WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Posted on 11/07/2004 6:34:45 AM PST by finnigan2
I'm reluctant to intrude on family grief, especially as the Dems are doing such a sterling job all by themselves. But, when big shot Democrats look at Tuesday's results and instantly announce the reason they flopped out was because . . .
Whoa, hang on a minute, my apologies. There's been a clerical error here: That was my post-election column from 2002. My post-election column from 2004 goes like . . . well, actually, it goes pretty much the same. It'd be easier just to take the second week in November off every two years and let my editors run the timeless classic whither-the-Democrats? column. All that changes is the local color. In 2002, I was very taken by the band at Missouri Democratic headquarters attempting to rouse the despondent faithful with Steve Allen's peppy anthem, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big,'' and noted that the party faced the opposite problem: This could be the end of something small.
As they've done for a decade now, the Democrat bigwigs worried about it for a couple of weeks and then rationalized it away: In 2000 they lost because Bush stole the "election"; in 2002 they lost because of that "vicious" attack ad on Max Cleland. The official consolation for this year's biennial bust hasn't yet been decided on, but Tom Daschle's election-eve lawsuit alone offers several attractive runners, including the complaint that Democrats were intimidated by Republicans ''rolling their eyes.'' Could be a lot more of that if this keeps up.
So it seems likely -- just to get my 2006 post-election column out of the way here -- that in a couple years' time the Democrats will have run on the same thin gruel as usual and be mourning the loss of another two or three Senate seats. You want names and states? Well, how about West Virginia? Will the 88-year old Robert C. Byrd be on the ballot in 2006? And, if he's not, what are the Dems' chances of stopping West Virginia's transformation to permanent "red state" status?
It also seems likely -- just to get my 2012 post-election column out of the way here -- that in eight years' time the Dems will have run on the same thin gruel as usual and, thanks to the 2010 census and the ongoing shift of population to the South and West, lost another five House seats and discovered that the "blue states" are worth even less in the Electoral College -- though in fairness their only available presidential candidate, the young dynamic Southerner 94-year-old Robert C. Byrd, managed to hold all but three of Kerry's states.
I had a bet with myself this week: How soon after election night would it be before the Bush-the-chimp-faced-moron stuff started up again? 48 hours? A week? I was wrong. Bush Derangement Syndrome is moving to a whole new level. On the morning of Nov. 2, the condescending left were convinced that Bush was an idiot. By the evening of Nov. 2, they were convinced that the electorate was. Or as London's Daily Mirror put it in its front page: "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?"
Well, they're British lefties: They can do without Americans. Whether an American political party can do without Americans is more doubtful. Nonetheless, MSNBC.com's Eric Alterman was mirroring the Mirror's sentiments: "Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' say or believe about anything." Over at Slate, Jane Smiley's analysis was headlined, "The Unteachable Ignorance Of The Red States.'' If you don't want to bother plowing your way through Alterman and Smiley, a placard prominently displayed by a fetching young lad at the post-election anti-Bush rally in San Francisco cut to the chase: "F--- MIDDLE AMERICA."
Almost right, man. It would be more accurate to say that "MIDDLE AMERICA" has "F---ed" you, and it will continue to do so every two years as long as Democrats insist that anyone who disagrees with them is, ipso facto, a simpleton -- or "Neanderthal," as Teresa Heinz Kerry described those unimpressed by her husband's foreign policy. In my time, I've known dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and other members of Britain's House of Lords and none of them had the contempt for the masses one routinely hears from America's coastal elites. And, in fairness to those ermined aristocrats, they could afford Dem-style contempt: A seat in the House of Lords is for life; a Senate seat in South Dakota isn't.
More to the point, nobody who campaigns with Ben Affleck at his side has the right to call anybody an idiot. H. L. Mencken said that no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Well, George Soros, Barbra Streisand and a lot of their friends just did: The Kerry campaign and its supporters -- MoveOn.org, Rock The Vote, etc. -- were awash in bazillions of dollars, and what have they got to show for it? In this election, the plebs were more mature than the elites: They understood that war is never cost-free and that you don't run away because of a couple of setbacks; they did not accept that one jailhouse scandal should determine America's national security interest; they rejected the childish caricature of their president and paranoid ravings about Halliburton; they declined to have their vote rocked by Bruce Springsteen or any other pop culture poser.
All the above is unworthy of a serious political party. As for this exit-poll data that everyone's all excited about, what does it mean when 22 percent of the electorate say their main concern was "moral issues"? Gay marriage? Abortion? Or is it something broader? For many of us, the war is also a moral issue, and the Democrats are on the wrong side of it, standing not with the women voting proudly in Afghanistan's first election but with the amoral and corrupt U.N., the amoral and cynical Jacques Chirac, the amoral and revolting head-hackers whom Democratic Convention guest of honor Michael Moore described as Iraq's ''minutemen.''
At some point in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, your typical media liberal would feign evenhandedness and bemoan the way the choice has come down to "two weak candidates.''
But, in that case, how come the right's weak candidates are the ones that win? Because a weak candidate pushing strong ideas is better than a weak candidate who's had no ideas since Roe vs. Wade.
Ping.
Good stuff
Steyn ALWAYS hits the nail right on the head.
Bingo!
Steyn is always a pleasure to read - thanks!
great column. he has them pinned perfectly. the dem leaders hate normalcy and absent Billy Jeff (who had no problem faking solidarity with middle america) they have no one who can effectively pull the wool over our eyes. Heck, I doubt even Billy Jeff can fool anyone any more
"Hitching up homosexual couples" is the only concrete idea that the Democrats have right now, and it isn't a very popular idea with the voters.
How is it then that the Democrats have the reputation of being for the "people"? They complain about "two Americas" but it is really their party that is split: the elites manage and keep the "poor" down with their emphasis on Affirmative Action, resisting education reform, etc.
And it is they who have the bulk of the "rich," like Soros, who tried to buy the election. What I love is that many of the new registered voters didn't vote en masse for Kerry. They actually thought for themselves.
It is their hypocrisy that is doing the Democrats in. It began under Clinton corruption (which they still don't get) and continues today.
Mark Steyn, as usual, is right on the money.
Ping
Ping to The Full Marky.
Heh heh
I have a list, that is not so short, where morality has covered nearly every REASON that *I* voted FOR PRESIDENT BUSH.
I VOTED FOR AMERICA, I VOTED FOR THE CONSTITUTION, I VOTED AGAINST FASCISM AND TYRANNY, I VOTED FOR THE MILITARY, I VOTED AGAINST THE FRENCH, I VOTED FOR IRAQ'S FUTURE, I VOTED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESULTS, I voted for our RIGHT TO DEFEND OUR FREEDOM AT ANY COST... Allowing the left to steal and silence our rights to survive, worship, speak freely, was completely unacceptable. I VOTED against EVERYTHING this Democrat Party stands for. And that about covers it.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Ann Coulter pointed this out last year - if there were truth in advertising, the Dems would rename their party 'The Abortion Party' because that is all they really stand for - that has become their core belief and reason for existence. There is pandering to small, far left segments, thus the emphasis on 'gay marriage' this time around.
All of the issues they proudly and loudly stand for are at the very least, mildly revolting to most Americans.
And if you throw in the criterion of occasional sly humon, Steyn is the top, the Mona Lisa, Mickey Mouse, to quote some elderly, fine writing by Cole Porter.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest, "Roosting Chickens, and Results of the 2004 Election"
It turns out Mark Steyn is one of the VERY few columnists I am willing to read all the way through.
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