Unity Is Key to Victory, Clinton Tells Democrats

Former President Clinton said Tuesday that the Republicans won last month’s midterm elections on “message, money and turnout,” and he advised Democrats to present a unified voice on national security if they want to win in the future.

In the two-term president’s first public speech on the issue since the Republicans took control of the House and Senate last month, Clinton also said his party needed to support its leaders when they are “demonized” for questioning the policies of President Bush.

“We cannot wilt in the face of higher negative ratings for our leaders.... We abandon them at our peril,” he said, speaking before the centrist Democratic Leadership Council at New York University.

Clinton, who had campaigned heavily for Democratic candidates leading up to the elections, said that because his party failed to present a coherent message on national security, many voters had the mistaken impression that it didn’t have one. “It’s not fair to say we were missing in action on national security,” he said. “Democrats supported the president against terror. They overwhelmingly supported the defense increases. Most of them supported the position on Iraq.”

However, Clinton said, Democrats failed to articulate their stance well enough.

“They won on message, money and turnout,” Clinton said of the Republicans.

The Republicans also were helped by the country’s “psychological need for unity” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, said Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a Democratic U.S. senator representing New York.

Democrats also need to be more vocal on issues of “real homeland security,” an area in which the party has a stronger position than the GOP, he said.

Democrats have been pressing issues such as protecting the United States’ transportation system from potential attack and readying the country in the event of the release of anthrax or other types of untraditional attacks, Clinton said.

“That’s a national security issue. It’s a homeland security issue,” he said. “We didn’t say it in the last elections, and if we had, it would have made a difference in some of these races.”