Post mortem thread. Why did we lose?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

289. The party needs to back-burner behavioral issues

Same-sex marriage is being allowed in more states all the time, thanks more to GLBT people themselves than to anything the politicians have done.

Abortion rights are still the law of the land, a right that women in their child-bearing years take for granted.

There's a huge divide between urban and rural voters on guns.

This is not to say that we should drop these issues, only not forefront them. I really wondered at the wisdom of Wendy Davis highlighting women's reproductive health in her campaign, especially not in a heavily Southern Baptist and Catholic state. It would alienate the good ole boys as well as the fundamentalist women. But economic issues would have had a broad appeal.

I'm convinced that if we can take care of some of the economic issues, a lot of the behavioral issues will take care of themselves.

There are a lot of economically stressed people in this country, and if they're not very savvy, they are easy prey for those who want to appeal to their various kinds of bigotry and paranoia.

You'll never get rid of all the creeps, but I suspect that easing the economic stress would go a long way toward lessening bigotry and gun worship.