Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities
The High and Almighty Party is finally starting to have doubts about whether they’ll recapture control of Congress this fall. I’ve known that they wouldn’t since before Christmas. The difference is that the NY Times is now quoting Democrats who are doubting it.
Asked to describe the health of the Democratic Party, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: “A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months. We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about,” Mr. Dodd said.
That’s what happens when the vast majority of the party activists and a significant number of the party’s leaders are stuck in a 1970’s mindset. Dean thinks of President Bush as Nixon and the NSA terrorist surveillance program as Nixon taping his political enemies. Ted Kennedy thinks that the Iraqi desert looks like Vietnam’s jungels. Dick Durbin thinks that our soldiers at Gitmo look like Pol Pot’s thugs.
And they can’t figure out why the American people don’t buy their rhetoric? Try living in the 21st Century for a change.
It’s also worth noting that part of their troubles come from John Breaux’s retirement and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s passing. Breaux was a level-headed centrist while Moynihan was an intellectual giant. Neither would be liked by the Kossacks, though, because they actually got along with Republicans and because they made sense. They’d likely be hated like the Kossacks hate Lieberman now.
Democrats said they had not yet figured out how to counter the White House’s long assault on their national security credentials. And they said their opportunities to break through to voters with a coherent message on domestic and foreign policy, should they settle on one, were restricted by the lack of an established, nationally known leader to carry their message this fall.
Perhaps they should rethink their strategy to not oppose EVERYTHING President Bush says. Perhaps they should think in terms that President Bush’s national security credentials, though far from perfect, are heading us in the right direction. Look where the Kossacks’ call for fighting for what they believe in has gotten them. The only thing that changed was how shrill they sound. That’s hardly conducive to sounding coherent.
“I think that two-thirds of the American people think the country is going in the wrong direction,” said Senator Barack Obama, the first-term Illinois Democrat who is widely viewed as one of the party’s promising stars. “They’re not sure yet whether Democrats can move it in the right direction.” Mr. Obama said the Democratic Party had not seized the moment, adding: “We have been in a reactive posture for too long. I think we have been very good at saying no, but not good enough at saying yes.”
Sen. Obama said it well so I won’t attempt to improve upon it.
Their concern was aggravated by the image of high-profile Democrats, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, challenging the legality of Mr. Bush’s secret surveillance program this week at a time when the White House has sought to portray Democrats as weak on security.
When Kennedy, Leahy, Feingold and Feinstein all accuse the President of breaking the law with the NSA terrorist surveillance program, it’s impossible to take Democrats seriously on national security.
In the end, you realize that, despite all their ‘warts’, Republicans are still more liked than Democrats are because they stand for a commonsense, positive agenda. And Democrats stand for whatever their liberal campaign contributors tell them to and…whatever President Bush opposes.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
February 7th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
True, true, true.
February 7th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
If the Democrats fail in the upcoming fall election, you can look back at their decision to choose Howard Dean as DNC chairman as an indicator that Democrats thought they needed no other votes than the far left to win elections. Dean has absolutely no appeal to independents and fires up the conservatives like very few can do. He is the best fund raiser for the Republicans in many many years. Whatever happened to the idea that charm and disarming humor were powerful political weapons? Invective,anger and smear tactics seem to constitute the Democrats’ entire political arsenal and that fact is why the Democrats have found the last three elections (’00,’02,’04) such disappointing experiences. Maybe a little honey to go along with all that vinegar? NNNOOOOO. Not possible for today’s liberals. Impeach BUSH. Bush=Hitler. Insurgents are modern day minute men. Sorry, Democrats are very unlikely to find enough hate filled voters or paranoid voters to win this fall.
February 8th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Dem party leaders feel as though they are in weak position
The NYTimes is reporting todaythat some leading Democrats are feeling like they are in a weaker position now than they’d hoped to be, because they haven’t been able to capitalize in any significant way on the various ’scandals’…
February 8th, 2006 at 9:47 am
My father, far from a moonbat, is severely infected with BDS. He read some article online last night that “effectively blasted Bush and all his policies”, and my only reaction was, o.k., so what’s your solution to those problems?
That’s the crux of Demo-gogary, that while the donkeys rage against everything Bush and Republican, they haven’t offered a real solution to anything since Moynihan died.
Not that any of his “solutions” was worth adopting, but, unlike today’s donkeys, at least they were worth discussing and he was a willing participant in the discussions.
Donkeys/libs/moonbats nowdays have little to no interest in discussions, only monologues. Look at the Alito hearings.
Go Deam/Sheehan! The elephants need all your blithering idiocy!
February 8th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Actually, you should be thankful that they are floundering. They have some issues that, if they dealt with them intelligently and with less acrimony, could definitely hurt in the next election. However, seeing as how they failed at that so miserably in 2004, and seeing no signs of them having any intelligent thinkers designing their campaigns, I don’t think they’ll regain Congress. I say that not as a Democrat hater or as a Republican lover. Just an observation.
February 12th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Thats a great observation. Even O’bama, the rising star of the democratic party, has tainted his image with centrists, idependants, and republicans, or any vote other than the extreme left, leaving the party in a very weak position come November.