Dear Supporters of the Institute for Policy Studies:

I just got of the phone with colleagues Karen Dolan, Steve Cobble and Segundo Mercado-Llorens and here are 4 points we think are important from this disastrous election in terms of the relationship between the elections and Iraq.

Hang in there,

John Cavanagh
Director

1. KARL ROVE WON: Rove and Bush's shameless strategy to keep the bad economy and corporate scandals off the front pages and replace them with Iraq war talk worked for September and October. Hence, emocrats key issues never got their play.

2. GEPHARDT AND DASCHLE WERE DISASTERS: The Gephardt/Daschle hug-the-President strategy on war and tax cuts failed. By spliting the Democratic Party over Iraq, Gephardt and Daschle weakened the party and gave people little reason to vote Democratic. Their argument about just getting the Iraq vote concluded quickly so we could move to other issues was equally absurd. And, the fact that Democrats refused to challenge head-on the Republican lead issue (after Iraq) of tax cuts for the rich also was a disaster. Segundo put it this way: "Harry Truman once said that if you give the American people a choice to vote between a Republican and a Republican, they will vote for the Republican. The Democratic Party conducted a "drive-by" campaign in which they chose to ignore the black vote (see Maryland Governor's race, for example) and decided to convince the American people that there was no real difference between themselves and George Bush -- on the war, or on the economy. They never presented the American people with a real choice, signifying real policy differences." It's time for progressives to take back what is supposed to be the party of the people. Gephardt is likely to resign today as House Minority leader and the leading candidate to replace him is progressive Nancy Pelosi.

3. DEMOCRATS WERE NOT HURT BY A "NO" VOTE ON IRAQ: Contrary to Gephardt, Daschle, and Bush's wisdom, Democrats who voted "no" on Iraq were not hurt by the vote. Only one Democrat who voted "no" in either Chamber actually lost an election, and that was Rep. Jim Maloney in Connecticut who had essentially already lost in redistricting and a scandal. Paul Wellstone went from 6% behind before the vote to 6% ahead at the time of his death. "No" votes in the House also seemed to boost Julia Carson, Rush Holt, Rick Larsen, Jay Inslee, and even saved Republican Jim Leach in Iowa.

4. THE IRAQ WAR FIGHT NOW SHIFTS TO THE STREETS AND THE PUBLIC: Our chance
to defeat war in Iraq now depends on:

• our ability to keep the public engaged and opposed to unilateral, pre-emptive war.
• our ability to carry out nationally-coordinated local days of action (and other creative events like city council resolutions) to show a united and strong anti-war movement.
• the strength of dissident voices in establishment: business, military, and intelligence.

We can still win this one.