Posted on 11/07/2004 12:05:41 PM PST by FairOpinion
Something else is going on in the country that has been little remarked upon. It is not just that an endorsement of a Michael Moore does not translate into votes or that Rathergate loses viewers for CBS. It has become perhaps far worse: A Hollywood soiree with a foul-mouthed Whoopee Goldberg or a Tim Robbins rant can turn toxic for liberal candidates. We are nearly reaching the point where approval from the New York Times or a CBS puff-piece hurts a candidate or cause, as do the billions in contributions from a George Soros.
Television commentators Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Andy Rooney or Ted Koppel have morphed from their once sober and judicious personas into highly partisan figures that now carry political weight among most Americans only to the degree that they harm any cause or candidate with whom they are associated.
After trillions of dollars of entitlement programs, most voters are unsure that the answers lie with bureaucrats and social programs, especially when the elite architects of such polices rarely experience firsthand the often unintended, but catastrophic results of their own well-meant engineering.
So we all know the cure for the Democratic Party: More moderate, populist candidates who don't talk down to voters or live one life and profess another; more explicit faith in American democracy and values; and a little more humility in accepting the tragic limitations of human nature.
Yet for many,that medicine of reappraisal will be far worse than the disease of chronic defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I think the country is moving ahead, and the Democrats are left behind.
There is this very old joke, I heard recently on TV.
Why are there no Democrats in Star Trek?
Because it takes place in the future.
===
The Democrats are doomed, just like communism.
good find
It would force the self oriented to acknowledge the error of their selfish ways.
Kerry was just a verrrrryyyy poor candidate. So disorganized and all over the place.
What if they had a good one?
Talking to some folks (all libs or independents) I think the lib disease may be fatal... as the more out of phase they are, the further they run from common sense
"So we all know the cure for the Democratic Party: More moderate, populist candidates who don't talk down to voters or live one life and profess another; more explicit faith in American democracy and values; and a little more humility in accepting the tragic limitations of human nature."
Go for it, dems! That would spell doom for hillary in '08. Though I expect to see lots of 'hillary going to sunday services' photo-ops in an effort to conceal the fact that she and her party have been and will always be the devil's advocates.
Well, for how long have the Dems been receiving reality enemas? But their leftist collectivism is terribly resistant to purging. Few, like Zell, are rather immune or recover, but the rest?
Victor Davis Hanson ping!!!
It is right on and the author has a better understanding of what went wrong than most.
Actually a few things that should have been clues for the author would have been the backlash of complaints to sponsors, such that Whoopie lost her corporate sponsorship job. That should have been a huge clue as to the seething unrest and pent up anger that would translate into votes.
Other signs that were ignored and are still being ignored by the Democratic-leftists are the near religious zeal on the part of the left to remove any reference to the ten commandments from any public building or area. When the left talks about how it was gay marriage that was the "moral value" folks voted on, they are just talking about the tip of the iceberg. Is it political free speach to get a bunch of thugs to march in front of a Republican convension or to stage an anti-war rally that blocks rush hour traffice in a large city, but to legislate that anti-abortion clinic protestors may not congregate near an abortion clinic as it is a violation of privacy? The heartland has seen the hypocracy and become angry over a multi-year period and been motivated to vote.
The Democrats and the left need to understand that after all their years in control and after all the judges who passed their litmus tests and all the partronage appointments to federal jobs, the time for the "other side" to have theirs is now at hand.
I can truly understand why so many on the left are now frequenting the Canadian immigration website. If they remain they are going to have to "grin and bear it" like the rest of us have had to do for a few decades. I honestly don't think that the democratic party as we know it will survive as a "single party" much beyond next year.
That's why the reasonable Democrats, like Zell Miller, need to recognize that "the party left them" a long time ago, and realize that their values are more aligned with today's Republican party.
And, while John Kerry has money and a well-known family lineage, he is no gentleman...and TeRAza is no lady.
However boorish the Europeans think we are, we still prefer some dignity in the White House.
I'm surprised no one has told you how inappropriate and crude your comment was.
It boggles my mind that the SF Chron's editors would allow Hanson's essay a place in their pages. I'll bet they're going to get a lot of angry letters from their SF readers.
VDH makes a great point. I think a lot of people were put off by Kerry's elitist snobbery while he played the common man poseur. His constant carping about Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy while Teh-RAAAAAAAAY-ZAH refused to release her tax forms only aroused suspicion. When it was finally revealed that she paid taxes at a lower rate than most Americans (~12%) and that Kerry complained about tax breaks for the wealthy while taking the ones the president also gave him (and the rest of us), he exposed himself for the hypocrit that he is. He even laughed as he acknowledged that he took the money instead of continuing to pay more taxes. To Jim and Jane Average American, this translates into "Even though I don't do it this way, here's what YOU should do."
The Johns had to work too hard to make themselves look like "regular guys". We all knew that they weren't and still aren't. Kerry's insistance on the football throwing around his plane was simply too phoney for words. He played like someone who doesn't play football (which, at his age and in his life, we know that he hasn't) and he caught like a girl. And his faux "hunting" excursions were too hilarious for words. He couldn't and didn't bring it off.
But, questions remain about Kerry's past. Why wasn't he court-martialed for the war crimes he admitted in sworn testimony before a Senate Investigating Committee that he committed? Why wasn't he tried for treason after meeting with Madame Binh in Paris and coming back spouting the VC conditions to end the war? Why wasn't he tried on a myriad of charges including Conspiracy to Commit Murder on a Public Official after the VVAW meeting at which they discussed assassinating a number of elected officials? Why wasn't he tried for Perjury after it was revealed that much of his sworn testimony before the Senate Investigating Committee was false?
This man doesn't deserve to continue having the opportunity to keep dust from settling on his senate chair, he deserves to be with his own kind - IN PRISON!!!! He is a criminal and he should be in prison - maybe three cells down from Bubba's cell.
IMO, we are not done with JF'n Kerry until there are some answers/resolution to these questions.
Yes, Chronical, government IS part of the problem -- NOT the solution.
Bumping...
xtinct, received your Freepmail suggesting I'm a Liberal lurker for my comment.
No, you're wrong. I just don't think putting guns to Liberal's heads and shooting them is the answer.
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