Ok, the election is done with, I'm already tired of debating how the Democrats should be reaching out to disaffected red staters — though for what it's worth, I think elrod in the Tacitus diaries has a pretty good premise for that, together with Mark Schmitt (see his entry after that too). Best of luck to the party as it rights itself and all that but any hopes that I might personally make some contribution to bridging the red state-blue state divide is pretty well wiped out by the fact that I'm still an elitist godless secular-humanist liberal even when I'm back home in Indiana, so I don't help much with the emerging consensus that we need to do some work on our collective brand image. But that's all beside the point! The point is I want to blog about something else right now, that ended up getting shelved until after the election like so much else.

I took Praktike's recommendation from a week or so ago and watched Frontline's piece on Rumsfeld's War. It really was a fascinating program to watch, and a complex one too since a lot of different threads seem to be at work: the title is somewhat deceptive because there are actually quite a few conflicts surrounding the Secretary of Defense presented within the program, any single one of which could probably merit a whole program of its own.   more »

I expect the Democratic Party, and by extension all the rest of us too, will be working through the ramifications of November 2nd 2004 for at very least the next four years or so, so maybe there's no need to rush into this all so soon, but Matthew Yglesias has a case to make over at the Prospect that maybe it can't all be traced back to values after all:   more »

If voters had gone to the polls and heartily endorsed George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, for the economy and all the rest, I would've been astounded, since I think those policies have been in a multitude of ways very demonstably wrong. But they would have been, at least, something that can be argued over and disagreed upon.

But I don't share George W. Bush's values, and I never will. And having won his reelection on the strength of those divisions within the American electorate, I find it very, very hard to imagine how he will be able to reach out to me and others like me now. Nor, given his practices to date, do I believe he is really even interested in trying.

I believe America is in great need of a reappraisal of its policies and practices in the world. We needed a change, and I believe George W. Bush will not offer us one, except perhaps for the worse. And for all the manifest dangers apparent in our current course, my fellow Americans do not appear to see or care.

Extremely disheartening.

Edit: Also more here.