2004: The Real Winner Is the Progressive Movement

Most of my Democratic friends have been lying low. We were so drenched in news that many of us are taking an information vacation.

But that is all. It's a respite.

A few days after the election, Akron area grassroot Democrats met. It was a hoot -- albeit a sad one. It was a venting session.

But it didn't smell of defeat. The anger seethed, the enthusiasm caught its breath.

I think of it this way. Bush's somewhat narrow win shows that the Democratic grassroots effort was powerful and phenomenal. Bush's successor cannot count on the next Democratic nominee to put up with as many lies as, inconceivably, the Kerry campaign did.

I was completely pleased with John Kerry as a candidate. He should've fought back at the lies, yes, but shame on dumbkopft Amerika for not crucifying Bush for lying so in the first place.

The real hero will be the grassroots energy, whipped into a frenzy by ACT and MoveOn, frothed by Howard Dean, served up by Kerry. The grassroots cannot be equated with one face, one flawed candidate, but millions of faces who thirst for progressive justice.

Goldwater's defeat in 1964 bore the first powerful shoots from the fertile ground of modern conservatism. It peaked with Reagan and is on the wane with Bush. The next Republican candidate will, to avoid a gargantuan ass-kicking, adopt much of the Democrat platform. The Swift Boat goons who lied about John Kerry can't come back to stir the pot of fear and loathing. Stick a fork in the postwar conservative movement. It's done.

Kerry's 2004 defeat produced the first harvest of the grapes that require a few seasons but will, in the long run, prove to be a formidable, sweet and powerful vintage for new millenium liberalism.