Search for relevance

That thud you hear is the majority of the U.S. population moving to the right.

Why, then, are so many Democrats deaf to it?

In grasping for feel-good rationalizations as to why they lost ground in Tuesday's elections, when both history and the sagging economy said they should have gained ground, some Democrats are suggesting they weren't far left enough.

It's true! Some have suggested that a winning Democratic strategy would have been to be more shrill in opposition to President George W. Bush's war on terror.

Unbelievable.

The problem isn't that Democrats didn't demonize Republicans enough; the problem is that demonizing Republicans was all the Democrats had. And that's neither a sufficient raison d'etre, nor an alluring vote-getting tack.

The party is certainly welcome to lurch to the left even more - and, indeed, may do so with moderate House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's decision not to seek the leadership post again. But every step Democrats take in that direction is another that will put them out of step with the American mainstream.

They just don't get it.

Perhaps if the Democrats find that their standardbearers have become Al Gore and Al Sharpton, they'll realize they've left most Americans behind.

Rationalizations aside - and with no Katherine Harris to blame this time around - Democrats should use this election as a catalyst to simply question whether they're right on the issues.

Do Americans want judges who write laws from the bench? Less money in their pockets? A Middle East madman with weapons of mass destruction? Do Americans want the president's hands tied by the union mentality in the new department of Homeland Security - or do they want to give him a free hand in fighting terror?

It seems Americans have decided.

While some Democrats wring their hands over the possibility that they didn't adequately get their message out, there's the even more unspeakable possibility that they did, indeed - and that voters rejected it.

In the future, the party shouldn't rely on demonizing the opposition - or on last-minute insertions of retread candidates from years past.

As president, Bill Clinton once felt compelled to insist that he was relevant. His party needs to do more than insist on it. It needs to find a reason for voters to believe it.

Lunging further to the left would be an odd way to do it.