[Industrialblog,
November 3, 2004]
Recriminations
Some recriminations going on among the Blogosphere Left. For examples, head to to all the usual suspects (I'm not linking to them.)
Here's what I think. Two reasons Dems are losing:
1. Perception of contempt. People in the heartland think Dems don't think much of them. Claiming the people are morons, by the way, isn't very democratic. You can't be the populist party while condemning the beliefs of the populace.
2. Bill Clinton. You should have discovered by now that Clinton poisoned the well. Clinton was out for Clinton, but he won at your expense. Your party's reputation has been immeasurably damaged by him. Defend him at your own risk, because it will not be at his risk or his wife's risk.
UPDATE: My commenters SuperG and Harry seemed to have taken this as more Democrat bashing. I'm actually trying to be helpful. It turns out my initial fears when I wrote this post were well-founded; this post was seen as a post-election attack on Dems. (In fact, I pulled an earlier version of the post for just that reason.) So if this came across as excessively partisan or as condescending, I'm sorry.
I remind you that I am a former Democrat and to a certain extent my heart will always be with the Democratic Party. The Dems used to have a super-majority and for nearly 40 years owned the House of Representatives. They've lost a tremendous amount of ground just in the past 12 years. There's a reason for that.
There's a reason people like me who were lifelong loyal Dems left. I'm just trying to help explain why. If you don't listen or just cross-accuse the GOP, you're missing the point. Many of us would like to come home; we're exiles in the Republican Party. We didn't leave because we're greedy or we're stupid or we're bloodthirsty or we're just easily manipulated by Karl Rove's evil campaign machine. There's more to it than that.
Here's what I think. Two reasons Dems are losing:
1. Perception of contempt. People in the heartland think Dems don't think much of them. Claiming the people are morons, by the way, isn't very democratic. You can't be the populist party while condemning the beliefs of the populace.
2. Bill Clinton. You should have discovered by now that Clinton poisoned the well. Clinton was out for Clinton, but he won at your expense. Your party's reputation has been immeasurably damaged by him. Defend him at your own risk, because it will not be at his risk or his wife's risk.
UPDATE: My commenters SuperG and Harry seemed to have taken this as more Democrat bashing. I'm actually trying to be helpful. It turns out my initial fears when I wrote this post were well-founded; this post was seen as a post-election attack on Dems. (In fact, I pulled an earlier version of the post for just that reason.) So if this came across as excessively partisan or as condescending, I'm sorry.
I remind you that I am a former Democrat and to a certain extent my heart will always be with the Democratic Party. The Dems used to have a super-majority and for nearly 40 years owned the House of Representatives. They've lost a tremendous amount of ground just in the past 12 years. There's a reason for that.
There's a reason people like me who were lifelong loyal Dems left. I'm just trying to help explain why. If you don't listen or just cross-accuse the GOP, you're missing the point. Many of us would like to come home; we're exiles in the Republican Party. We didn't leave because we're greedy or we're stupid or we're bloodthirsty or we're just easily manipulated by Karl Rove's evil campaign machine. There's more to it than that.
I thought you would take a break from Dem bashing. Of course, you can claim to be the populist party if you get 52%, even if you relentless bash and defame Democrats. Clinton hasn't poisoned the well any more than Newt or Bush II has poisoned the well for Democrats. Your well is just poisoned by different things than my well.
It is a two-way mega-highway. It's very unlikely to get fixed because neither side can step off as far as I can see. It is one-sided only if you only see just one of the lanes.
Rove's strategy trumped all. Bush won on values and for being perceived as being more like his voters. It's about gay marriage and stuff like that. I said if Bush lost it would be about Iraq, but he didn't lose and it wasn't about Iraq.
You will now have years of power. This is your day. Don't waste it on bashing Democrats.
Why don't you blog out your hopes and expectations for Bush. That'll give us the chance to see if Bush meets your expectations. How much more debt are you comfortable with? How many more lives and $ in Iraq is good performance on Bush's part? What tax rate is good enough? When should we try to catch OBL? How soon should we outlaw gay marriage?
