Posted on 11/05/2004 5:36:53 AM PST by ClintonBeGone
The day after the election, Slate's political writers tackled the question of why the Democratic Party—which has now lost five of the past seven presidential elections and solidified its minority status in Congress—keeps losing elections. Chris Suellentrop says that John Kerry was too nuanced and technocratic, while George W. Bush offered a vision of expanding freedom around the world. William Saletan argues that Democratic candidates won't win until they again cast their policies the way Bill Clinton did, in terms of values and moral responsibility. Timothy Noah contends that none of the familiar advice to the party—move right, move left, or sit tight—seems likely to help. Slate asked a number of wise liberals to take up the question of why Americans won't vote for the Democrats. Click here to read previous entries.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, red states and blue states aren't the same people throughout time. Smiley's hated Missourians went for Wilson and FDR at a time when many a blue state was still strongly Republican. And liberal Democrats counted West Virginia and Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama as lucky finds when they couldn't count on carrying Vermont or Connecticut, California or New Jersey.
So today, the South and much of the West are solid for the Republicans. That's what happened the last time someone from Massachusetts ran for President (1988), and the results will be the same the next time Democrats do something so foolish.
You'd see a similar electoral college sweep by the Democrats if the Republicans nominated someone from the Deep South. That's just the way politics works, and next time the Democrats probably won't be quite so stupid.
Most of us are the descendants of people who were happy to get beyond ancestral hatreds when they arrived here. It's one of the things that makes America successful. It would be the height of stupidity to revive such sectional hatreds at this point in our history.
In any case, the real split looks to be between cities and the countryside, not between North or South, East or West. When you understand that, and understand that some of the people on our side may not have been four years ago and may not be there four years from now, and some those on the other side now may have voted Republican in the past and may do so again in the future, it becomes easier to bridge the gap.
But a big event, like an election or disaster, is a blessing for writers who are sought out to provide opinions. They can earn a few more dollars and see their name in print again, even if they have no specialized knowledge or have nothing to say.
Yeah, sort've like the Vagina "Dialogues."
"The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not what to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable."
Doesn't this sound exactly like something we've heard from Slave Owners?????????????
And they keep saying Christians elected Bush while the enlightened voted for Kerry. As if being Christian is a bad thing. As if it is new for Christians in America to vote. As if Christians should not be allowed to vote at all.
America had its Civil War - it is not necessary to wage it again. The 'Cultural' Civil War (I refer to it as spiritual) has been ongoing. This election was the victory: the article is how the left is rationalizing defeat. They are stupefied.
In historical terms, the Age of Enlightenment is between the death of Louis XIV, in 1715, and the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire (9th November) 1799. The Founders were enlightened.
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
These words make the left cringe. This is enlightenment. It has inspired democracy all over the world. It transcends time.
Yes.
I don't how how old Jane is, but the way she refuses to address reality means she probably was around in the late 1960's - 1968 in particular - the year the left began to think they really were the vanguard of future America.
The bringing down of Richard Nixon (of which event little Hillary the Clown Princess and perhaps the heir apparent to Kerry's lost crusade was part) gave these fools (including Dan Rather who, as a legend in his own mind, convinced himself that he could become King of the Media and thus, control the American political dialog forever) the false idea that NeoMarxism as a way of life for allAmericans was just over the horizon.
They peaked in 1994 and the tide began to turn in that year. The BS factor had run its course: 1994 - exactly 30 years after Lyndon Baines Johnson had come into the presidency on the promise that "American boys should not do the job Asian boys should do." 1964 was the start of the War On Poverty with its affirmative action centerpiece garnered through the Civil Rights Act of the same year. Women's lib (code for having sex with no consequences attached - an outcome of the development of the oral contraceptive), the civil rights movement built on the greatness of Martin Luther King (who listens to his heir apparent - the unlikeable, hypocritical, fornication king, Jesse Jackson, today?), the Free Speech Movement spawned at the University of California at Berkeley, (whatever happened to Mario Savio and his band of foul-mouthed failed academics?)and the advent of the Psychedelic Age (Tim Leary has gone to his reward as has his heir apparent, Terrence McKenna) - it all looked like the dawning of a New Age.
