Dems in the dumps: demystifying their defeat; charting their comeback.(Democratic Party 2002 elections)

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. IN THE WAKE of yet another of their periodic election debacles, the Democrats are deflated and dispirited, bothered and bewildered. Bewildered, I think, more than anything else. After all, this is not 1980, the year of the Reagan ascendancy. The American electorate is not clamoring for less government.

Indeed, the public's domestic concerns are precisely those issues that congressional Democrats should have won on: better schools, more affordable and comprehensive health coverage, economic security. Yet these are the issues on which Republicans ...

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