Values are great - but how do they translate into policy? Governments don't have values, they just perform as they are directed to do.
The last four and the next four to twelve years are the Republicans years. May be it will longer. The Democrats aren't stopping you from doing anything. Go for it!
Actually, I thought I was stopping the Dem bashing. My point is not to bash them more, but to legitimately explain what I think the problem is. I'm trying to be helpful, believe it or not.
I see your point. I'm sorry. I didn't really take any offense, it's just a bit tiresome that you never manage to find anything good say about democrats. And then, when you want to point out something, well it just happens that it's the inadequacies of the Dems.
Much of my note is a disagreement that these are the two primary causes Kerry lost.
I'm still interested in what your success criteria for Bush are. I think that will a lot more interesting for me for at least another few days than hearing advice to democrats on what they did wrong, though perhaps less entertaining for you (and it's your blog and I don't have to read it anyway).
Also, what it is that really makes the GOP so attractive to you? Knowing that may be more valuable to Democrats than knowing what turns you off about Democrats.
There are plenty of good things about democrats...
Um...
They often lose elections; that's definitely a virtue for them.
Look: we just had a few years of people on the democrat side of the Isle screaming all sorts of barely coherent vitriol. We can afford a few weeks of just enjoying the fact that the lunatics lost. I.e. a few good weeks of democrat bashing would be good for the soul.
;-)
And, frankly, pointing out how out of touch modern democrats are, and how badly they need to repudiate their foolishness is not being unkind, it's being patriotic. If dissent is patriotic, so is spanking those who lose grandly in elections. The most patriotic thing that we can do is beat the democrats over the head with their loss and try to drive some understanding of what they did wrong through their thick skulls.
If it was patriotic for people to hold up signs saying "Bush = Hitler", it's patriotic to hold up signs saying "Democrats = Stupid, Irrelevant Fools". All the more so because it is at least tangentially related to reality.
I not unhappy with my vote - I made the right vote. I'm not out of touch at all, I just don't agree with the course the Right has taken. I think Bush is horribly wrong and his economic polices are worse than voodoo economics. So you know I'm not alone, look what happened to the Euro/$ exchange rate since Bush won. It's going to be real funny if inflation starts kicking in to compensate for our massive export/import and spending deficit. If your real wage starts going down, don't blame Democrats. ;)
A couple of points:
1) Clinton's part of history, so if Bill is voting against Clinton, no one can change that. He'll be voting Republican until he dies. I find that kind of a unusual voting strategy, but that's his choice.
2) I'm more interested in Bill defining success for your candidate in measurable terms. If Bill doesn't want to do that, that's fine, I'll just find his posts less interesting. No big loss to him I'm sure.
Suuuuuuper G
(1) You do realize that when we import more than we export, a strong dolar is to our benefit, right?
(2) In most of the complicated parts of life, success can only be identified retroactively, because there is too much we don't know.
Did the criteria for Regan's success include toppling the Soviet Union? Did the criteria for Carter's success include that? Did Clinton's criteria involve stopping 9/11? Should they have?
Take Iraq, for example. Obviously one of the criteria is that it should go about as well as could be expected given the situation. Do you know the situation well enough to say how well it can be expected to go? Does anyone really know the situation that well?
Human life is lived primarily in ignorance. Wise men know that and fools don't, but that's about the extent of human wisdom. When you take a job, you don't know what your work will be like. When you marry a woman, you don't know what your marriage will be like. When you go to a party or buy a new car or join a monestary, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. You have an idea, and even that might be wrong.
Living requires making decisions based on ignorance, but it doesn't require us to make judgements that we don't need to make.
Ultimately, the criteria that all sane people will judge Bush by is whether his actions turned out well given the circumstances. Setting up criteria now is just fixing the information at less than will be available when it comes time to judge.