It should be clear to almost everyone by now that the normal rules of operation in Congress will be ignored for at least the next four years. The Democrats are not going to be partners in government and they have to learn to act with that in mind. They have to forget about crafting coalitions and working with the President and start acting like an opposition party.
What does being an opposition party mean? An opposition's job is not to stop the government from doing things. An opposition has only one job--to sell a set of alternative policies to the voters. Why? Because your goal is to win the next election. And the only way to win the next election is to learn how to lose battles.
In a parliamentary democracy, like Canada, the role of the Opposition (Official and otherwise, and yes, we do have an "Official Opposition") is very well defined. Opposition parties know, most of the time, that the government doesn't need them in order to get its policy through. The government will do whatever the hell it damn well pleases.
Accepting this gives you an odd kind of freedom. If you know that you're going to lose no matter what, then you can concentrate on the real question--how you want to lose.
Why? Because you need to do two things.
The first, and most important, is to develop and articulate a critique of the current government. You need to explain why what they're doing is wrong, especially when the government appears to be in good shape and nobody's listening. Think of it as an investment. The idea is that you're banking political capital, so that it can build up enough interest between now and the election to buy you a win.
As the opposition, you need the government to fail, and to be responsible for that failure. If you didn't oppose them, then you can't later hold them responsible. If Texas gets obliterated by a giant space rock, you want to be in a position to say "I told you we should have sent Bruce Willis", not "you cut the budget for searching for giant space rocks". Sure, maybe sending Bruce Willis wouldn't have worked, but that's only a theoretical not working as opposed to the actual not working.
People might have been more prepared to blame Bush for Osama bin Laden remaining free if senior Democrats, ones with actual positions in Congress, had kept pointing out that Osama bin Laden is, in fact, still free. But if it doesn't appear to bother you, you can be sure that it's not going to bother the electorate. A consistent pattern of criticism gets out a steady stream of low-level news stories that then have people ready to listen to you when the election comes around. Remember the "America Held Hostage" counts, and what they did to Carter? Think about what it would have done to the Bush administration to have the Evening News lead off with a "Days bin Laden has evaded capture" count, night after night.
Sure, under this kind of pressure Bush might have actually caught bin Laden. You know what? If he'd done that, he'd have won whether Kerry attacked him on it or not, so who cares?
Yes, sometimes the government's policy will succeed. While you may look bad for opposing a policy that eventually worked, that's less of a risk than not opposing failures. It's better to err on the side of criticizing too much than too little. A successful policy is, by definition, not an issue and thus is unlikely to come up during a campaign. I'm not recommending knee-jerk oppositionalism here--if you think a policy is really, truly a good idea, then endorse it. The point of articulating clear opposition is to give people a sense of how you're different than the government, and shape people's perception of what's going on in ways that are favorable to your party and your candidate.
A secondary benefit is that you get to articulate, by default, what your own policies are. While less important than tearing down the government, it is still an important goal of an opposition party. That means you have to develop your criticisms along specific themes. Don't launch every possible attack under the sun. If the message is that the Bush Administration has undermined the economic strength of America, abandoned the average person, and left al Qaeda to grow stronger, then frame every criticism along those lines. If an issue doesn't fit your message, let it go.
You need to think both tactically and strategically about how you're going to lose each fight. Always think about the message you want to convey about the government's shortcomings. Forget scorched earth, forget the idea that you'll make them fight for each inch of political territory--instead select two or three messages that you want to hammer into the news cycle. The Alberto Gonzales nomination is a perfect example. He gives Democrats a perfect chance to talk about Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, and criminal investigations of the Bush White House. They don't need to be the same messages each time, but they should reinforce your overall themes.
Republicans aren't inherently more skilled at defining themselves than Democrats. For the most part, the clear sense of what Republicans are is the result of the influence of two men--Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. Yes, there's a large conservative infrastructure that developed and nurtured the message and the policies the Republicans embrace, and it was and is a vital part of their machine. But Reagan and Gingrich moved that message out of the party and into the population.
Reagan did it largely by virtue of his position. The President, like it or not, is a single figure whose choices, personal style, and policies rapidly become seen as being those of his party. Even if Congress is fractious or opposed to him, he's the person Americans think of when they wonder what a party stands for. Reagan was particularly effective at communicating a message and creating a sense of resolution, and his Republican successors have succeeded or failed electorally in direct proportion to their willingness to match their behavior to that image.
There was one point in recent history when the Republicans risked losing that natural definition, and the Democrats had a chance to gain it--shortly after Clinton's election. Newt Gingrich prevented that by developing the "Contract on with America". It bound the party to Reagan's legacy, in the public eye, and kept them running as the party he had created.
Clinton, by contrast, largely failed to define anything resembling an ideology. We can talk about Reaganism or the Reagan Revolution and have that convey some meaning about policy and ideology. But "Clintonism"? Clinton's decision to pursue a policy of small, incremental changes, his failure to achieve any transformational goals, meant that Gore and Kerry have had to define themselves on their own terms rather than having their party affiliation automatically provide them with positive associations. The result is a window of opportunity for the Republicans to define them negatively--which the Republicans took.
If the Democrats want to turn this around, they need to work to create the perception, well before the election, that they think America's current course is a bad one. The Presidential candidate in 2008 will need to be able to shape that message to fit the needs of his (or her) campaign, but it is vital that he (or she) not have to build the critique from scratch. There should be a message already out there, one which has been proven to resonate with the voters and the media, that the candidate can tailor to fit the specific demands of the campaign. Kerry worked hard to make the argument that Bush had blown it in Iraq and ignored bin Laden, but the problem was that not enough Americans were prepared to believe it--because most of the media hadn't been discussing it.
This is going to be a hard switch for the Democrats in the House and Senate, who still seem to believe that it's all about collegiality, working together to craft compromises, and not incidentally bringing home the pork. It's very likely that they'll continue to do exactly that. But if they want to win the Presidency in 2008, they have to stop--and if each and every Senator really fancies him- or herself a future President, they'd better start acting like one.
