lickety jackblog

election talk, con't...

why you should be optimistic:

i think the moral of this story is that since clinton, the democrats have devolved into a large corps of pouting weenies with no (to use the word of the week) 'moral' core to speak of. they are the guys who are against bush. and while that may be enough to garner most of the jackbloggers' votes, liberals have always overestimated the extent to which most americans pay attention to what is going on in their country. to the millions who never watch the news (except for a certain day in september 3 years past), they knew that they liked the swagger and plainspokenness of the guy from texas. if they tuned in to hear the lurchesque noreaster before the election, chances are they just heard him talking about how wrong the president was. this was, in essence, his platform. and the majority of our brethren, who don't pay attention, need a little bit more than 'i'm not the other guy'. and who can blame them?

when it came down to it, the prospect of newlywed dandies coming to take our guns away and removing 'god' from the pledge was far more frightening than, say, the prospect of drafts and multiplying wars and loss of civil liberties and religion in government and wacko judges and privatizing social security and an exponentially rising gap between rich and poor and an ever diminishing circle of allies and more difficulties travelling abroad and lower real wages and the list goes on. kerry's advisers were the old guard and they have failed. bob shrum is the classic example: a gentleman who ran over four democratic presidential campaigns and failed each time was the best candidate for the job apparently. boo!

and herein lies the real problem: the democratic leadership is chock-full-o-dumbshits. it doesn't take a genius to make those possibilities real to people. they affect people far more than jane and stacey getting hitched in martha's vineyard. but unless somebody says it, message ain't gonna get to my aunts and uncles and cousins in malvern arkansas, who are struggling to find jobs and are reliant on social security and medicaid, and hate the war and see the rich getting richer while they stay poor but also don't really get those gays and have guns and use guns and don't appreciate yanks telling them what they should and shouldn't do with them. which brings us to the uplifting part:

in 1964, johnson beat goldwater handily in one of the largest electoral massacres in history. the republicans imploded and were forced to regroup and reevaluate their platform and their strategy. meanwhile, the democrats got cocky. then? nixon, ford, their knight in shining armor sir ronald, and during the 90s they decimated democratic control of the house and senate.

the republicans will get cocky. they will overstep their bogus 'mandate'. the democratic leadership will be replaced. a reevaluation of strategy must and will occur. and it's about goddamned time. i don't know any discerning person who is really pumped up about the democrats or their platform. but maybe, soon, we can at least be satisfied that the democrats have grown some hairy genitals to replace the small and crooked makeshift strap-on that has been rotting for decades on the putrid crotch of modern democracy. good night!

posted by the cold cowboy @ 10:26 AM