The Iron Yuppie

Okay, We Lost Ohio. The Question Is, Why? (washingtonpost.com)

I found this kind of amusing. They look at every possible aspect of why the Democrats lost Ohio, and basically the reason was that the Democrat's message was not good enough. This is the one hope the Democrats have for winning next time. Message counts! Whether or not the Republicans painted an accurate picture of the Democrats (my opinion is they both tried smearing, but the Republicans were just much better at it), the Republican message resonated more thoroughly and won them the election. Rather than saying the message changed people's minds, however, I believe it was 9/11 and the incidents thereafter which changed people's minds, and the Republicans crafted a much more straightforward platform about what to do about that, though I fully believe that if Gore had been elected and faced 9/11, he would have had similar policies in place (except possibly Iraq) and would have been just as effective leading with the "I have stopped terrorism" message. Whether or not this leads to the disbanding of 527 organizations is fairly open. Certainly, they must transform into smear machines rather than just get-out-the-vote machines. Because, like it or not, message matters.