[I wrote this on the Beacon forums tonight… it was in a post-election thread with much hand-wringing. I can’t claim all these ideas are mine… many of them came out of a conversation with my friend Carl tonight, and others came from the blogs, but I needed to get this out of my system.]

The answer is this:

Organize.

The Republicans beat us because they got — as Rove said months ago — the 4 million evangelical Christians who didn’t vote in 2000 out to vote. How did they do it?

Wedge issues.

The GOP worked with the fundamentalist churchs. They got their parishoner lists and then they cross-referenced those lists with the state voter rolls, and they called every single unregistered person until they registered.

Then they got gay marriage referrendums on the ballot in eleven states. Then they called every person on those parish lists and told them that Kerry / Edwards were going to destroy the sanctity of marriage unless those ballot initiatives were passed. And they called, and they called, and they called until one out of every five voters who voted yesterday self-identified as a born-again Christian.

Kerry won a majority of people who identified as moderate, Kerry won a majority of people who identified as independent. Kerry won on people who said that terrorism was their number one issue. Kerry won on people who said that the economy was their number one issue. He lost because the Christian right voted in record numbers.

The GOP beat us on the ground. They got the vote out.

This is the way the game is played. It’s not pretty, and you rarely keep your hands clean. But if you play it right, you get to make incremental change for the better. And if you play it really right and get very lucky, you get to make history.

And… while I greatly respect the intelligence and integrity of my colleagues, let me say that the political game is played by those who care if they win or lose. And this time, the stakes were high:

Two — perhaps three — Supreme Court nominations, which means that we can expect Roe v. Wade to be overturned, and quite possibly, 20 to 30 states will outlaw abortions after that.

We will have to go it alone in Iraq — and we are about to launch major offensives in several cities.

Continued use of bigotry as a wedge issue to divide this country.

Extension of the PATRIOT Act and continued abuse of our civil rights.

Extension of a regressive tax cut.

No Child Left Behind.

Probable end of the UN as a real diplomatic force in the world.

Was Kerry perfect on these issues? No.

But he was much better — and he ran a good campaign overall, and he was as progressive a candidate we could run and still have a prayer of winning. And while talk about the long-term is nice and all, how much damage will be done in the meantime?

They beat us fair and square this time because they played the game better than we did. They got the vote out by the millions, they used information technology better than the Democrats did, and they followed up every phone call with another phone call. The RNC coordinated every facet of this election — and if you don’t believe that the Swift Boat Veterans were working in coordination with Karl Rove, I’ve got a bridge a few blocks downtown for you… we worked with MoveOn and other organizations, but nowhere near as neatly and seamlessly as the GOP worked with their 527s.

Angry?

Good.

The mid-term elections are in two years. We should look to send every GOP Congressman in blue states home. Every Republican in New York state should be help responsible for the failures of the Bush administration. And we should look to run and support candidates that reflect the face of the progressive movement. And we should look to take down Pataki too.

Then we need to look to change the game, and increase the blue states by getting our message out there. Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado… even West Virginia and Virginia are winnable. But we need to play the game the right way. We need to galvanize our base — and yes, that means Nader and Cobb voters too. Get Instant Runoff ballot initiatves on the ballot in key states, and give Greens a real reason to vote for Democrats.

Then, look at the wedge issues for moderates and independants and run on them. Convince moderates that Republican plans to privatize Social Security could threaten their retirement. (It has the added bonus of being true!) Remind Republicans over and over again that they are the party that wants to keep government out of our private lives and then point to the PATRIOT act and repeat — over and over again — that this is not the GOP they grew up supporting.

Politics is a game played for keeps with very high stakes. It’s played by people who care if they win or lose. And it matters.

A lot.