November 5, 2003 - With the centerpiece of his campaign, the Confederate Battle Flag, pinned carefully in his lapel, Halley Barbour claimed the governorship of Mississippi for the Republican party.. In Philadelphia the discovery of a listening device planted in the Mayor's office changed a hair thin Republican advantage in September's polls into a devastating Democrat landslide for the Democratic incumbent. In Mississippi the Democrat incumbent avoided any connection with the Democrat national establishment. In Philadelphia the Democrat incumbent welcomed Bill Clinton and Al Gore to nail down his victory. Philadelphia 's incumbent mayor is Black and was running in a city that is overwhelmingly Democratic with a Black and whose population is about 50% African-American. Did that unique set of circumstances account for the difference in results?

In Kentucky Happy Chandler's grandson ran away from the national Democratic Party while the term-limited Democratic incumbent's record was marred by sexual scandal and charges of corruption. Across the Ohio at the heart of conservative Indiana , Dan Quayle's Indianapolis where once the Republican Party and the KKK were indistinguishable, the Democratic incumbent was handily re-elected. It is too early to draw conclusions on this morning after Election Day but one thing is clear. When the Democratic candidate ran from the Democratic Party, he lost.

Howard Dean used an unfortunate choice of words when he said that he wanted to be the candidate of the guys with Confederate Flag decals on their pickup trucks and he is taking heat for the comment. He was not trying to out Barbour the Republicans nor appeal to a nescient racism of southern voters. His message that the interests of working class southern voters had a community of interest with working class urban voters in the north got lost in the rhetoric.

November 2004 is a whole year off and events have a way of altering political reality. News of the 7.2 percent quarterly growth rate in the GDP is coupled with the news that more American jobs were eliminated in October 2003 than had been the case in October 2002. Mission Accomplished has been replaced with Chinook Down in the political definition of the Second Iraqi War. On the surface the President's economic weakness has become his greatest political strength and his greatest strength as a wartime leader has become his greatest vulnerability as America is starting to count the body bags. The political landscape of 2004 will not be defined by the Stars and Bars or by wrapping an incumbency in the Stars and Stripes. It will be defined by the same question that Ronald Reagan asked, "Are you better off now that you were four years ago?"