The "Angry Left" Is About to Become The "Enraged Left"

DEMOCRATS PEAK, THEN BEGIN A LONG SLIDE
In 1992, shortly after Bill Clinton's stunning victory over incumbent George Bush gave Democrats control of the House, Senate, and White House, it seemed as if the Democratic Party had entered a new golden age of power and influence. As golden ages go, theirs was relatively short-lived. Just two years later, Democrats were tossed out of the House and Senate in record numbers, and Republicans took control. Shortly after, Republicans also won a majority of governorships in the US. Then, in 2000, George W. Bush defeated then V.P. Al Gore to become the 42nd President of The United States.

So, in just eight years, Democrats in Washington went from monopoly to minority; from feast to famine. In November 2002, just a year after Senators Daschle and Jeffords managed to disenfranchise Vermont voters and shift the balance of power in the Senate, Democrats again lost the Senate to Republicans. Not only that, they also lost seats in the House they had expected to gain and failed to win the number of governorships they had expected.

For Democrats, the worst part was the fact that President Bush, who took an enormous political risk in supporting his fellow party members during the midterms, was the key to success in several strategically close races. Somehow, certain victory had been turned into stunning defeat, and hard-line Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated with each defeat suffered over the past decade.

Thus has heralded the rise of what conservatives now call, the “Angry Left.” They cannot fathom why it is they have been consistently rejected at the polls by mainstream America. What they do know is that their party is on a consistent losing streak and SOMETHING has to be done about it. They just do not know what can be done other than supporting Howard Dean, the man with their same leftist vision but no future in politics.

NOW WHAT?
Now it is 2003, the thirteenth year marking both the beginning and the end of the golden age of the Democratic Party. Will year thirteen prove better for Democrats? Well, if we look to California, THE liberal bastion in America, which at this very moment is undergoing a recall election of the Democratic Governor, Grey Davis, because of his monumental incompetence, its not looking good.

But the story behind the recall and all of the factors leading to this moment are not really as important as the question we must now ask: If Grey Davis loses today, how will the Angry Left react to yet ANOTHER stunning defeat?

In truth, the possible answers worry me. My personal opinion? I think the Angry Left is going to morph faster than the “Mighty Morphing Power Rangers” into something more like the “Engraged Left,” or the “Berserk Left.” In other words a group that loses control entirely.

The fact that Davis and the LA Times have thrown every bit of dirt possible at Schwarzenegger in the last days of the race says nothing of the desperation the left will experience should these typical Davis tactics NOT work. So, what have Democrats done in recent years to turn things their way when they don’t like what voters have given them?

Its more than obvious that, should Davis lose, they will immediately appeal the results of the election, hoping that a court like the radical 9th Circuit will again play accessory to the crime of voter disenfranchisement. What other tactics might we see? I shudder to think, but I am convinced that it will make the pre-election sleaze tactics from the left look like a pleasant stroll in the park. Expect that they’ll pull out all the stops and go for broke. They’ll do whatever it takes to retain power, and the law or the will of the people will not stand in their way if they can help it.

DUCK AND COVER
Another Florida recount scenario? No, expect FAR worse. First of all, Davis will not give up the office without an intense fight, secondly, Democrats on the local and national level will use delay tactics and stonewall any moves to transition power to a Schwarzenegger administration. Meanwhile, expect reports of bullying at the polls, manipulation of votes, demands for multiple recounts, and multiple third party lawsuits from groups like the ACLU to stall or overturn the election results.

In the end, if they STILL lose, then expect a plunge by the Angry Left into some new level of denial and an increased effort to lash out at conservatives in general and the President in particular. Liberals will posture and condemn the whole process; they will demean the Governor-elect, and plot ways to scare Americans into thinking that Republicans are actively subverting the democratic process in America. It will be a sad and disturbing sight, no doubt.

I hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid that I’ll be wrong only in that things will be worse than even I imagined. One way or another, we’ll know how bad, or good, things are in the next few days. Lets hope for the best… and prepare for the worst.

