Democrats... hello?!

I've read two articles in the past couple of days that confirm my fears for my friends who profess to be Democrats.

First, I read Paul Krugman's article about Bush. He says that President Bush is a radical leader of a movement that hates America. He says Bush wants to tear down the division between church and state and got the evangelical votes to do it. He says Bush wants to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. He says Bush didn't win in a landslide and that if it weren't for terrorists attacking our country on 9/11 Bush wouldn't have had a chance. He goes on to say that Democrats just didn't do a very good job of mobilizing their base. He suggests that Bush won because the gay marriage initiatives brought out the religious right. (Yes, this trash was printed in the New York Times.) The long and the short of the article is this: Democrats, do not stop what you're doing. Keep going down the path you've chosen. Don't change a thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman

Second, I read Jane Smiley's article in Slate. It's called "The Unteachable Ignorance of Red States." The subtitle is "Why Americans Hate Democrats." It doesn't get any better. She says that essentially, Republicans have their brains sucked out and replaced by religious dogma. Once the critical thinking skills are given over to religious zeal then the big corporations can have their way with the zombie like remnants of thinking human beings. She then included bloodlust in her indictment of Republicans citing a recent example from 1856. Powerful work from Ms. Smiley. http://slate.msn.com/id/2109218/

I had hoped that the Democratic party would look long and hard at the situation in which they find themselves, having lost 5 of the last 7 presidential elections and continuing to slide into smaller and smaller numbers in governorships and Senate and House seats. These might be considered signs of dwindling relevance or of a failure to connect with the voting populace. Either way, it's not healthy. I hoped they would remind themselves of their core beliefs and see where it was that they strayed from the American public. But now, after a spanking of an election cycle, they choose to continue to push ahead toward gay marriage, abortion on demand, entitlement programs for everyone, subjection to the UN and a large scale redistribution of wealth.

Bush got 59 million votes and Kerry got 55 million. It clearly doesn't mean Bush got handed a mandate to do whatever he chooses. He's still going to have to work with Democrats and Republicans to make the best decisions possible for our country. My concern is that if the Democrat party keeps going the way they're going now, they will not be viable in the next election cycle and the 55 million people who believed that Kerry was a better candidate will not have any better choices. After all, as a Republican I believe strongly in a free marketplace and the laws of supply and demand, even in the marketplace of ideas. The vitriolic and condescending tone of the two Democrats above is not going to win any elections and does not serve the populace. Try again.