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Why It's Tough To Be A Democrat

DOUBLE WARNING!! NOT ONLY IS THE FOLLOWING POST ABOUT POLITICS, IT ALSO CONTAINS A VERY POLITICALLY INCORRECT, BADLY DISGUISED CUSSWORD. TO ANYONE OFFENDED, THAT'S WHY I USED IT.

Being the underdog every time out doesn't bother me. I spent 20 years working for the second newspaper in a two-newspaper town. Truth be told, "outmanned but never outfought" are fun words to live by.

Losing sucks, but it doesn't drive me to despair. I've been a Philadelphia sports fan for over half a century now. Kerry '04 was hard to swallow, but compared to the '64 Phillies, it was nothing. Bill Veeck summed up the Democrats' plight many years ago. "If the status quo didn't win almost all the time, it wouldn't be the status quo anymore." Those who can't accept that situation should get out of politics.

No, there's only one insupportable problem with being in the Democratic party. It's infuriating and sickening to line up for a game when a significant subset of one's own team are a bunch of f*&$@!ing p#$@*&ies.

Too harsh? Not from where I sit. With three weeks to go before national elections, much of the most committed and intelligent members of the Democratic base are already preparing to lose another. There's not a scintilla of evidence to support their pessimism. It's an ingrained defense mechanism. To be precise, it's the quitter's defense mechanism.

That's not a sentiment heard from Democratic officeholders, not in public anyway. It's commonplace all over the left-liberal blogosphere, what's supposed to be the party's new driving force. I've read it from people who otherwise have my utmost respect as thinkers and writers.

It's best to get my hopes up, wrote Matt Yglesias. Uh, Matt, if you don't like to hope, why are you in the business of trying persuade people your political opinions represent the electorate's best course of action?

William Grieder has been one of the country's top political journalists for over 25 years. Last week in the Nation's blog site, Grieder wrote couldn't stand his own fears of what'll happen on Nov. 7 another minute, and the signs of a possible Democratic triumph only made him more anxious. Grieder was, in effect, playing the game with one eye on the scoreboard, hoping to run out the clock. Uh, Bill, me and Denny Green can tell you how that usually works out.

Underneath the movement's stars rests a base of frantic, almost despairing comment from its base, good citizens who're so afraid of losing they're already beat. With sorrow more than anger, their viewpoint is summarized in the following paragraph.

Oh, I'm a Democrat, boo hoo. We always lose, boo hoo. Karl Rove is so mean and smart, boo hoo. The Republicans have more money (something that was just as true when FDR ran against Hoover), boo hoo. Diebold, boo hoo hoo hoo! Putting a twist on top of their paranoia, some commentators have written it won't matter if the Democrats do win, because George Bush will still be president.

It is to puke. These people really are defeatocrats. What's most odd is that these are the same folks who spend a great deal of energy rightly berating Democratic officeholders for their timidity, no, make that cowardice, when confronting Bush and his agenda. Gang, what do you expect if you send your leaders signals like these. Given an army of yous behind him, Stonewall Jackson would've surrendered at First Bull Run.

Upon further review, that's only the second-oddest thing about the Democrats' worriers of October. Number one is they've got nothing real to worry about.

That's doesn't mean the Democrats are a cinch to win. There's no such thing as a cinch, and I've got decades of lost bets to prove it. But in a very real sense, the opposition party is irrelevant to next month's election. The moral and practical consequences of the vote rest squarely on the voters themselves.

Unless the entire polling industry has imploded (which wouldn't be such a bad thing), the electorate is wildly dissatisfied with the status quo, and hence the party in power. Bush and the Congess have approval ratings on a par with some life-threatening illnesses. If the electorate holds that opinion, but come Nov. 7 is too frightened, apathetic, or confused to vote for change, it's on them, not the Democrats. There's nothing, nothing, any political party can do to win over voters who're so set in their habits they'll put up with their own anger rather than risk changing direction. All the opposition can do is wait for the facts of life to get even worse by the next election. Don't worry, they will.

But for heaven's sake, team, try to look like you expect to reach the end zone every so often. Sports is not important and that's why I like it. But to the people in sports, winning and losing are everything, and they know more about those two non-imposters than most folks. Here are some rules they live by.

1. Never look at the scoreboard until the last out or the clock is at 0:00.

2. Pessimism is the first, fatal step down the slide to quitting.

3. You play to win the game. Herm Edwards will never make Canton, but he's a lock for Bartlett's Quotations.

Those Democrats who can't internalize those rules should STFU anyway. I believe it was Pericles who first said sniveling is not a big-vote getter.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:29 AM