Reply #46: I'm not even sure we had one

[loyalsister]

a good candidate, I mean. I think the problem was regional, and the inability of Kerry to connect with voters. In fact, Kerry's candidacy represents a larger problem. An unwillingness of the party to make the actual effort. Howard Dean wanted to run a 50 state campaign. While I love the guy and all he has done for us, I think they tore him down enough that he couldn't have won. The Democrats should have picked up some of his ideas, however. 50 state campaign was one of his best. Kerry pulled out of MO and probably Arkansas way too early.
I would have rather seen door to door precinct politics more regionally relevant. Ideally, national staff would ask how do you do things and win here? Volunteers should be trained to speak to the audience with whom they are speaking. Unfortunately, the campaign didn't do that, and we didn't have a party that made it a priority.
A ground war specific to every neighborhood and every door with economic issues in mind might have looked very different.

Regional politics is a great starting point for future proactivity. I recommend reading the article about the Democratic Da Vinci Code in the January 2005 American Prospect. A lot of the red state reps that they pointed to may not be who we would want to run for president or who you would put up in your blue state, however they know how to win WHERE THEY ARE.
We need those guys. It's not about moving economically LEFT and understanding how to SPEAK to the people who actually speak a different dialect of English. Obama has a whole other kind of IT that we need to learn to use better to capture the attention of the country.