Archives for 2004

Calls for Edwards in 2008, advanced here by Saletan and echoed here by Oliver, besides being just a touch premature, are just idiotic.

John Edwards was an empty suit with pretty teeth, and the voters saw through his haircut. He didn’t help this ticket in one way, he was virtually invisible the past month, and he didn’t even carry his own state.

If the Democrats had listend to me to begin with, they would have won this election. The most electable Democrat in the party right now is Evan Bayh. As a Veep candidate, his moderation would have balanced the ticket, and he would have put you over the top in the rust belt. You probably would have won Ohio. You might have made in roads in Indiana. You might have carried Iowa.

Evan Bayh, Harold Ford, and Barack Obama are the future of the Democratic party.

The Wrong AnswerPost + Comments (17)

Via Talk Left:

One more thought: The claim that Bush has a mandate is a joke. This was a squeaker. 51% voted for Bush. That means 49%, virtually half of the country, opposes him.

– More people voted for Bush than any other candidate in the history of the nation in the highest voter turnout since 1968.

– Bush picked up two states, so that he actually carried 30 of the 50 states (unless my math is wrong).

– We picked up 4 seats in the Senate, including defeating the Democratic Minority Leader, the first time a Senate leader and incumbent has lost an election in 52 years.

– We picked up 3 seats in the House.

This is a mandate. Quit fooling yourselves, guys. Facing reality is going to be the first step towards recovery. And while you are at it, tere are some bright spots, chief of which is Barack Obama.

Cognitive DissonancePost + Comments (17)

I am sorry. I guess I am a small, shallow man, but I love reading things like this when the Democrats lose an election:

But, when all is said and done, Bush’s very convincing popular vote has one unmistakable cause: Kerry lost because more Americans indisputably like, trust, and feel more comfortable and safer with Bush than with Kerry.

Why? The unavoidably obvious explanation is that Americans are by-and-large morons. Simpleminded, uninformed and undereducated, intellectually lazy and proud in their ignorance to boot, self-important and self-righteous, arrogant and benighted idiots. They are a reflection of George W. Bush, and in him they saw themselves. That’s why they love him and trust him so. Their reality is the faith-based myth that America is blessed and always right and great and perfect and freedom is handed down by God and not manmade constitutional governments and cultures of tolerance and inquiry. The are certain that the “real” America is in the unpleasant, xenophobic, homophobic, red states in the middle, where everybody has a white picket fence in the brain and they don’t seem aware of their own squalor and the fact that they make ends meet only because the far more prosperous blue states continue to subsidize their light beer guzzling.

Americans chose Bush. They deserve him.

The people have spoken, the bastards.

Paging Dick TuckPost + Comments (20)

This is a positive sign that perhaps this loss will finally mete out enough electoral punishment that they will learn:

First, we need to get real. I can’t tell you how optimistic I was going into this election, though, looking back, there doesn’t seem to have been a reason for quite such a sunny view. But I, like most of us, fell for the echo chamber. Daily Kos, MyDD, Steve Soto, Pandagon, and all the other blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they’re you’re primary source for information, you’re outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works (for more on this, see my article Power Trippi).

Not only were you in an echo chamber, but you flat out villified anyone who had the temerity to disagree with you (I don’t mean you specifically, Ezra, but rather, the collective) on any issue.

While Ezra seems to be getting it, Jesse is still in the fever swamps:

Incidentally, I really do believe Bush’s win is based on getting out the homophobic votes for the same-sex marriage amendments across the nation. I get the feeling he won’t get denounced for relying on homophobes to get him into the White House.

This is simply more of the childish, churlish, obnoxious bile that got you where you are. Opposition to gay marriage is not the same as homophobia or bigotry, no matter how many times you say it. Unless, of course, you think that the following percentages of the following electorates are all homophobic bigots:

Arkansas: 75%

Georgia: 77%

Kentucky: 75%

Michigan: 59%

Mississippi: 86%

Montana: 66%

North Dakota: 73%

Ohio: 62%

Oklahoma: 76%

Oregon: 57%

Utah: 66%

A sign of adulthood and maturity is an acceptance that other people’s positions on issues might differ from yours- something the Democratic party simply seems unwilling to understand. Look at recent history:

In favor of the War in Iraq- you have been fooled by the administration that Saddam was behind 9/11 or you are a bloodthirsty jingoist after oil.

In favor of tax relief- you are a greedy sob who hates the poor.

Do I need to go on?

Seriously, although I am glad my side (for the most part) won, the country is not well-served in the long run with such dominance of the electoral process. Until the Democrats come to terms with their deep problems, and manage to learn how to oppose someone on issues without villifying the populaces of entire regions of the country, they aren’t going to win a national race for years to come.

*** Update ***

Like I said, Ezra is learning, although he still seems to think that oppositin to gay marriage is a de facto position of ignorance. For some, maybe. For all, of course not.

A Positive SignPost + Comments (29)