Bush Victory
This was an old-fashioned, world-class butt kicking. White House, Senate, House, the whole deal top to bottom and inside out. And that against a President who was extremely vulnerable and eminently defeatable.
The leadership of the Democratic Party made the mistake of enabling their extremist Moore-on, Move On wing during this election (outsourcing at its worst), and now they may face a Hobson's Choice. They either try to continue that poisonous relationship, which would involve moving the party even further left and further into oblivion, or they toss the moonbats over the side and run the risk of a strong third-party movement on their left.
The alternative possibility is that Hillary Clinton (who carefully minimized her involvement in this debacle) will be able to move the party toward the center without alienating its left wing. This would be a good outcome for the party and the country. But Hillary's negatives are very high, and there is no guarantee that she can win a national election against a strong GOP ticket (Giuliani, Rice, McCain, etc.).
As it stands, the Democratic Party has little to sell that people find attractive on the merits. Their pitch this time was about 90% anti-Bush, with the high-profile positive proposal being a massive expansion of government health insurance that everybody knows would be utterly DOA on Capitol Hill. As somebody wrote the other day (Steyn?), the Democrats got their tank filled during the New Deal and are still trying to run on the old fumes. That's a product of their own success -- most of the New Deal agenda got enacted long ago --combined with a failure innovation and creativity since then.
Unless the Democrats come up with some kind of interesting agenda of new ideas, they are going to be stuck with winning an occasional election only because the GOP has screwed things up too egregiously. Nothing about that scenario leads to a political movement with any prospect of consolidating power and leading the nation over any significant period of time. That will depend on developing an agenda of interesting, attractive ideas. The question is whether the matrix of interest groups that the Democrats are wedded to have the party so hamstrung that innovation has become impossible in most policy areas.
Not that long ago, the GOP was in a similar situation, only worse. It had become a party of privileged seat warmers, satisfied with coasting along on the backbench sidelines. Extricating itself required a series of humiliating electoral defeats, a leadership coup d'etat, and years of wandering in the think-tank wilderness reassessing the intellectual and ideological foundations of failed conservatism. They discovered that there was really no mystery why the existing moribund mélange of deadend positions and weary, retrograde ideas had little attraction for anybody outside of a few corporate boardrooms, the local country club, and the DAR. Only when that was recognized and admitted could an idea-driven conservative revolution begin.
The Democratic Party does not need better version of Karl Rove, or slicker media spokesmen, or personally more attractive candidates. What it needs is a leadership purge and an intellectual overhaul. Without that, none of the cosmetics are going to matter.
Byron
The leadership of the Democratic Party made the mistake of enabling their extremist Moore-on, Move On wing during this election (outsourcing at its worst), and now they may face a Hobson's Choice. They either try to continue that poisonous relationship, which would involve moving the party even further left and further into oblivion, or they toss the moonbats over the side and run the risk of a strong third-party movement on their left.
The alternative possibility is that Hillary Clinton (who carefully minimized her involvement in this debacle) will be able to move the party toward the center without alienating its left wing. This would be a good outcome for the party and the country. But Hillary's negatives are very high, and there is no guarantee that she can win a national election against a strong GOP ticket (Giuliani, Rice, McCain, etc.).
As it stands, the Democratic Party has little to sell that people find attractive on the merits. Their pitch this time was about 90% anti-Bush, with the high-profile positive proposal being a massive expansion of government health insurance that everybody knows would be utterly DOA on Capitol Hill. As somebody wrote the other day (Steyn?), the Democrats got their tank filled during the New Deal and are still trying to run on the old fumes. That's a product of their own success -- most of the New Deal agenda got enacted long ago --combined with a failure innovation and creativity since then.
Unless the Democrats come up with some kind of interesting agenda of new ideas, they are going to be stuck with winning an occasional election only because the GOP has screwed things up too egregiously. Nothing about that scenario leads to a political movement with any prospect of consolidating power and leading the nation over any significant period of time. That will depend on developing an agenda of interesting, attractive ideas. The question is whether the matrix of interest groups that the Democrats are wedded to have the party so hamstrung that innovation has become impossible in most policy areas.
Not that long ago, the GOP was in a similar situation, only worse. It had become a party of privileged seat warmers, satisfied with coasting along on the backbench sidelines. Extricating itself required a series of humiliating electoral defeats, a leadership coup d'etat, and years of wandering in the think-tank wilderness reassessing the intellectual and ideological foundations of failed conservatism. They discovered that there was really no mystery why the existing moribund mélange of deadend positions and weary, retrograde ideas had little attraction for anybody outside of a few corporate boardrooms, the local country club, and the DAR. Only when that was recognized and admitted could an idea-driven conservative revolution begin.
The Democratic Party does not need better version of Karl Rove, or slicker media spokesmen, or personally more attractive candidates. What it needs is a leadership purge and an intellectual overhaul. Without that, none of the cosmetics are going to matter.
Byron
posted by Byron | Wednesday, November 03, 2004
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