Inoffensive, ineffective
Blaming Margaret H. Marshall is not going to fix what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Marshall's decision on same-sex marriage did not cost the Democrats the White House last week. John F. Kerry's indecisiveness on that and just about everything else did.
It took only hours for conventional wisdom to lay the Democratic defeat at the door of the chief justice and her colleagues on the Supreme Judicial Court who ruled one year ago that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the state Constitution. Four ''activist judges" in Boston, went the argument, energized evangelical Christians nationwide to come out to vote for a president who shares their ''values."
That Republicans benefited from ballot initiatives in 11 heartland states to preserve traditional marriage is certain. But Kerry opposed same-sex marriage, too. Sort of. Voters were as turned off by the senator's perpetual equivocation as they were attracted to the president's moral certitude.
Bush was reelected because he told Americans in the clearest possible language who is he and what he stands for. Just enough of them liked what they heard. Kerry left voters, including many people who voted for him, scratching their heads. It is no mystery why the architect of the Bush campaign was so successful in defining Kerry with that ''I voted for it before I voted against it" ad. Kerry handed Karl Rove the steel beams to build the case against him.
Instead of drawing a distinction between the parties, Democrats insist on blurring the differences in a wrongheaded search for some squishy center. A concerted effort to offend no one ends up inspiring no one, either.
Democrats lose because they are unwilling to embrace the principles of their own party. Poverty is a moral issue, too. So is the right to basic medical care, a job, decent housing, safe streets, and a clean environment. If Kerry had projected half the passion about those issues that Bush did about abortion and homosexuality, this race might have been about big ideas, instead of a protracted series of skirmishes in a culture war that Democrats cannot win.
When millions of Americans have no health insurance at all, why so much focus on embryonic stem-cell research? When 88 percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of gestation, why so much attention on the 1.5 percent that occur after 20 weeks? When the majority of Americans prefer to leave same-sex marriage to the states, why so much talk about amending the Constitution?
Kerry kept telling voters that the Bush tax cuts went to the wealthiest Americans. Why didn't he talk about the fundamental economic reality of the last two decades, the growing gap between the haves and have nots? Why no outrage about the fact that the top 1 percent earns more than the bottom 40 percent in the United States, the widest income gap since 1929? A stump speech reference to the ''two Americas" does not constitute a campaign against economic injustice.
Republicans have been winning big by changing the subject from the economic challenges facing Americans to the emotional issues that exploit their fear that the nation has lost its moral compass.
Instead of framing the fight to end joblessness at home or to engage in diplomacy abroad as the moral imperatives that they are, Kerry attempted a pale imitation of the president's personal piety. It flopped not only because it has been 50 years since the senator was an altar boy. Public displays of religiosity are not convincing in an aloof, progressive Catholic in the same way they are in a garrulous, born-again Christian.
Before Kerry strategist Bob Shrum convinces the next crop of Democratic losers to shun gays, shoot geese, and embrace Jesus, he ought to consider the possibility that voters did not reject John Kerry because he is a Massachusetts liberal. They rejected him because they could not figure out who he is or what his party stands for.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 