Return of the San Francisco Democrats
Remember 1984? Democrats were resigned to Ronald Reagan's reelection, so they decided just to go to San Francisco and have a great big party. They got the most liberal guy they could find and nominated him for president. They also seized a cost-free opportunity to nominate the first female ever for national office. They hooted and hollered and got really really drunk and a great, self-indulgent time was had by all. Then they woke up with hangovers and four more years of Ronaldus Magnus, but hell, they went out in style, and no one begrudged them their fun under the circumstances.
Oddly, I'm beginning to think the entire core of today's Democratic Party is morphing into San Francisco Democrats. It doesn't really make sense on the face of it, because there is every reason to believe that the next election cycle will be competitive, and the Democrats are ostensibly desperate to regain some measure of power.
It may not make sense, but from my surveys of the lefty blogosphere, it sure seems to be what's happening. The most recent case in point involves Paul Hackett. Liberals at DU and Kos are livid that the Democratic Party is pressuring Hackett out of the race for Ohio's Senate seat. Hackett himself is playing to this crowd, donning the full-boat martyr regalia:
"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."
Crikey, if that's the kind of cheesy dialog we can expect from the guy it's no wonder he's being squeezed out.
Yeah, Paul, the DNC is afraid of you. They're afraid you're going to lose and they're right. You had your chance, but you've raised one tenth the money your opponent has. Hell, even Kos himself seems to grasp this, but the grassroots of the MoveOn/Kos axis are actually incensed that the Democrats don't want to squander millions on a brutal, internecine primary battle that can only benefit the Republicans.
Hello? When Markos Zuniga is the voice of reason within your party, that should definitely be considered a warning sign, people.
Astonishing, isn't it? These are the same Democrats who are expending money and energy to unseat one of their own who holds a safe seat in Connecticut. And it's not just Joe Lieberman, either. Regular followers of moonbat websites have seen these folks anathematize Joe Biden, the Clintons, Robert Byrd, Dianne Feinstein, both Senators Nelson and the entire DLC within recent months.
To say that electoral victory has taken a backseat to ideological purity would be an understatement. I understand the left is frustrated by its political impotence, but is taking the "San Francisco" turn really helpful? Somebody needs to explain to the Democrats that you cannot become a majority party and anathematize anyone to the right of Russ Feingold simultaneously.
At a certain point, Democrats will have to face some tough choices between ideological purity and electability. And unless something changes over the next few months, the party's heart and soul seems to have already made its choice. I get the distinct feeling that November is going to find both parties partying like it's 1984.
Comments
Anyone else think that Barack Obama is the last hope for a vibrant 2-party system. Either that or the GOP splits and the Democrats go the way of the Whigs.
Posted by: CRB | February 14, 2006 12:59 PM
Barry,
I am one of the democrats who is contributing money to unseat Joe Lieberman in CT. For a good reason: He is not one of "our own". He is a disguised republican.
Anyway, I like that quote of urs from this post:
Hello? When Markos Zuniga is the voice of reason within your party, that should definitely be considered a warning sign, people..
Well, let me put it like this: Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga may be on the left (like I am), but he is rational. It will be great when the democratic party will be fully controlled by its left wing. But you should be the last to criticize that. You are supporting a republican party that has as "voices of reason" people like Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and other lunatics. Of sorry I forgot, and Dik Cheney. What is worse?
Posted by: Blue Wind | February 14, 2006 02:13 PM
> It will be great when the democratic party will be fully controlled by its left wing.
Yeah. Great for Republicans.
But you should be the last to criticize that. You are supporting a republican party that has as "voices of reason" people like Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and other lunatics.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. I often criticize the GOP for such foolishness, and I'll continue to criticize the mistakes of both parties, because the better our options are at election time, the better off everybody is.
And one more thing. Joe Lieberman is hardly a Republican, and it's nonsense to make that claim. He is a pro-war Democrat. He has a 100% rating from NARAL, an 86% ranking from the NEA, a 100% ranking from the AFL-CIO, 100% from the ARA and a ZERO percent ranking from the Christian Coalition. Hardly the profile of a typical Republican. Or even an atypical one, for that matter.
Posted by: Barry | February 14, 2006 02:28 PM
John Kerry was supposed to be the "electable" candidate.
'nuff said.
Posted by: Jill | February 14, 2006 03:01 PM
> John Kerry was supposed to be the "electable" candidate.
Well I never bought that either. ;-)
Posted by: Barry | February 14, 2006 03:09 PM
Jill,
Only real left-wing democrats, who are not afraid to say so, are electable. For instance, our best chance to get back the White House is Russ Feingold. Believe it or not.
Kerry was simply afraid to say so.
Posted by: Blue Wind | February 14, 2006 03:25 PM
Only real left-wing democrats, who are not afraid to say so, are electable. For instance, our best chance to get back the White House is Russ Feingold. Believe it or not.
