Cannon here: Even as it provided a link, Buzzflash made a snide remark about this Washington Post analysis, which lists the people Democrats will blame after they lose in 2006.
Not only does the piece operate from the defeatist presumption that Democrats will fall short of their goals in 2006, writer Dana Milbank seems to believe that the opposition party must never act like an opposition party. Milbank scores any Dem who criticizes Bush or opposes the war, even though neither the President nor the war command much popular support.
I do agree with the article on one point: Hillary Clinton cannot win the presidency in 2008 and should not run.
Beyond that, I think Milbank's approach plays to the major vice of Democratic thinking: When we lose, we blame ourselves. When Republicans lose, they blame the opposition.
To a large degree, these attitudes reveal much about the psychology of the people attracted to both parties. Democrats, by nature, are self-questioning and introspective. They have, until recently, made such a habit of trying to see all sides of all issues that they have become (as one wag put it) incapable of taking their own side in an argument.
Republicans, by contrast, would rather scrape their own nipples off with a potato peeler than admit even the slightest possibility that they could be wrong. About anything. If a conservative steps on your foot, he blames you for having your foot there.
I think it's possible for Dems to eschew their natural tendency toward self-flagellation without lapsing into conservative bombast and arrogance. A middle ground does exist; a healthy soul learns how to question himself without attacking himself.
And that's why, if the party fails to recapture one or both Houses in 2006, I will not blame Kerry or Gore or Dean or any of the others on Milbank's "precriminalization" list. I will recognise whatever faults our spokesmen may have, but I will not fixate on those failings. If we lose, I will blame the brainwashed Jesusmaniacs. I will blame the conservative media machine. I will blame digitized vote-burglars. I will blame the long-predicted staged "terrorist" strike on our soil.
I will, in short, blame the enemy.
2 comments:
Republicans blame the other guy dept:
… as In Wittington didn’t announce his presence, he had the sun behind himself and the rest of the hunting party, he allowed himself to become separated from the party, etc. Even Cheney’s language in his mea culpa couldn’t sound more eerily indirect if he had used the third person:
"You can't blame anyone else. (and God knows I’ve tried!) I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend," he said.
And there is always the matter of the consequences:
News Telegraph:
“…the affair has once again raised questions in the minds of some Republican strategists about whether the Vice President is becoming a liability to the White House.”
I think it is highly doubtful that Cheney will suffer for any infractions official or unofficial. After all he is the real head of state. The Bible said nothing about cutting off your head if it offends you!
It was so much fun hearing Sen. Frisk spin the Cheney affair on Face the Nation this morning. Once again, true to blaming the other guy, he asserted that the furor over Cheney’s accidentally shooting the Republican in the quail-bush was not the fault of the Veep’s contradictory testimony or the fourteen plus hour gap betwixt the “crime” and the investigation, but solely the result of Democratic partisan politics. This strategy of blame the other guy is so reflexive that it no longer causes a ripple to stir. A fish is more likely to be conscious of the water in which it swims than a Republican being aware of the idea of personal culpability for his actions.
What makes you think the Democrats have any chance of winning in ’06 or ’08, even in the unlikely event that they somehow get their act together? You should reread your own commentaries on the last two stolen elections. It is highly doubtful that we will have a free major election in this country ever again. I might be willing to grant the possibility of some Democratic victories in Congress in ’06. There are just too many races to fix’em all. Yet I’m sure the Republicans will try to fix as many as they can get away with. I guess we could always file briefs for any contested races with the Supreme Court!
I think that the only hope we have to bring this country together again is with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Probably the only thing both Republicans and Democrats can all agree on is that she would be a colossal mistake. What do you bet the Democrats will run her in ’08? What did Freud call it -The Death Wish?
to BB...
What makes you think we're going to have any more elections?
Post a Comment