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What The Left Has To Do To Survive
Published on February 18, 2005 By Zoomba In Politics
We lost the election. We lost it when we should have won it in a landslide. There was so much anti-Bush sentiment out there that it should have been a walk-in-the-park. But it wasn’t. We lost solidly in Congress too. We’re going to lose the next set of elections too the way we’re going. How did we fall so far from The Clinton Years, when even a cigar and a stain on a blue dress weren’t enough to diminish the nation’s love-affair with the Democratic Party?

Simple answer really… The Democrats became arrogant. We thought we could do no wrong, that election victories would fall from the sky like rain and all they had to do was stand up and say “Hey, remember Clinton? Yeah, he was cool wasn’t it?” When it didn’t work in 2000, we fell apart. We were outraged! They cheated! It wasn’t fair!

Well, regardless of whether or not the election in 2000 was fair or not, we made a single large tactical error. We tried to go against the attitude that kept Clinton afloat through his scandal. That the average person doesn’t care that much. Once we got the first recount back, for most it was a done-deal and we moved on. Once the second and third recounts came back with the same results the vast majority of us moved on. But still, there was a vocal minority that pitched a real fit and made a zoo out of the whole thing. Most people call that “being a sore loser” and they applied the same label against a lot of the really vocal Republicans who went after Clinton for getting a blow job. The louder you scream, the more likely you are to drive people towards the enemy camp. We used that attitude to our advantage a few years earlier, but we were so out of sorts now that we forgot about it and went ahead with our tantrum. We lost and by the end people looked at us and said “Well, that shows you!”

However, even after it was flat-out decided, we couldn’t give up. It became our new mission to attack Bush over everything. He says X, we say Y. He says the sky is blue, we’ll argue whether it’s more a shade of grey or green. I bet if he came forward and said “We need to feed the hungry” the Liberal Party would shoot back saying “How dare you say that when we have such a large deficit!” The man can’t win right wrong or otherwise. We kept it up through Sept 11th. We kept it up after there was no turning back from Iraq. We kept at it through this last election. We did nothing but whine and complain and rant and rave for four solid years. The entire Liberal Party built the platform of “We’re not Bush!” While a nice platform in its own right, it doesn’t actually put forth any ideas or solutions.

That brings us up to the 2004 Election. The zoo that we handed to Bush on a silver plater. Instead of pointing out the failings of Bush AND how we would do it better. We just said “Bush did it wrong.” We had no plan, we had no solution. We just wanted to blame it all on Bush. Then we had people like Michael Moore. The craziest liberal I think there is right now. He became the mascot for the Liberals in ’04. Unfortunately he only represented the most extreme of the camp. His insane tactics and speeches alienated the vast majority of people who were leaning against Bush but weren’t entirely convinced yet. Those essential swing voters took one look at Moore and said “No way am I voting for people who believe what this kook believes!” Then add screaming-monkey Dean, Memogate, Kerry and his complete lack of a platform and finally the general shrill of every Liberal politician and you had a disaster. Anger, jealousy and pure hatred became what the Liberal Party was about this time around. And that drove away a lot of people who were almost willing to vote for anyone but Bush.

Note that I keep saying “The Liberal Party” and not “The Democratic Party” There’s a reason for that. It’s because the fiasco we just went through left the average Democrat out to dry. Many of us still voted for Kerry just because we didn’t like Bush… but some like me didn’t like being placed in such a situation. I had solid reasons for voting against Bush, ones that went beyond the BS rhetoric most Liberals were spewing. Kerry was my only real alternative, and that saddened me greatly. With each passing day since the election, those who control the Dem Party are straying further and further Left, leaving a larger and larger chunk of us with nowhere to call home (and feel good about it). Dean being chair of the DNC makes things about 100 times worse too.

We need to get rid of Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore and MoveOn.org… These guys make the rest of us look bad. And if the past four years are any indicator, they’ll just keep at it until the next election…

But by then, I wonder how many people will be left that will even consider listening to them.

Comments
on Feb 18, 2005
I agree with you for the most part. The radical left element in the party is what is bringing us down. But, i don't know if kicking them to the curb is the right solution either. I'm willing to give Dr. Dean a shot at the DNC chair position. I'm hoping he can put his personal agenda aside and bring everybody toward the center. I also think that moveon.org could be saved as well if they would step back frim the liberal edge.

Teddy and mikey on the other hand? Make em walk the plank!
on Feb 18, 2005
insightfull, too the point, and I hope no Democratic Politicions pay attention to this.
on Feb 18, 2005
I believe that we did point out how we would do things better, but it was blown off by the media and that left us vulnerable to counter by the Republicans. Which sells more newspapers, long boring explainations or to watch the attacks begin.
on Feb 18, 2005
Reply By: whoman69Posted: Friday, February 18, 2005I believe that we did point out how we would do things better, but it was blown off by the media and that left us vulnerable to counter by the Republicans. Which sells more newspapers, long boring explainations or to watch the attacks begin.


