Dear Dr. Liberal:
So a Republican male centerfold beats a Democrat in Massachusetts and its the end of the world for Democrats. While late last year a Democrat beats a teabagger in historically strong Republican Congressional district and there wasn’t this cry of anguish from the Republicans.
Why are the Democrats the biggest bunch of spineless reactionaries around? Or, in Dr. Liberal terms, why are most Democrats douchenozzles and run with the fight gets tough?
Sincerely,
A Democrat with a Spine
Dear Spiney,
Pull up a chair. Warm your hands by the fire and help yourself to a glass of bourbon. No. Not that Maker’s Mark. That was a gift from Michael Moore which he gave to me when Jesse Helms died. Yes, the Jack Daniels is okay. It isn’t really Bourbon of course, but it is fitting because the story of our party’s demise goes back to the hills and hollers of old Tennessee.
It all began with a man named Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Jr. who was born in Washington DC on March 31, 1948 but pretended to be from Tennessee. Gore served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Then he ran a shit ass campaign for President hiring both Donna Brazil and Joe Lieberman for key positions. His shit ass campaign was a disaster for the country. Mainly because it allowed the truly execrable George W. Bush to become the President of the United States, but also became the pattern for Democratic sissyhood that continues to this very day.
You see Spiney, Al Gore ran an “electoral college (50% plus 1) campaign”. That means he ran on the assumption that Democrats have no core values, but can win by pandering to a few voters in Ohio and a few in Florida while taking for granted that all liberals will vote for the Democratic candidate, because WTF? They aren’t going to vote for Bush right?
This strategy (if you can call it that) is rooted in a Washington DC based idea that Democrats are eggheads and can’t win over the “middle” by talking about things they want to do. It is a strategy predicate on the assumptions that the obvious outcome of running on the democratic values of “reason based” policy making and economic justice would be electoral disaster when voters only want to know one thing – which candidate would I rather have a beer with?
During the 1990’s people like Al Gore and Donna Brazile, and John Kerry had lots of talks with David Broder over cocktails and salmon roe canapés in Georgetown, and they all agreed that average beer drinking, NFL football watching Americans would never go for Democrats acting like Democrats. David Broder, the Dean of Washington Journalists, spoke to a taxi driver once and therefore, he was dead certain that the more Democrats act like Republicans, the less Democrats talk about rich people and corporations getting a free ride compared to people making $30,000 a year, the better they will do in elections. The two worst thing Democrats could ever do would be to listen to its base and have a coherent message.
The rest is history. Every Democratic retreat, capitulation, compromise, was foretold by Gore’s failure to forge a modern vision for the Democratic Party that energized its base voters while ignoring inside the beltway conventional wisdom. From the flaccid Gore capitulation to GOP bullying during the recount, to the abysmal John Kerry “electoral college” strategy loss to our recent folding of the tent on Health Care Reform.
The point I’m making, of course, is that to win – we have to compromise MORE with Republicans, not fight. Fighting would make us look angry and partisan. David Border’s taxi driver hates that shit. Also, we need to be vigilant. We started to have a coherent Democratic message during the Obama campaign when he spoke about Health Care reform being a moral issue at every campaign stop, but luckily that has been fixed. We have to make sure a coherent message does not come back into the picture or we might fire up the base and thereby lose in Lake County Ohio.
Corrections:
I may have something to correct someday, although I seriously doubt it.
The Doctor is out!