Quit worry about Obama, wimpy liberals
Thursday October 30, 2008
Categories: Democrats
Ta-Nehisi Coates is on fire, praising Obama for running a hell of a campaign, and telling liberals to quit their usual handwringing and realize what amazing thing is happening right before their eyes. (The opening visual is profane, but hilarious)....
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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I have to agree that things aren't as bad as they seem for the conservatives. The Republicans were meant to lose this election: poor economy, unpopular war, rising deficit and debt. And yet, the race remains relatively close in the polls (even if Obama wins 370+ electoral votes).
Republicans need to stop the back-biting. We'll get past this. We survived Bill Clinton, we'll survive Obama (if he wins).
I find the "war" rhetoric troubling. We need to eliminate metaphors like this from our political vocabulary. In war all sorts of things are permissible that we don't want in our domestic discourse and using metaphors like this just encourages people to think in terms of violence, destruction and "anything goes".
I was going to post a link on the original article to the Rolling Stone piece about the 2004 election, but someone beat me to it. Kerry probably wasn't "beaten by a superior candidate." Since this was written in 2006, there's been increasing evidence that 2004 was stolen.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen/
Coates is right: the left is suffering from the political equivalent of the battered wife syndrome, in which every move from the GOP makes the wife flinch. If the Republican candidate had the overwhelming lead that Obama has in this race, the discussion would be about who will be in his cabinet, which legislation will he bring first to Congress, etc. Ironically, only commentators on the right are looking at these questions now.
Still, you can't really blame Democrats for being nervous, not after they saw this country re-elect a president who was not just manifestly ill-prepared for the job, but who even took the nation into a disastrous war under false pretenses. Most Americans have made peace with this catastrophic mistake, but if you talk to other folks around the world, they still ask: After all his screw-ups, how could the US possibly re-elect George Bush?
Nobody I know has a very good answer to that question. Hence it's natural for Democrats to wonder if Americans have really come to their senses, or if they once again will elect a right-wing Republican for no apparent reason.
After all his screw-ups, how could the US possibly re-elect George Bush?
He was running against John Kerry. One of the few people on the face of the planet who could make George the Dumber look charismatic and attractive. Both parties have had trouble recently selecting good candidates, historically with all the baggage that McCain has to carry, a tanking economy, an unpopular war, and so on, the political discussion would be whether or not McCain could even carry Arizona let alone win the election. This year, thanks to another weak candidate in Obama, McCain still has a shot, a slim shot, true, at winning the election.
Not really.
It is an important PR strategy. The WORST thing that could happen was if the electorate truly believed (even if polls and such were to back such an assertion) that this would be a landslide.
That's true no matter who the landslide was for. The US voter default is apathy and complacency. Even in the most exciting of Presidential election years a pretty small fragment of eligible voters actually go out and do so.
If they felt that 'Well, he's got this in the bag' (again, doesn't matter who 'he' is.. and this year its both he..), they will stay home. Many will anyway, who claim they're gonna vote.
THAT is why you have the whole 'let's not get overconfident', rather than any sort of battered wife, or handwringing.
They could be at home secretly, hoping nobody hears, doing victory dances already. But you are NOT going to see much of that in public.
Kit Stolz writes "Still, you can't really blame Democrats for being nervous, not after they saw this country re-elect a president who was not just manifestly ill-prepared for the job, but who even took the nation into a disastrous war under false pretenses"
We forget about a lot of things, we Americans. The invasion of Iraq was really the inevitable result of Desert Storm 12 years earlier. The pending collaspe of the international sanctions agaist Iraq in 2003 and the challenge to the reserve currency status of the dollar forced Bush's hand. I have come to conclude that Desert Storm in 1991 may have been an overreaction and we could have gotten Iraqi army out of most if not all of Kuwait without firing a shot. Bush I wanted a war, think Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime would fall. It did not. And then with the crushing sanctions after, maybe invasion looked like the best thing after all.
Remember all the super-patriotic war fever in 1991?? Well this is the resulting negative pay-back for all that crap. We are all guilty, not just George Bush!
Is there any wonder that there is apathy about elections when even the well-informed see
1) the media supporting one candidate and/or party above others,
2) the vast amount of money being spent (much of it coming illegally from overseas),
3) no proof of identity, residence, or citizenship required for registration or voting
4) massive fraudulent registration and voting.
In Washington, in 2004 the number of proven illegal votes cast was well above the number needed to turn the election after the third recount. It didn't matter. Why should it be different this time?
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