talented (and unified) political strategists. Perhaps that was Clinton's biggest strength. In sweeping along the Democratic party and recreating it in his image, he quieted many of the party's less winsome wings. In that sense, the weakness of the field of Democratic candidates is an echo of the weakness of the Democratic sales pitch: there isn't toughness, and there isn't unity.

But the best answer to the Democratic defeat is found in Bob Herbert's Monday Times column. In Slate's fray, Jane Smiley was savaged for professing the ignorance of red-staters, and the damage that ignorance did to the Democratic cause. I, like many of us on the left have some righty friends, and lots of righty family, and therefore must offer the standard qualification that, of course, not everyone voting Bush is stupid (and as someone who lives in a blue state, er, colony, it's clear to me that there are many foolish lefties). But our Democratic frustration arises from the fact that we feel anyone who had all the facts, who read what we read, would vote the way we voted. And as it becomes clear that the victory-through-moral-values explanation was a red-herring, it seems ever so likely that, yes, much of America does believe Saddam and Osama were intimately linked, much of America does believe that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and much of America could not find North Korea on a map. I've been told many times that one does not win points by thinking that most of America is stupid, but that is exactly the game the GOP is playing. They count on the fact that more Americans will accept their misstatements than will be turned off by the complicated clarifications posted online or noted in the Washington Post (or, god forbid, in a blog). So while I readily accept that red America is home to millions of intelligent, well-read people, I cannot help but think that the difference in this election, the historically tiny difference in the popular and electoral vote totals, was due to popular ignorance. Perhaps Slate should instead pose the question, Why are Americans such ill-informed suckers?

In any case, the Democrats ought not to change their positions for anyone, and especially not for the millions of middle Americans who won't take the time to read about policy anyway. Winning is selling, and right now the left is routinely out-sold by purveyors of inferior merchandise. When they learn to drive the hard bargain, the Dems will be back on top.