MARK STEYN: Democrats stick to vaudevillian knockabout in midst of drama

The Daily Telegraph ^ | November 7, 2002 | Mark Steyn

[MadIvan]

Campaign 2004 is now under way. We can't say for sure who the presidential candidates will be but, after Tuesday, we know who they won't be: Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt, and Democratic recurring nightmare Al Gore will be departing the national scene, though, as usual, it may take Al a while to get the message.

Daschle and Gephardt symbolise, respectively, the frivolous obstructionism and intellectual vapidity of the Congressional Democrats. And Al Gore symbolises, alas, Al Gore.

You can pretty much correlate the Democrats' worst results on Tuesday with Al's travel schedule during the campaign.

The polls had Bill McBride holding his own against Florida Governor Jeb Bush until Al showed up to campaign with Bill. The same in Maryland, where Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was still the favourite until Al breezed into town to stump for her.

And everywhere he went the country's most prominent Android-American had a consistent message: this election isn't about the war or the economy, it's about me and "the disputed Florida vote two years ago".

"Are you over it?" he roared at the crowds. "No!" they roared back. Earth to Al: the rest of us are over it.

This is the Democrats' real problem. "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," sang Fleetwood Mac in Bill Clinton's '92 campaign. Ten years on, the Dems can't stop thinking about yesterday. For Al Gore, it's always Florida 2000 and his chads are dangling.

For the National Organisation of Women, it's always 1973 and the landmark Supreme Court abortion decision, Roe v Wade. For Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte and the other black power-brokers, it's always 1963 and Selma, Alabam'.

Come election time, the Democrats sound like an oldies station with only three records. Even in crude terms of "shoring up their base", the Dems feel clapped out: one could forgive elderly feminists running around warning "women" that their right to an abortion is at stake in this election, but it's not just that it's untrue, it's that it's so lame and tired and frankly sounds just plain loopy when North Korea has nukes and there's a Homeland Security bill to pass.

We live in interesting times, and the Dems have nothing interesting to say. In the midst of a great historical drama, they're still doing vaudevillian knockabout.

As the victorious Republican Norm Coleman neatly put it in the Minnesota Senate debate, it's not about Walter Mondale's age, it's not about his own age, it's about the age we live in.

What did a Democrat have to do to lose on Tuesday? Show up. The short version of Tuesday is that anything they could lose they did lose, from the chadlands of Florida to granola-crunchy Ben-&-Jerrified Vermont.

Walter Mondale ran in Minnesota as an old tax-and-spend liberal opposed to both the Bush tax cut and the war with Iraq: he lost. Jeanne Shaheen ran in New Hampshire as an "independent" (she barely used the word Democrat) who backed the President on national security and supported his tax cut: she lost.

At such moments, the duty of the rest of us is to step to the side and try not to weep with laughter as the party turns on itself in vicious recrimination. I note that already several powerful voices are saying Democrats should have opposed the President more directly: Chris Lehane, the political consultant who did such a grand job for Al Gore in 2000, said in The New York Times yesterday that the party needed to go on the offensive about "the billion-pound elephant in the room - the Bush tax boon for the wealthy". All I can say is I hope the party's crazy enough to fall for this analysis: anyone who thinks that being more anti-war and pro-tax would have helped in Florida, Georgia or Missouri should have the privilege of testing this theory in November '04.

The only good news for the Dems was a handful of pick-ups in the gubernatorial races and in a significant number - Alabama, Oklahoma, Oregon, Wisconsin - it was anti-tax Libertarian candidates siphoning off enough votes from the GOP to deliver the state to the Democrat. When a Dem runs on an explicit high-tax platform - as the candidate did in New Hampshire, with his proposal to introduce an income tax - voters abandon the Libertarians and come home to the Republicans. Whether the Democrats understand any of this is difficult to know: to their cheerleaders in the press, Bush is still too dumb to be President. If Bush is too dumb to be President, how dumb do you have to be to be consistently outwitted by him?

With Daschle, Gephardt and Gore going, going, gone, who's left for 2004?

Step forward, Hillary Rodham Clinton. I can't wait.

[Paulus Invictus]

The Libertarianoids suck!

[Guillermo]

Excellent, as usual.

This guy is one hell of a writer.

[Palladin]

Al Gore -- "the country's most prominent Android-American".

ROFL! Steyn nails it, as usual.

[gortklattu]

This is Steyn's SECOND best piece. Did you ever read his "Reader Beware! This is gangsta rap" ??

[aristeides]

Step forward, Hillary Rodham Clinton. I can't wait.

Hillary? Who does Steyn think is responsible for McAwful's disastrous strategy?

[Erasmus]

For Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte and the other black power-brokers, it's always 1963 and Selma, Alabam'.

In Harry's case, I think it's October 1917.

[mrustow]

Thanks for the ping. Steyn is wrong on only one count: HILLARY! will never run in '04. She's about winning; she sees no value in symbolic defeats. She's waiting for '08, and an election that will make '00 look genteel by comparison. That's why Algore may get to repeat history in '04, a la Stevenson in '56 -- and we all know how that turned out.

[Southack]

"The only good news for the Dems was a handful of pick-ups in the gubernatorial races and in a significant number - Alabama..."

As has been pointed out in this thread, it was the Republican Riley who defeated the incumbent Democrat Seigelman in Alabama, marking yet another historic loss for Democrats on their home turf.

Also, the Dems lost their incumbent governorship in Vermount, though that seems to have been omitted by the news media (although their losses of the governorships in MN, GA, and SD got some press).

One more thing, the Libertarians broke 9 to 5 Repub to Dem in Alabama, meaning that Libertarians drew 9 Republican votes for every 5 Democratic Party votes that they syphoned off (based upon same precinct results of Libs versus Dems with no Repub and Libs versus Repub with no Dem challengers).

[rudypoot]

I was told 4 out of 5 democrats that voted for the Bush tax cut lost.

The only reason the republicans lost a senate race is because Hutchinson dumped his wife for his secretary, not because Pryor was the better candidate.

[cpprfld]

Thanks you guys. (Thanks, Ed. I'm sure Tommy is real proud of ya. You freak.)

Thanks to those Libertarians we are stuck with Jim Doyle as governor. Dumb @sses

[knighthawk]

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