I’ve read and heard some curious things in the post-election ether, and I’ve got an idea as to how we look and feel a month or three from now. Let me say for what it’s worth, that this idea comes from my gut, but I’ve learned that the gut is nothing if not an efficient collector and processor of filtered data.
Yesterday, I heard Katrina vanden Heuvel saying that we are going to have a non-violent civil war here over the next 4 years. Then today, I had an email correspondence with a friend over the Arafat death rumors. When I suggested that Yasser had a river of blood on his hands, my friend shot back with, “and Bush doesn’t?” Never mind that I had not even brought up GWB’s name. My friend then cited the Lancet article as proof of Bush’s crimes. No, he does not frequent our blog, for while he knows of it, he prefers to read only that which reinforces his own beliefs. There is a contingent out there that cannot, will not, and does not want to let go of anger, bitterness, venom. But I think that group will find itself traveling in ever-smaller circles. Hopefully, the Democratic Party will recognize that there is no future in that thinking.
Now I have no way of knowing what the administration is going to do going forward, and a lot depends on that, but the people that I know and respect, the ones who I listen to closely when they are speaking, are saying basically the same thing: It’s over, we’re moving on (ironically, since the group by that name is not). The country is tired of politics, of “battles,” and of hardball.
I much prefer that this post from Democratic Underground becomes the trend in the Democratic Party because it is exactly the kind of introspection needed in the DP to make it a truly national party again. It would be nice if they can let go of this anger as I hope they can, but fear they won’t. As it is, this post is being quickly forced down the front page with articles claiming that Kerry “really” won outright, or that the election was rigged, or both.
*sigh*
I’m starting to miss the days when they all thought that the election was rigged. Now a lot of them are starting to think that 51% of the electorate is composed of idiots and fascists.
This is not a good sign.
Ken,
Yes, but not everyone who voted for Kerry thinks the 51% who voted for Bush is an idiot or fascist.
I voted for Bush, but I’ve family members who voted for Kerry, just as I’m sure every family has similar voting patterns. Not all them think I’m an idiot or a fascists, just as I don’t think all of them want to appease terrorists.
At some point, the complex diversity of American voting patterns becomes the hard truth that breaks the notion that 51% of the electorate is idiotic or fascists.
Regardless for whom they voted, most Americans sit comfortably in the general middle – and the party that races to the extreme edges first is the party that will lose. If Dem activists persist in thinking 51% of Americans are idiots or fascists, the only thing that will change is the 51% will increase to 53%, and then to 57%, and then to 60%…
And then, finally, they might wake up once they realize they are relegated to a small minority.
It’s this quote from that DU post that I’ve never understood:
“For as long as I have been a Democrat, we have taken for granted the obvious truth that we are better at protecting the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans.”
How is it possible that higher taxes and greater governmental regulation is an ‘obvious truth that we are better at protecting the economic interests ….’?
The next paragraph is spot on if you ask me. Although, as a libertarian, I protest his use of same:
“Here’s another problem: I believe that party elites are disproportionately drawn from the first two groups: Left-liberals and center-left libertarians.”
Roger, I think he specified in that article that the assgination of the term libertarian was only “most appropriate” and arbitrary on his part. It was not intended to refer to the Big L Libertarians, just those members of the Democratic base that are socially liberal, but are only *more* fiscally conservative than the uber-left (smaller tax increases?). As I point out in my blog , the center-left libertarians and Left-liberals are the democrats we see arguing with each other on TV about whether colleges should put the new Asian-American Women Studies Program should move into the facilities wasted by the Math Department or the Hockey team . The term really refers to dovish centrist Democrats. Leave it to a lib to create new terms rather than the ones that have been good enough for us so far ;) All in all though, I think Skinner hit the nail on the head. I just hope his party mates listen.