Why Bush Angers Liberals(Michael Kinsley Barf Fest)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/996109/posts

Why Bush Angers Liberals

We have our reasons, and that is why we're so pragmatic about 2004

By MICHAEL KINSLEY

Conservatives are alarmed about the tone of our political debate. Interviewed last week in TIME, Fox TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly trumped the standard definition of chutzpah — a man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy as an orphan — by complaining that the country is "as polarized as it's ever been in the history of the Republic." In TIME two weeks ago, essayist Charles Krauthammer expressed astonishment at the level of antagonism toward President Bush among liberals. Newly anointed New York Times columnist David Brooks has deplored both the viciousness and the shallowness of today's politics, compared with the Athenian atmosphere he recalls in the 1980s.

Oddly, Brooks and Krauthammer offer nearly opposite diagnoses of today's caustic tone. Krauthammer says liberals are angry because Bush has turned out to be a more ideological and more effective President than they expected. The anger, in other words, is over substance. Brooks, by contrast, complains that earlier disputes over cultural values and ideology have molted their substance and turned into rival but trivial assessments of the President as a person.

So why are liberals so angry? Here is a view from inside the beast: it's Bush as a person and his policies as well. To start, we do think he stole the election. Yes, yes, we're told to "get over it," and we've been pretty damned gracious. But we can't help it: this still rankles. What rankles especially is Bush's almost total lack of grace about the extraordinary way he took office. Theft aside, he indisputably got fewer votes than the other guy, our guy. We expected some soothing bipartisan balm. There was none, even after 9/11. (Would it have been that hard to appoint a Democrat as head of Homeland Security, in a "bring us together" spirit?)

We also thought that Bush's apparent affability, and his lack of knowledge or strong views or even great interest in policy issues, would make him temperate on the ideological thermometer. (Psst! We also thought, and still think, he's pretty dumb — though you're not supposed to say it and we usually don't. And we thought that this too would make him easier to swallow.) It turns out, though, that Bush's, um, unreflectiveness shores up his ideological backbone. An adviser who persuades Bush to adopt Policy X does not have to be worried that our President will keep turning it over in his mind, monitoring its progress, reading and thinking about the complaints of its critics, perhaps even re-examining it on the basis of subsequent developments, and announce one day that he prefers Policy Y. This does not happen. He knows what he thinks, and he has to be told it only once.

This dynamic works on facts just as it does on policies, making Bush a remarkably successful liar. This too is unexpected. There seemed to be something guileless and nonneurotic about Bush when we first made his acquaintance. It was the flip side of his, um, dimness and seemed to promise frankness if nothing else. But guess what? Ignorance and lack of curiosity are terrific fortifications for dishonesty. Bill Clinton knew that he had had sex with that woman and had to work hard to convince himself that he hadn't. Bush neither knew nor cared whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or close connections to al-Qaeda when he started to say so, and once he started, mere lack of evidence was not going to make him stop.

Just this week, responding to the brouhaha about the alleged White House outing of an undercover CIA agent, Bush declared that he takes leaks very seriously and deplores them. Liberals across America screamed into their TV sets, "But that leak was in the papers two months ago, and you did nothing about it until the fuss started last weekend!" If Bush could hear them, he might furrow his brow in puzzlement and say, "And your point is?" Steeped as liberals are in irony, it took us a while to learn what a powerful tool an irony-free mind can be.

Screaming powerlessly at a defenseless television set is a metaphor for the sense of powerlessness that unites these elements in liberal rage. In the 1980s, liberals nursed the fear that we really might be dwelling in an irrelevant cul-de-sac outside of the majority American culture. That kept us sullen and mopey. Today we feel that our side got the most votes, and it didn't matter. This man then sold a war to the country based on fictions, and it didn't matter. It didn't even matter if he hadn't made the sale, since he mainly asserted the right to invade another country. And Krauthammer is right: we didn't think he had the heart or the brains for anything like this. It's maddening.

Krauthammer is wrong, though, to suppose that anger is driving liberals to self-defeating ideological extremes. The mood is not suicidal. It is comically pragmatic. The comment you hear most often about the Democratic primary race is, "All I care about is sparing the country four more years of that &*!!@#$%!" It's sweet when liberals try to be cynical and hard-headed. If I were a conservative, I wouldn't be too worried.

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