Thirty years later it all looks so stupid in retrospect. The War on Poverty has been a colossal failure. Although many fine black people have taken advantage of the gift of affirmative action to better their lives and the lives of their families, most have not. Clinging to the mantle of 'victim-hood', many refuse to address their own unwillingness to actually do the foot work necessary for success. The promise of unrestricted, consequence-less sex has dissolved into an epidemic of herpes and AIDS. The Psychedelic Culture has not spawned a New Age of Enlightenment - it merely sputters along as the aficionados have moved back to the more comfortable (and more controllable) amphetamines, opiates, and booze.
The high water mark for the RAT bastards was 1994 - the end of the honeymoon of the first two years of the Clinton presidency. The cold war had been won (not by a RAT, but by a Goldwater Republican - Ronald Reagan), free sex was no longer free, the drugged out hippy generation was now approaching (or in )middle age, nobody gave a hoot for the National Organization for Women, (now hi-jacked by radical feminist lesbians with a single agenda item - on demand abortion), the Civil Rights Movement had more or less petered out, and people were getting a little tired of having much of their hard earned money taxed at confiscatory rates.
Clinton left office in shame, Al Gore went completely insane and lost his 2000 bid for the presidency, the RAT party moved further to the left, so much so that a life-long democrat, Zell Miller, could no longer recognize the party of his youth, and certifiable psychotics like Kucinich and Dean (and Teresa)were pushed to forefront.
Kerry was hosed before he got started.
And now, in the aftermath of perhaps the greatest failure of the American left, the morons want to fall back behind their own phony victimhood nonsenes once again. These people (thankfully) are never going to get it.
You should write to newmax about that. the less blue the better!
My soon-to-be ex was a 60s Grateful Dead petuli wearing hippy in the finest of liberal tradition. We are opposites. I can't say that it was a bad marriage: I learned about myself and she did too. She is materialistic, on social security disability and trying to get as much out of me as possible including ridiculous alimony. Needless to say, I have a very special place for liberals: on the curb.
On the positive side, I've met a beautiful Christian conservative woman, Teresa who has changed my life. We are both working through ending bad past relationships and it seems very much so that we were meant to be together.
One door closes and another opens.
Good for you Dave! God's blessings on both you and Teresa.
Stay well
Sergio
But not his republican-voting family:"my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority
M************! What friggin' nerve. These pansies will never win anything important if they keep thinking this way.
Why Americans Hate Democrats: The invincible ignorance of Jane Smiley.
I am getting tired of the nonsense. As a took-of from H.G.Wells' "The Time Machine", the Eloi Democrats have just found out about the Republican Morlocks. Give me a break...
"candidates won't win until they again cast their policies the way Bill Clinton did, in terms of values and moral responsibility"
This is a joke right?
I was listening to a newspaper reporter on CSPAN in one of their group therapy sessions for democrats express why Kerry lost. The claim was that people could not understand Kerry's nuanced stance on terrorism. He beieved that as an instrument of negotiation with Sadam, Bush should have the right to threaten force, and so he voted for it. He did not actually agree with using force and so he voted against it.
I don't know what part of going through with your threats the democrats don't understand. Are the so immoral as to think it is ok to threaten someone's life over and issue that you don't feel that strongly about. That is nothing but a petty heist in a diplomatic alley. It means that Democrats don't know what it means to have principals to guide what you stand up for and then stand up for those things. It isn't all about negotiations. Some things you are not a big deal and you give up, and some things you fight to the death over. It is immoral, not to say dumb, to confuse the two.
Those were democrats doing the slaughtering.
The way Clintoon "cast his policies" was one of the main reasons why he failed as a president. He never really got around to casting policies. He could never make up his mind even after polls and his advisors told him to do so. A good read on this in Morris' new book "Because He Could." Don't fail to read it.
Without Perot in the race, Clinton would have won in 1992. That's why in 1996 the Republican party filed suit in every state to keep Perot off the ballot. Wait? We didn't do that? Oh right, that was the Democrats in 2004 with Nader.
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