Excerpt Of The Day: Goldberg On Today’s Democratic Party

09 Feb, 2006 by John Hawkins

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“Some Democrats are furious that their party doesn’t have its own ideas. Other say they do have ideas, they’re just keeping them secret for now. That sounds a lot like the high school geek who insists that his girlfriend is really hot but lives in an undisclosed location in Canada.

…A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks,” George Orwell once observed. This seems to capture nicely the dynamic of the Democrats’ shame spiral. Success in politics is measured by winning elections. On this score, Democrats have been failures for a while now. In response, they’re getting drunk on a brew of partisanship and Bush-hating.

It is amazing how obvious — OK, even trite — is the Democratic plight. Democrats need the money and energy of their “progressive,” blog-addicted base, but in order to get it, they turn off mainstream voters. In other words, they can’t get escape velocity.

….Pelosi has become enamored with the idea that one needn’t be for anything, as long as one is opposed to Bush. No doubt that’s the feedback she’s getting in her echo chamber.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid has infuriated Republican moderates such as Arlen Specter more than GOP conservatives by obstructing legislation and hurling partisan insults. This is exactly the opposite strategy required for clawing out of the hole the Democrats are in. But anti-Republicanism trumps everything. And that’s a roadmap for the Democrats to go ever deeper into the wilderness.” — Jonah Goldberg