Mr. Willis is depressed
DC area blogger Oliver Willis has looked at the Democrats’ performance, and has become depressed.
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Why Republicans Will Maintain Or Increase Their Control This Fall
by Oliver Willis | June 16th, 2006 | 2:12 pm
Only one party is interested in the big fights
Yesterday’s scummy GOP political stunts over Iraq were, of course, scummy. At the same time, though, Democrats are paying the price for the ostrich-like attitude they’ve taken to the war ever since the 2004 election. There’s been this persistent hope that either the Bush administration would declare victory and go home, or else that the mounting casualties, costs, and unpopularity of the venture would somehow allow a bipartisan truce to prevail letting Democrats wage a campaign that’s all about ethics and prescription drugs.
The same formula that led to electoral losses in 2002 and 2004 is currently in play. The Democratic leadership along with the same sorry ass Democratic consultants are writing the playbook again. Democrats will wake up after election day, seeing losses or the status quo and wondering why a campaign on healthcare, education and ethics somehow got trampled by a campaign about the most important issue of our time.
Actually, I think Mr Willis missed a more important part of the article he referenced, the very next one:
There’s a lesson in yesterday’s events that Democrats need to learn, and quickly: The Republicans are confident — very confident — about the politics of national security. Confident enough to try and sell a war based on bogus intelligence. Confident enough to, in the wake of the intelligence’s evident wrongness, simply revise history and say it was about something else. Confident enough to try and make the war a winning issue years after it’s launch, even though it’s unpopular.
Mr Willis and his commenters are somewhat distressed that the Democrats don’t have a unified proposal on what to do about Iraq; right now, the Democrats’ position on Iraq is: I wish we weren’t there.
Gee, that’s a bold one! 
The original article in Prospect noted that the Republicans believe that they have a real political advantage on national security — and they do. The Democrats are in the strange position of wanting to run from a fight for which they voted! That hasn’t gone unnoticed, and it isn’t the kind of thing that gives people confidence in the Democrats’ ability to be strong defenders of this country. Even if people believe that Iraq is a war we should never have fought, there is a strong, visceral reluctance in Americans to run from a fight. And the idea that people, people like John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton voted for the fight and now want to run, well, that is particularly uninspiring.
Even the sometimes expressed complaints of the Democrats who voted for the war, “The President assured us that war would be a last resort, not his first option,” don’t get much credit: in saying that the president fooled them, they are setting themselves up to be called fools. People who claim that they were tricked tend to get less credit for having good judgement than they might otherwise get.
(Showing my advanced age, remember how George Romney’s political fortunes plummeted once he said that he had been “brainwashed” on the Vietnam war?)
The ultimate irony is that the Democrat that the public sees as showing the most courage of his convictions is Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), whom the liberals are trying desperately to read out of the party because he disagrees with them on one issue. (Mr. Lieberman is a pretty reliable liberal vote on most other issues.) People like Senator Kerry have made floundering a (bad) art form, trying to justify their votes for the war. Mr. Kerry’s woeful performance in the 2004 campaign was based, in large part, on his having no flaming idea what to do concerning Iraq, and no idea how to take a decision that wasn’t hamstrung by his 2002 vote to authorize the use of force.
Some Democrats, like Al Gore and Russ Feingold, opposed the war from the beginning. That has made them the darlings of some of the far-left bloggers (Mr Willis, in particular, likes Mr Gore.) But Mr Gore is a certified loser, and will never be nominated again; he has already said he doesn’t plan on running in 2008. Mr Feingold has seen a boomlet for himself on the Lost Kos and other sites even further left than Mr Willis’, but he’s a rather poor self-promoter for a presidential candidate.
Part of the problem is a real intellectual split between the party activists, who want to run on real liberal ideas, including raising taxes, and the actual politicians, who see that as a looming disaster. In the end, it is the candidates, not the activists, who decide on what they are going to run.
And in the very end, the critics among the side that loses will all claim that victory would have been theirs, if only their advice had been taken.
Common Sense Political Thought » Blog Archive » Mr. Willis should be depressed!:
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18 June 2006, 9:54 amRovin:
“And the idea that people, people like John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton voted for the fight and now want to run, well, that is particularly uninspiring.”
It was interesting how you slipped the “wicked witch of the east” in there with the “cut n run” crowd. Are we to assume that you don’t believe Hillery is interested in the future of a free and independent Iraqi nation?
Of course we, (on the “left” coast) are
fortunate, hagridden to have two “wicked witch’s of the west”, Boxer and Pelosi.Until the Democratic party throws away their current “playbook” along with the radical left, well……..you heard the weatherman, “there will be no change.”
18 June 2006, 11:17 amDana:
Rovin wrote:
Actually I believe that Senatrix Clinton’s number one interest is in herself. Whatever is number two with Mrs Clinton trails number one by such a huge margin that it is completely out of sight. In that, she is just like her estranged husband.
Why did President Clinton govern by polls? Because he didn’t really have any convictions, didn’t have any beliefs other than in himself. He was more interested in being president than in actually having a goal of where he wanted to lead teh country.
18 June 2006, 11:53 amEva-Marie:
Hi Dana,
Not so fast. If you want the Winning vs. Losing strategies, please go here.
18 June 2006, 5:45 pmDana:
I followed your link, Eva-Marie; you are more than welcome to post references to your site on this blog. This site does not censor dissent or disagreement in any way.
18 June 2006, 6:47 pmArthur Downs:
In politics, it is often that the demagogue beats the person of principles. A demagogue may not be as extreme as a Hitler but may simply tell the people what they have been taught that they want to hear. LBJ played the game rather well against Goldwater in 1964 but while Johnson humiliated Goldwater at the polls, he slunk from office a beaten man loved by very few and loathed by many.
Harry Truman did some unpopular things and made a few mistakes. Yet history looks at him in a much more favorable light than most of his contemporary ‘pundits’.
19 June 2006, 8:46 pmWhy Republicans Will Maintain Or Increase Their Control This Fall - Oliver Willis:
[...] If the D’s can’t show some balls Rove will rollover them once again. he’s preparing to cheat, steal and kill if necessary to keep control of the congress. the D’s can’t even decide if their D’s. 45 of these spineless slugs actually voted with the Repugs on their Iraq resolution. if present trends continue by fall I predict the Repukes will add 20 seats to their majority in the House and 5 in the Senate. June 17, 2006 8:06 PM Common Sense Political Thought said: [...]
11 November 2007, 8:27 am