BW, I don't know how old you are but I was "Clean for Gene" in 1968, the year I was first able to vote. The way that both RFK and HHH screwed him stuck in my craw and I chose not to register that year - a huge mistake.
In 1972, I was at Madison Square Garden for a McGovern fund raiser. The place was packed and I recall looking around and thinking that the polls were somehow horribly wrong.
Well...they weren't.
I was.
My point is this: far left positions and successful presidential elections are mutually exclusive. They will please the base of which I was once an active member and they will go down in flames come November if not during the primaries. The casualty list of candidates stretches back to William Jennings Bryan and includes notables like "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, Henry Wallace, McGovern, Mondale, Kucinich, Dean (sorry, Jill, you never convinced me that he was moderate - especially considering how much you supported him), Jerry Brown, and many others.
As Barry intimated, we from the right welcome having Dean as head of the Dems and the Cindy Sheehans of the world threatening liberal Dianne Feinstein with a primary challenge if she didn't play the ideological purity card in the Alito nomination.
I clicked on Barry's link to the DU and was amazed to find that more than one member there think that Reid and Shumer are Bush-enablers, more intent on doing their party harm. That is so far from reality as to be laughable but it shows the mass confusion and astonishing inability to think in a rational manner that has afflicted so many on the left these days.
God knows the GOP and its incumbents are no prizes but...!
Posted by: Anonymous | February 14, 2006 05:46 PM
The last unabashed "Liberal" to occupy in the WH was Jimmy Carter, who was elected in the wake of the Watergate scandal some thirty years ago and he immediately made Americans wonder, "What in God's name were they thnking putting a bunch of idealistic, one-worlders in the WH."
Carter is directly responsible for the growth of Islamic-radicalism/Islamo-nazism, as the very pro-American Shah of Iran had that sinister movement under his boot-heel until Carter withdrew U.S. support for that government. Ditto with Sukarno and Pinochet.
Carter never seemed to grasp the simple concept that when living in a very dangerous world, you sometimes have to support dangerous, even nefarious pro-American tyrants, to keep even more nefarious and, worst of all, anti-American tyrants from gaining ground.
At any rate, ironically it wasn't Carter's many foreign policy blunders that got him tossed out in a landslide in 1980, but his pathetic economic policies. Many Americans still relate "Liberalism' to Stagflation (double digit inflation, double digit interest rates & double digit unemployment), or more succinctly, "economic ineptitude."
Carter...what a DOPE.
Since that debacle, America elected Reagan TWICE, over two completely unabshed "Liberals" (Jimmy Carter in '80 & Fritz Mondale in '84), George Bush Sr, over another hapless and unabshed Liberal (Michael Dukakis), then elected the much maligned and anti-Liberal DLC's candidate and one of the DLC's co-founders, William J Clinton, who astutely managed to run to the Right of two "Moderate" (read Liberal Republicans), in George Bush Sr, (whose raising taxes after promising not to, doomed him) and Bob Dole.
Sure, Ross Perot's entering both the '92 & '96 races, allowing Clinton to win with a plurality by siphoning off far more GOP votes, may well have been the real reason that the GOP hasn't swept every election since 1980, but Clinton's running as a "Moderate" (more Conservative Democrat) also certainly helped.
The current WH occupant beat Clinton's VP in a race that shouldn't have been that close and wouldn't have been, had many Americans not mistakenly believed that Gore was going to be little other than a Bill Clinton clone. Few in Middle America realized how much more Liberal/Left Gore was than his predecessor and he adroitly tried to downplay that Liberalism as much as possible, because he knew that Liberalism, the "L" word, was political poison in America.
That same G W Bush, then went on to defeat another candidate of the DNC, the Democrat's Left-wing, in the midst of a faltering economy and a prolonged and unpopular war!
And John Kerry too, tried to veer away, as much as he could, from the Liberal-Left, NOT because he wasn't an "unabashed Liberal," his voting record was MORE LIBERAL than Ted Kennedy's! He tried, as much as he could, to publically distance himself from the Liberal-Left because he too KNEW that Liberalism is political poison in America.
That bit of history is an awesome repudiation of American Liberalism here in America, take into account that Richard Nixon probably got as many MORE popular votes as Al Gore did, over the declared "winner" in that 1960 contest (JFK), and take into account LBJ's "pity win" in the wake of the JFK assassination, and you can easily make the case that America has repudiated Liberalism since FDR, or at least, since Harry Truman, who was also a relatively "Conservative" Democrat, who ran against a weak "Moderate" GOP candidate (Dewey).
And still in the face of that furious repudiation today's Liberals insist that they just aren't angry and obnoxious ENOUGH!
I say, by all means go with that strategy.
If nothing else, it's ballsy.
Posted by: JMK | February 15, 2006 10:41 AM