Posted by
travis christensen on Sunday, March 09, 2008 7:19:36 PM
When Democrats lose an election it is never the fault of their candidate.
I was reading Susan Estrich column, "Democrats need to be careful." In this column Estrich states that Obama and Clinton need to keep the animosity to a minimum to avoid lasting splits in the Democratic Party. In this column she recalls that in the 1980 presidential elections there was residual animosity between Kennedy and Carter people. Though she did not say it, she seems to be intimating that it was this animosity which led to Carter's defeat in 1980.
Give me a break. Reagan did not win the presidency because of a divided Democratic Party.
This brings to mind the old chestnut that Reagan won because of a Republican plot to politicize evangelicals and pentacostals. The yarn is that conservative Christians were completely non-political before being deceived by the Republicans, and that afterwards they considered the GOP as "God's own party," to be blindly supported at the expense of their religious integrity.
Yeah, right. Reagan did not win the presidency because he was able to brain-wash religious conservatives.
Reagan was a great President, but greatness was not required to beat Carter. The Republicans could have run virtually anyone and taken the Presidency in 1980.
The crux of my argument is that Democrats will never concede that a loss is the fault of their candidates. Carter flubbed the oil crisis and the Iran hostage crisis, gave up the Panama Canal, and boycotted the Olympics. On top of all that, everyone was tired of hearing Carter's voice.
Carter was a bust, but instead of admitting this the Democrats have created a mythology in which Reagan only won 1980 because of Democratic splits and a clandestine takeover of religious conservatives.
1984? Not a hard victory...Mondale was just a Carter, but with less gravitas.
1988? Bush against Dukakis...does anyone even remember Dukakis? I don't remember the Democratic excuses for 1988, but if as a national party you select Dukakis as your nominee, you deserve to lose.
We lost it in 1992 and 1996, but I don't recall Republicans making up crazy excuses for these losses, we just lost because the vote went the wrong way.
We won in 2000, against Gore, and the reason was a fixed vote in Florida. We won in 2004, and the reason was "politics of fear" and the Swift vote veterans for truth.
Look at the lineup of defeated Democrats: Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry.
This is not the A-team of political heavy hitters. No excuses needed, the reason why all these candidates lost is because they were all duds. Democrats, you sure can pick them.
We don't know yet who we get to beat in 2008, but I can anticipate the excuses. If we beat Obama, it will be because of racism, if we beat Clinton it will be because of gender bias. If we beat them both on the same ticket it will be because the Republicans are racist and sexist.
Wait and see what they say, but in order to test this theory we have to win.
We have two choices, Republicans. We can let the media convince us that we are losers and stay home on election day. We could do that, in which case we guarantee that we lose the Presidency and lose more of the Congree, perhaps losing enough of the Congress to give the Dems a supermajority. For those of you who don't know, a Congressional supermajority would allow them Dems to break filibusters, change Congressional rules, and propose amendments to the Constitution.
That's a little bit scary.
Our other option is to knuckly-down and man-up and win this thing. We can do it because recent history has shown that Democratic Presidential candidates tend to be duds.
Do you think that Obama is so great that he is unbeatable?
Do you think that Clinton is so great that she is unbeatable?
Do you mean to tell me that the Grand Old Party cannot defeat candidates of mediocrity?
Are we going to let the media convince us that we are going to lose?