In 2004, I went to Ohio to cover John Kerry's campaign to unseat George W. Bush. For liberals, the race felt existential. The Bush administration had lied America into war in Iraq, where an entirely predictable insurgency was raging. His military and CIA were torturing people; the Abu Ghraib scandal had broken open in April.
A worshipful cult of personality surrounded the president, whose administration was nakedly disdainful of truth. Yet four years earlier Bush had lost the popular vote, in a race in which progressives were divided and a decisive number voted third party. Surely, it seemed, with the right mobilization, Democrats should be able to defeat him this time.
Liberal groups launched what Matt Bai described in the New York Times Magazine as "the largest get-out-the-vote effort ever undertaken to win a single presidential campaign." It wasn't enough. Democrats did increase their turnout, but Republicans increased theirs even more.
Reporting from Ohio megachurches and right-wing rallies, I could see that many conservatives were motivated by the specter of same-sex marriage, which had been recognized in Massachusetts a few months earlier. In the election, 11 states including Ohio — including Oregon — passed ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage. Postelection surveys showed that "moral values" beat out issues like Iraq and the economy as voters' chief concern.
As I look back from 2020, two things seem obvious to me. LGBTQ activists had justice on their side, even if the campaign for marriage equality caused a terrifying backlash before it triumphed. At the same time, it's understandable why Democratic politicians like Barack Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage in 2008, because to do otherwise risked producing permanent right-wing rule. Good policy and good politics are not the same thing.
The 2004 election illuminates some of the dilemmas faced by today's Democrats, who are locked in an internecine battle between progressives and moderates. It's a frustrating and destructive fight because both sides are partly right.
It's the job of the activist left to push political limits, staking out positions that sound radical today but could, with enough work, seem like common sense in the future. But in the short term, an assertive left that garners national attention can threaten the political survival of Democrats who answer to a more conservative electorate.
In a postelection interview with the Times' Astead Herndon, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed frustration with those who are blaming leftists for Democrats' down-ballot losses. "Progressive policies do not hurt candidates," she insisted, noting swing-district Democrats who had co-sponsored "Medicare for All" legislation and the Green New Deal and had kept their seats.