WASHINGTON - - The Democrats are now in disarray? Gosh, when weren't they?
"Disarray is a state we visit frequently," one party elder said after last week's mid-term drubbing. "There was the Republican tidal wave in '94, there was impeachment in '98, the loss in Florida in 2000 - - disarray is something we do."
But as the Democrats prepare to wander in the desert without control of the House or Senate, they do so without a Moses: Bill Clinton is off building his presidential library, the Democratic leader in the House just resigned his post, the Democratic leader in the Senate is tainted by defeat and many in the party are grumbling that the current field of 2004 presidential aspirants - - the "Six Pack" of Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, John Edwards, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean - - are just a bunch of would-be has beens.
"Within the party, the political equation for 2004 has been changed," says Donna Brazile, chairman of the party's Voting Rights Institute. "We have seen too many of our elected officials hugging this war-time president. We need somebody with vision and no such person is out there now."
It has long been said that when Democrats form a firing squad they stand in a circle and within hours of their defeat the ammunition was already being passed around.
The first victim was Gephardt, who resigned his leadership position after four unsuccessful attempts to regain control of the House. Rep. Harold Ford, Democrat of Tennessee, who wants Gephardt's job, led the attack saying: "The manager in the clubhouse could be the most beloved fellow in the clubhouse, but if he can't produce victories for the team, you have to find another job for him."
To Gephardt, however, this was all about presidential politics. "That was Gore generated," Steve Elmendorf, Gephardt's chief of staff, says of Ford's assault. "He is Gore's guy. And I must say Gore was extraordinarily graceless in his Barbara Walter's interview in his attack on the congressional leadership."
With the bodies of the Democratic fallen still warm, Gore went on ABC to say, "Democrats should not mistake the magnitude of this loss; there has to be a major regrouping."
Right now, Gephardt's people would like to regroup on Gore's windpipe. "The congressional leadership stood with Gore in 2000, stood with him in Florida, worked for him and never questioned him," Elmendorf says. So why is Gore on the attack? "I take it as a sign he is running for president," Elmendorf says.
But, then again, who isn't? The problem for the Democrats is that after last Tuesday's defeat many in the party now want to throw all the babies out with the bathwater and search for new babies.
"Both the rank and file in the party and the Washington chattering classes are saying we need new blood," says Chris Lehane, Al Gore's press secretary in 2000. "But that is easier said than done."
As a sign of how difficult it is, none of the names being tossed around are very realistic contenders including Governors Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, James McGreevey of New Jersey or Mark Warner of Virginia. And though some would like to see Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York run, she almost certainly would rather face Jeb Bush in '08 than George Bush '04.
"We need somebody not scarred by battle," says Brazile. "We need a new tone, a new song, we need new music. All the old records are scratched."
Whatever new songs the Democrats start singing, however, they are going to more closely resemble gangsta rap than love songs when it comes to George Bush. If there is anything the Democrats agree on - - and there probably isn't - - it's that the party has been far too easy on the president.
"As a party, we were intimidated by September 11 and there was a fear of taking on the behemoth of George Bush," says Democratic political consultant David Axelrod. "But that is what we have to do. We either have to stand for something and win or lose, or stand for nothing and lose for sure."
WASHINGTON - - If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.
If Democrats ever doubted the wisdom of that old adage before Tuesday, they do not doubt it now.
Just what did the Democratic party stand for in this last election?
Supporting President Bush on tax cuts?
Supporting President Bush on the invasion of Iraq?
Sure the Democrats blasted Bush on the economy, but what was the Democratic plan to help the economy?
"What are the Democrats?" a Democratic stalwart asked me bitterly. "We are Republicans who try to convince poor people that we care about them."
Could the Democrats have done everything right and still lost seats?
Sure. And it was Trent Lott, who will be the new majority leader of the Senate, who put it simply and frankly: "America did change on 9/11 and that had an effect."
George Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 attacks and the aftermath has helped him maintain a high personal popularity and allowed him to energize the Republican vote as he visited 15 states in the last week of the campaign.
And in a nation as closely divided as this one, the party that gets its voters to the polls is the party that wins.
Unlike some Democratic leaders, who decided a combination of bitterness and recrimination was the best way to deal with 2000, the Republican party spent $1 million to analyze the results, specifically as to why Bush lost the popular vote when Republican polls showed him winning.
The Republicans studied the last 72 hours of the election and came to one overall conclusion. "The Democrats have a better voter turnout operation than we do," Blaise(cq) Hazelwood, RNC political director, said.
The Republicans had, over the years, become victims of their own success: Since they raised more money than the Democrats, they could afford to spend heavily on get-out-the-vote ads, professional phone banks and computerized voter lists. The Democrats were left with bodies, especially the bodies of labor union volunteers going door-to-door.
But for this election, the Republicans started months ago going door-to-door and, armed with Palm Pilots, they gathered information on their voters and developed ways to invigorate them and get them to the polls.
