These are voters who can and will respond to the right Republican appeal. It doesn't mean they are lost to the Democrats by any means. That was the implied message in Gov. Ben Cayetano's comments on the election, in which he said his party has to look beyond its traditional issues and traditional power base. Cayetano might have been talking specifically about his push for civil service reform, which was opposed by the public worker unions and their allies in the Legislature. But the advice is equally valid on a larger scale.
Democrats are anything but stupid.
If they listened carefully this year, they learned an important lesson. Watch for a new message and a new style of Democratic campaigning in the huge election year of 2002. The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co .