so, is this our equivalent of Goldwater 1964?

[drumwolf]

Goldwater's thrashing in the 1964 election was a disaster for the Right in the very short term, but in the long term it actually turned out to be the beginning of their dominance. It was a watershed event for the Right which mobilized them and got them to start building their foundations from the ground up. I'm thinking that we need to do the same.

One thing I've learned in the past few months is that participating in the political process is damn important, but at the same time, it's not enough by itself. We need to be doing FAR more than just getting people to vote Dem -- we need to be building up our think tanks, organizations, media outlets. We've already started doing so with groups like MoveOn, AAR and the lefty blogs, of course. What we need to do is to continue on that momentum and not get knocked off our stride. We need to keep building on that.

I get the sense that after the Goldwater debacle, the Right resigned themselves to the fact that they wouldn't be regaining political power any time soon and instead decided to rebuild their foundations and their base at the grass-roots level and build up for the long term.

We may just need to accept the reality that we might not be taking back political power anytime in the immediate future and instead start looking to a decade down the road and continue building our foundations for the longer term.

[rockydem]

1. we will come back

the seeds are already planted

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. 64

That's rediculous...

Goldwater got 38% of the vote and one hundred or so EC votes


Kerry got 49% of the vote and around 250 EC Votes...


This is more like 1960 but we are the losing party...

[hippiegranny]

2. this sounds great

except I still have one question. Will there still be a democracy left to build towards?

[liberalpragmatist]

6. There will be democracy if we want there to be

Look, I'm in the minority on this board in that I don't think we're facing dictatorship - I really don't. But if somehow we were, if we were to truly be an effective, organized opposition we could overcome that.

the key is organization and cohesion. History is littered with examples of extreme minorities that seized power b/c they were the best-organized.

[WI_DEM]

3. Hell, No

Goldwater won six states and 38% of the vote. Kerry won about 20 states and (so far) 252 electoral votes and 48% of the vote. Bush won the narrowest re-election victory of any president since 1916.

[drumwolf]

7. that's not the point

I'm not talking about comparing Goldwater's and Kerry's numbers.

The point is, the Republicans used the 1964 election as a mobilizing point for their movement. We need to be doing the same thing for ourselves with this election.

[aldian159]

5. This party has been through far worse

we will come back, but it will take lots of effort and work on our part.

[tinrobot]

8. Maybe... but we weren't thrashed

We're in a MUCH stronger place than the Republicans after Goldwater.

We will take this country back.

[dolstein]

9. I don't think so

For one thing, the thrashing the Republicans got in 1964 was far worse than what the Democrats got last night.

On the other hand, the 1964 election sowed the seeds for the resurgence of the right. The divisions in the Democratic Party were greatly exacerbated by the civil rights movement, and there were already signs during the 1964 election that the once solid South was shifting to the Republcans. Goldwater carried several deep South states against LBJ.

Right now, I don't see any major regional trends that favor the Democrats. The Southwest might become more competitive, but I don't see it becoming solid blue in the way the South has become solid red.

But the fact is, we simply don't know what issues will be most important to voters ten years from now. Political coalitions don't last forever. And sometimes too much success can be a bad thing for a political party. But right now the GOP appears to be in a strong position.