Harold Meyerson on what went wrong

TAP: Web Feature: Debacle. by Harold Meyerson. November 6, 2002.
On what should have been the Democrats' defining issues, they endeavored to be indistinct. They could never bring themselves to oppose Bush's tax cut, his trillion-dollar handout to the rich, though that made it impossible for them to advocate any significant programs of their own. Nor could they bring themselves to oppose the White House's headlong charge into Iraq, though polling showed over two-thirds of the American people oppose a unilateral war. So Missouri's Jean Carnahan, Colorado's Tom Strickland, New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen, Georgia's Max Cleland and South Dakota's Tim Johnson -- Democratic Senate candidates in close races -- backed the president. All of them lost (though as I write, the South Dakota race may go to a recount).