Democrats Who Want To Win Vs. Democrats Who Want To Vent

It’s entertaining to watch the Democrats who’re actually interested in winning elections duke it out with the rabid lefties want the candidate to be a mirror image of them — even it causes the party to go down the tubes. In any case, there’s a lot of good news for Republicans in this article

“Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004, according to a new poll commissioned for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

…Penn said his polling indicates that since Clinton left office in 2001, more Americans believe Democrats are the party of big government and higher taxes and he said Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism has opened up a huge gap with Democrats on who is more trusted on issues of national security.

“If Democrats can’t close the security gap, then they can’t be competitive in the next election,” said Penn, who polled for Clinton in his second term and who is the pollster for the presidential campaign of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.).

But Penn said Democrats must make a concerted effort to appeal to white voters, particularly men and married women, to make the 2004 race competitive. He said just 22 percent of white men identified with the Democratic Party in his poll, and he said younger men are even more strongly Republican in their leanings.

Penn’s poll was used by DLC leaders to press their argument that Democrats must embrace the kind of centrist policies espoused by Clinton to avoid a humiliating defeat in 2004, and they used the two-day conference to continue a debate over the direction of the party that has intensified in recent months.

DLC leaders have criticized former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose antiwar rhetoric fueled his rise to prominence in the Democratic presidential race, and today, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), the DLC chairman, warned that the party is “at risk of being taken over by the far left.” The choice for Democrats, Bayh said, is, “Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?”

But not all of those in attendance agreed with the Dean bashing. Washington state Rep. Laura Ruderman decried the battles between party centrists and liberals, and told the audience, “I don’t think we can be successful if we go down that rat hole.”

“Do we want to vent or do we want to govern” — does that not sum it up perfectly? The honest answer, one that a lot of people on the left won’t even admit to themselves, is that yes, they would rather vent than govern.

That’s because they know in their heart of hearts, they’re losing the war of ideas badly and they’ve given up on trying to win it. Now in the past, they’ve gotten around that by…

1) Talking about what a lousy country this is
2) Saying we have a lousy country because the GOP is full of racist NAZIs who want to take grandma’s Social Security just so the GOP contributors at Kibbles ‘N’ Bits can make more money selling her dog food to eat
3) Then the Democrats ran as “not Republicans” — “Vote for us because we’re not stupid or evil!!!”
4) Then when they won, they appointed a lot of liberal judges who imposed the left’s agenda via judicial fiat.

That was the strategy in nutshell, but the Dems are no longer winning enough elections with it to stay in power — so they’re “venting” at Bush, at the GOP, at the war, at America — you name it, they’re furious about it — and Dean represents the people who feel that way. He’s the feeling behind the “No War For Oil” sign personified and I’m rooting for him to make it through the primaries and go head to head with Bush. I say that because unlike liberals, Conservatives aren’t “venting”, they’re looking to govern and having a guy like Dean running on the Democratic ticket will help us get & keep the majorities to do it with.

Share this!

Enjoy reading? Share it with your friends!