I believe your refering to the great "george bush is wrong and I can do it better fight song" I watched the elections long and hard, never saw even one rational explaination of a Democratic plan. not one.
on Feb 18, 2005
The media had no desire to talk about the Democratic plan. Confrontation gets higher ratings. The only place you could have found your answers was JohnKerry.com . People want their answers easier than that.
on Feb 18, 2005
The media had no desire to talk about the Democratic plan. Confrontation gets higher ratings. The only place you could have found your answers was JohnKerry.com . People want their answers easier than that.
on Feb 18, 2005
sorry for the double post, board is running like crap.
on Feb 18, 2005
Actually if you look at the debates, or any of the commercials that were aired, Kerry at most made reference to "a plan" but never defined it. He was given opportunity to detail his plan at many points but he never did. For all I could tell, his major plan was "Whatever Bush says... I'll do the opposite".

Now, don't take me for a Bush supporter... I'm not. I voted Kerry to get Bush out. However I am under no illusion that Kerry actually had anything going for him aside from not being Bush.
on Feb 18, 2005
The only place you could have found your answers was JohnKerry.com .


The man had at least three debates to say something about "My plan", but only continued to repeat "but My plan". I think people was starving for him to say something about "My plan". I also listened to some of his speechs and could not find any details.

The problem with JohnKerry.com was that repeatedly I used that website as an example of a broken or lack of any "Plan".

My personnel favorite was his health care plan. Nothing like putting most of the insurence companies out of bussiness and those few that do survive would have to cut survices by half. Way to improve health care guy, make it cheap, but worthless.

That's My Two Cents
on Feb 18, 2005
Zoomba,

Good luck. I have put out numerous blogs pointing out these facts, only to be told I'm wrong (I DIDN'T vote for Kerry, and I dislike Bush's policies as much as virtually ANY liberal).

While Clinton was far from the perfect president, much of his appeal was that he put on the face of a fiscal conservative, even if not always behaving as one, and he moderated the party platform while not entirely disenfranchising the left. There's a REASON why he won two terms; too bad the "new breed" of Democrats don't realize that.
on Feb 18, 2005
That's just it... Clinton attempted to bridge the gap, not widen it like the Dems are doing now. People don't get it... if you appeal somewhat to BOTH sides you'll probably get a better response and greater support.

The Democratic Party as it stands now is inadvertently creating a new party, The Sane and Reasonable Democratic Party. The party that sits on the left of middle but is tolerant enough to listen to the other side every now and then.
on Feb 18, 2005
I believe that a big reason for Kerry's loss was the bushies' continual fear mongering since 9/11. Terror this and terror that. The media bought the hype, and there was nothing at all that sells better than blood and guts. Hence, the Iraq invasion. Us or them. Nuke the bastards. Only, we cannot identify the "bastards" so we kill anyone that moves. What ever happened to the ridiculous color coded terror alerts? They seemed to pull those out of their collective posteriors whenever ratings were desired.

What the republicans did well, better than the democrats, was hammer a message of religious superiority, moral majority, meanwhile ordering the deaths of thousands. The dems ended up on the defensive always, and that really cost us. It's hard to make any kind of case against this kind of rallying and extremist jingoism. Hence, the loss.

As for Moore and Dean, et al, I beg to differ. Moore documented some very telling stuff, albeit with some poetic licence. Kennedy's biggest issue is upholding health care, but the repubs just hammer away at his liberalism. Jingoists buy into it. Dean is definitely passionate, but does that mean he's no good? I say not.

I think that dems need to stay on message and never become republican lites. Never. It's not a question of refusing to compromise. It's more an issue of philosophies for living. And, the republicans hammer points that I can never compromise on, like the right to choose, health care for all, environment, etc. All the repubs want to do is lower taxes, pad the profits of corporate interests and pharmaceuticals, and balance the budget (what a joke) off the backs of the poorest and most vunerable people in society. To me, that's just flat out immoral. Period.
on Feb 18, 2005
The Democratic Party as it stands now is inadvertently creating a new party, The Sane and Reasonable Democratic Party. The party that sits on the left of middle but is tolerant enough to listen to the other side every now and then.


Can I join?
on Feb 18, 2005
dabe -

I don't think the media "bought the hype" at all and to suggest so makes me wonder what planet you were on last fall. The media savaged Bush relentlessly and did all it could to put a gloss on Kerry. Had it not been for Fox and some important bloggers, the election's outcome might have been different.

And you should sit back and re-read your post objectively, dabe. You'd realize that every point you make amounts to an insult. You're saying you lost to jingoists, murderers, immoral "blood and guts" whackos who want to "nuke the bastards" or "kill anything that moves." It's all emotionalism and no substance. You'll have a very hard time persuading people to come around to supporting your objectives this way. You may think that it doesn't matter, that the opposition is hardened and won't budge, but you'll certainly never know with this approach.

Cheers,
Daiwa