WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- It is a time of reckoning for the United States' historic Democratic Party. Its disastrous showing in the 2004 presidential election seems certain to doom the moderate, centrist Third Way leadership that has led it to three humiliating defeats in a row. But the inevitable coming years of anger and upheaval may invigorate its grass roots for the future.
Like the 2000 and 2002 elections, the results of the 2004 vote were devastating for the Democrats at the congressional level. The outcome is likely to plunge it into years of turmoil and eventually into radically new directions.
As in 2000, the Dems' showing in the national vote was respectable, even impressive. But even there they lost ground.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, their second lackluster candidate in a row, failed to outstrip President George W. Bush in the popular vote the way Vice President Al Gore did four years ago. And the relentless process continued whereby the Republicans remorselessly stripped the last vestiges of Democrat influence at the national level from a virtually rock-solid GOP South.
The Dems even lost the ground they needed to gain in the Midwest to balance this and made no discernible inroads in the West at all. On the contrary, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was kicked out in South Dakota after three terms. The GOP comfortably increased its majority in the House of Representatives. And all this occurred despite 1,100 dead U.S. military personnel in a bungled war in Iraq and the worst job-creation record for any president in three-quarters of a century.
The immediate consequences of this debacle are obvious. Kerry will become as much of an embarrassment and non-person in the Democratic national leadership as George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Al Gore were before him. If he is lucky, Dukakis will let him come along for walks on Boston's Freedom Trail.
Two other supposed rising stars at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this July have now plummeted to Earth with sickening thuds. Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, had better go back to trial lawyering in medical-malpractice suits: He's good at that. But as for national politics, forget it.
Edwards' coattails in the South and the West that the Democrats counted upon so much proved zero. He failed to make the slightest indent at the presidential-campaign level even in his own state of North Carolina.
The same fate awaits Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He was the chairman of the Democratic convention in July and was widely seen as potential presidential material for 2008 or 2012. Forget all that. Even with the control of the state administration in his hands, he failed to help Kerry even carry the state he ran. That drops Richardson to zero credibility at the national level. Also, as a senior party official he won't be able to escape responsibility for the great 2004 debacle.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe looks like a goner, too. The party rank and file has seethed for years resenting his moderate centrism and obsession with piling up the big bucks to outspend the GOP. His strategy succeeded beyond everyone's wildest dreams in raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States' alarmed and beleaguered middle class in 2004 only to fall flat on its face when it mattered the most.
The Dems were still swept humiliatingly from control of the House, the Senate and the presidency. They didn't even have the consolation of winning the overall popular vote for president that they could console themselves with four years ago.
It was a total reversal of fortune from the heyday of Third Way Democrat moderates 12 years ago when Bill Clinton triumphed for the first time, taking control of both the House and Senate with him. Since then it has been downhill all the way for the Dems -- and there is still no end in sight. The Third Way is dead for the party, and so is McAuliffe's credibility.
Say goodbye at long last, too, to the ineffable and previously inevitable Bob Shrum. This veteran speechwriter has been a leading figure in every one of the six disastrous presidential campaigns the Democrats have lost since 1972. The only times they have won, in 1976 with Carter and in 1992 and 1996 with Clinton, were when he wasn't a significant presence in the campaign.
More than any other man, Shrum crafted the inept campaigns for both Gore and Kerry, and on both occasions his feel-good, take-the-high-road visions of a shining future, his crusade against special interests and ignoring of national-security clichés led his candidates to disaster.
Forget the Democrats' hoary old Southern strategy. It worked for them fielding presidential candidates all the way from Woodrow Wilson to Clinton. But the transformation of Georgia and Florida into impregnable GOP fortresses leaves it dead as a dodo. Now the Dems need leaders who can carry them through the Midwest and west of the 100th meridian into cattle-ranching country, too.
Forget the inevitable emerging Democratic majority. That old chestnut beloved of Ruy Teixeira has been blasted into irrelevance in every election since he came out with it. Look on it as the successor to the old despairing catchphrase of Red Sox fans: "Wait till next year." But there was nothing inevitable about Teixeira's Democratic majority, and it hasn't emerged. Only a radical reconfiguration of American political forces will create it. Teixeira should now change the name of his Web site from "Donkey Rising" to "Donkey Drowning."
Like "Wait till next year," Teixeira's variant of "Wait till next election" was a comforting futuristic fantasy. Common sense, sanity and virtue would all eventually triumph. No one needed to change any policies, seek any new directions or abandon any beloved old clichés. All the Dem fans had to do was wait for their heroes' time to come, and it inevitably would.
That kind of thinking denied the Boston Red Sox any more World Series triumphs for 86 years. If the Democrats don't want to wait that long, they'd better start asking some hard and angry questions -- right now.
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