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The architect? Charlie Rangel.
"Who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?"
Tell us more, Charlie.
I was talking to some liberal (I think it was a liberal blogger, but I can't remember which one) last week about the Ford ad and I said:
Me: "Well, in order for it to be a racist ad, the assumption has to be that the South is just chock full of racists that will change their votes due to the mere visual, fictional association of a white woman with a black man."
He: "Yeah, that is the assumption."
Me: "Trying out a new Democratic strategy to pick up Southern votes, are you? Go ahead, keep trying with that one."
This is the new age of bipartisanship and cooperation.
Democrats have a chance to act reasonable, and probably get a bunch of pretty liberal (very bad) yet popular measures passed, like a minimum wage hike and an amnesty of some sort for illegal aliens, with an assist from our squishy President and the squishy Republicans in Congress. The culture of Washington and Congress is tailor-made to let really bad, really big spending bills pass without trouble. It would serve Democrats well now and in '08 to be happy with that.
But they won't be. Folks like Rangel and the Nutroots can't help themselves. Case in point, I had a nice, quick conversation with a guy at the CNN blog party who, as it turns out, was TRex from FireDogLake.
Leave it to the Nutroots to be b**chy even when they're winning. He ended up snarling about me (and others) on his blog after being perfectly sweet to me at the party. I guess I didn't get the memo that the blog party was, like, OMG! actually a junior-high dance, and we were supposed to pass notes about the other people behind their backs after we talked to them.
I got introduced to Mary Katherine Ham, who, it turns out, shares my alma mater, the University of Georgia. She went to journalism school there, which might explain her execrable writing. She's the blogger who viewed the infamous "Call me!" ad about Harold Ford, Jr. and pronounced that cries of racism were baseless and that the ad was cute and funny.
Yeah. Don't forget to take your Dramamine before you go floating down the River of Denial Mary Katherine.
Dude, you won. Cover the wins and cheer up, for goodness' sake. FireDogLake ringing a bell for anyone? Yeah, it's the same blog that blackfaced Joe Lieberman. There is not enough Dramamine in the world for these folks.
If you can't cheer up and play nice on a night like that, when will you ever be able to? Maybe after the dust has settled and you've taken both chambers with very slim majorities?
So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.
Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face.
Yeah, not so much. TRex, Rangel, Kos, Pelosi. The left wing of the Democratic Party is going to keep letting the nasty peek through. It's not everyone in the Party, to be sure, but there is a significant chunk of the leadership and the left blogosphere for whom disdain for Southerners, Middle Americans, evangelicals, the military and pretty much anyone whose views are more conservative than theirs, is part of their philosophy. I'm not trying to be unfair, here. A lot of times they don't even know they're doing it, and often they don't realize it's a problem.
I grew up in a largely liberal town, and the condescension is palpable. Most folks don't try to hide it because it's just understood that conservatives are "less," and to treat the conservative political philosophy and its trappings with respect would be giving it much more credit than it deserves. It's not even meant to be mean-spirited most of the time. It's just the way things work.
That same attitude is written all over the Democrats' reactions to electoral losses since 2000. They haven't trusted the judgment of the people and worked to change their message to reach them. Instead they have blamed the American people for being clods and dullards who are inexplicably disinclined to vote "in their own self-interest." Remember "What's Wrong With Kansas?" and "How CAn 59,054,087 People Be So Dumb?"
Alternatively, they have blamed Diebold and Bush for stealing elections because, after all, how can 59,054,087 people be so dumb, right? It must have been a conspiracy.
I'm so glad our side doesn't act the same way.
Most importantly, we didn’t lose because our countrymen suddenly misplaced the virtues that make America great. It is a distinctly liberal trait to blame “the people” when they don’t vote as one would dictate. I’ll brook none of that from our side. The fact is, we thought our country would be better off with a Republican congress. We made a case to the American people. They didn’t buy it because they thought it was a weak case.
So, we regroup, retool, and make a better case, and the left wing of the Democratic Party will continue to alienate the moderate and conservative votes they earned this time if some smart Democrat doesn't hush them up.
And, since the "stolen" elections meme should have been laid to rest by this Republican loss, and Republicans are willing to take a loss like grown-ups without all the crying, let's play us a cheatin' song to bid the theories adieu for now.
The theories will be back, of course, when the American people get "stupid" enough to vote Republican again or Karl Rove works out that Diebold glitch that messed up this election. But until then, enjoy this little Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Ditty and remember how much she reminds you of a Democrat who just lost a national election:
At least your ex-girlfriend is cuter than Kos. Well, hopefully.
Update: See Dubya gives us a refresher in "The Art of Sore Losing" from 2004, courtesy of the Dems (content warning; just one curse word).
Also:
"If you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Jackson." Ha.
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