It was unromantic, unsexy grunt work - - and it worked.
Take Florida. No state was more important to the White House in this last election. Why? Because of the four mega-states in presidential elections - - New York, California, Texas and Florida - - two, New York and California, seem solidly Democratic, Texas is a given for Bush, which makes winning Florida once again critical for his victory.
His brother was a big help to his winning Florida last time and had Jeb Bush lost reelection as governor this time, the George Bush reelection effort in 2004 might have suffered a blow.
So the Republicans poured huge resources into Florida (the president visited 13 times) and Jeb won big. Significantly, voter turn-out in Florida was up 6 percent.
Not all of those votes were Republican, but Republicans across the nation came out in larger numbers. This, in the long run, may be the most significant victory for the GOP.
And even though you may have read that this was another low-turnout election based on the percentage of the electorate that voted, in fact more citizens voted in this midterm election than any midterm election in U.S. history.
The Democrats picked up some governorships and, as I said, holding the Florida governorship was critical to Bush in very unusual circumstances last time.
But how important, overall, are the governors? Not very.
Terry McAuliffe, the DNC chairman who has little to brag about, bragged this week that the Democrats picked up governorships in Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania and that will "help tremendously in a presidential year."
Oh, yeah?
Republicans held those governorships in 2000 - - as well as New York and Wisconsin - - and George Bush lost every one of those states.
So if the Democrats are counting on governorships carrying them to victory in 2004, they are counting on a pipe dream.
And now, more than ever, this is a party that better deal with reality.
WASHINGTON - - Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack made an important decision this week: He decided he and his wife would no longer fly together in small planes.
And for at least one day this week, he decided not to fly at all because the weather did not look very good.
With the election just days away and in a geographically large state like Iowa, where it easily can take you at least two hours to drive between campaign stops, this is a big sacrifice.
But it is a sacrifice some politicians are now willing to make.
Vilsack's opponent, Republican Doug Gross, also decided to travel the state by car on Tuesday because the cloud ceiling was low.
"Sometimes you push it too far" when flying in bad weather, he said.
Nobody knows, or probably will ever know, if the people flying the small plane carrying Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter and staff members had pushed it too far last Friday, when the plane crashed, killing everyone on board.
But it is very much on the minds of the people who, in the past, have routinely traveled in bad weather on small planes because they just "had to" get to the next campaign stop.
"I just thought about the surviving children (of the Wellstones,)" Vilsack said. "I realize how devastated they are….I don't think I should put that possibility before our children." The Vilsacks have two sons.
Just about two years ago, on Oct. 16, a small plane carrying Missouri Sen. Mel Carnahan and a staff member and piloted by Carnahan's son crashed in storm, killing everyone on board.
The list of politicians who have been killed on small planes as well as the list of near misses goes is a long one.
Lauch Faircloth crashed in a campaign plane when he was running for governor of North Carolina in 1983.
"I was thinking about it this afternoon when I heard about Paul (Wellstone)," Faircloth told the Washington Post recently. Faircloth admitted that he flew in bad weather all the time when he was a candidate.
"You always feel the pressure to be somewhere. In your heart you know you shouldn't be flying. The pilot probably knows it, too," he said.
Faircloth said he had a number of close calls, but on Aug. 22, 1983 he and some members of his staff were taking off on a wet runway. "We hit a big puddle of water and it skewed the plane to the runway," he said. "Instead of going straight out, the plane veered into the side of a mountain. The plane went through trees, knocking them down like it was a bulldozer. It fell into the headwaters of Lake James. The water saved us. The plane was on fire from one end to the other and the water extinguished the fire."
"Miraculously -- the plane was beat all to pieces -- the door opened and I was able to get away from it," he said. Faircloth swam away as fast as he could. "Before we were 50 feet away, the plane went back into flame and was burned to a crisp."
I have a thick file of campaign plane accidents. Like most political reporters who have flown with candidates for a number of years, I have my own list of near misses and have engaged in "I can't believe we made it" stories with other reporters at the end of the day.
I remember when Walter Mondale's plane skidded down a runway when he ran for president in 1984, when an engine on Gary Hart's plane burst into flame, and when John Glenn's plane narrowly missed a control tower in New Hampshire while trying to land in a snowstorm.
I will never forget Jesse Jackson's campaign plane in 1984. The plane had so many problems that Jackson asked the Secret Service to check it over one day before he would get back on it. The plane got a clean bill of health and we all climbed back on board.
In January, 1985, while carrying charter passengers back to Minneapolis from a gambling junket in Reno, the same plane with the same pilot crashed, killing 67 people.
It was a jet and I still fly on jets, because I don't really have any choice. And I know that way more people are killed on the highways each year than in air crashes.
But I won't fly on small planes anymore. I don't care who the candidate is or where he is going or why he might want to "push it too far" before Election Day.
It's just not worth it. Not to me, not to the candidate, not to his family, not to his survivors, not to anyone.