Assuming Ohio goes the way it's likely Ohio will go, we're going to be reading articles for months on why John Kerry lost. There'll be dozens of reasons, most of them probably valid to some extent. But I suspect the conventional wisdom will boil down to two reasons, one being that Kerry was not a very appealing candidate to most people. Even supporters found him long-winded and he somehow managed to sound inconsistent even when being consistent. To a lot of voters, he was just a skinny Ted Kennedy: Massachusetts Liberal. Rich kid. Thought he was better than all of us. That he was also a war hero didn't resonate with a lot of voters who considered Bill Clinton unfit for the presidency due to supposed draft-dodging. Somehow, Bush — though born into privilege — convinced a lot of people he was a down-home Texas rancher…and one of them.
The other reason, I'm afraid, will be that the Democrats weren't mean enough. I know a lot of Republicans think the Dems were plenty rough on Bush but it was not as bad as it could have been. Next time, I'm afraid, it will be.
As I think I said here a few weeks ago, it was always destined to be a sad election, no matter who won. No matter who it was, we were going to wind up with a president detested by about half the nation. In 2000, I think Democrats were better sports than the Republicans would have been if their guy had lost with a minority of the popular vote and so many very real questions about uncounted ballots and suppressed voters. This time, Bush's win seems cleaner but I think this country will wind up more divided than ever…and to the extent that happens, we all lose.
Presidencies have a way of not going the way we expect. No one who voted for Bush four years ago thought he'd drive up the deficit and get us deep into "nation-building" in Iraq. His second term may be equally full of surprises for all. At the very least, he's the one who got us into debt and Iraq and now, he's the one who's going to have to figure out how to get us out of both. I sure hope he succeeds.