marccooper: The Democrats Have Met The Enemy [UPDATED]

Here's a version of my latest L.A. Weekly column on the election aftermath:

Whatever slim hope that Democrats might have of extracting something positive from this week’s resounding defeat depends entirely on how much authentic introspection they are willing to inflict on themselves. To the degree that they look outward –instead of inward—to identify the causes of the 2004 debacle, the more certain they are doomed.

The more that we hear in the coming days and weeks about counting and recounting in Ohio, about supposed voter intimidation and suppression, about fixed machines, crooked and partisan secretaries of state, about unfair advertising, or Karl Rove’s dirty tricks, then the more that anyone with something other than tapioca for brains should abandon any hope of rejuvenating or rebuilding this hollowed-out excuse for a party.

The Democrats lost this election fair and square and have absolutely no one to blame for it than themselves. They don’t even have pathetic Ralph Nader to scapegoat like they did four years ago. Sorry if I rush to hang the crepe. But the four million vote margin racked up by Bush—the first absolute majority since 1988 in a presidential election—is an undeniable and clear victory that robs any other solution – as unlikely as that might be—of any moral legitimacy. At least it should --after Florida’s Hurricane Chad-- in whose aftermath the Democrats screeched that Bush was an illegitimate president because he had lost the popular vote and was appointed, in effect, by the Supremes. Surely the Democrats would want to eschew any similar stigma, wouldn’t they?

Locating the roots of this defeat, you are free to dig as deeply or as superficially as you care. We could start this particular narrative, I suppose, in 1993 when a newly-elected Bill Clinton gambled all of his political capital to bully and ultimately divide his own party, forcing passage of the pet project of Bush 41 – the job-shredding NAFTA. Or perhaps, you’d prefer to begin this story three years later when the same Democratic President signed the Republican abolition of federal welfare thereby putting on the table the simple question of why we should even bother to continue having a Democratic Party. Or maybe in ’98 when Democrats re-assured America that all presidents lie and why pick oin you-know-who.

Yet, to unravel this latest tragedy, there’s no need really to rehearse the ancient history of the Clinton Nineties, now enshrined in official Democratic mythology as, perhaps, the peak moment of Western Civilization. Going back to the fall of 2002 will suffice. I refer to the moment when Senator John Kerry joined with Trent Lott and Tom DeLay among many, many others in voting the same Florida-tainted George W. Bush full authorization to move toward a patently and brazenly unnecessary war with Iraq.

Not that Kerry really meant it, of course. He had opposed what was a significantly more justifiable war with Saddam a decade earlier. But, then again, Kerry wasn’t contemplating a presidential run back in ’91.

Or we could zero in on that frosty evening back in January when about 30,000 rosy-cheeked and gray-haired Iowa farmers and their neighbors decided that, among Democrats, only John Kerry was “electable” and millions of Democrats coast-to-coast immediately rubber-stamped that now rather discredited notion.

Maybe it’s unfair, however, to isolate any single catalytc moment. A cool-headed assessment of the entire Democratic response to the Bush presidency would herald the doom deal out on Tuesday night almost independently of who ultimately was the candidate. From the onset of his administration, the Democrats have combined a freakish accommodation to Bush with a shrill, sometimes paranoiac exaggeration of his evil. One moment they are part of his War Cabinet. The next they are demonizing him as an individual and warning we are on the doorstep of fascism. And then we blame the voters for being confused. .

But once so many Democrats had worked themselves into a frenzy with the mantra of stolen elections and Supreme Court electoral coups, the die was cast. If Bush was, in fact, the most dangerous, evil and demented President ever as Democrats tirelessly reminded themselves (and apparently only themselves), then Anybody But Bush would do just fine and … well… the rest is now history.

Mr. Anybody turned out to be quite the loser that voters suspected he was before his miracle resurrection in the snows of Iowa. No one can, with a straight face, repeat just what was the precise message of his just-passed and wretched campaign. Is there a reader out there who would like to write in reminding us of one memorable line to be extracted and preserved from amidst the logorrhea that overflowed his campaign?

Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out..

Think for a moment, if you can bear, just how fraudulent the Party has become as a champion for everyday, working Americans. John Edwards, it should be said, did a fine job of evoking the rude inequalities of the Two Americas. And it’s a pity that someone like Edwards couldn’t emerge as the Democrats’ national rabble-rouser. For a brief historical moment, the unlikely Howard Dean flashed in that role and then was even more quickly extinguished. But when you ask yourself who are the great Democratic mass icons of our times, the two or three individuals who put a face and some heart on the core populist values, damned if we don’t come up with literal clowns like Al Franken and Michael Moore. They may or ( may not) be just dandy entertainers. But doesn’t this say something rather startling about the state of the Democrats?

Once the whining over Ohio dies out, what will laughably be called the war for the “soul” of the once-again-defeated Democratic Party will commence – a struggle so drearily predictable that the whole exercise can be easily scripted in advance. On the one side the corporate shills of the Democratic Leadership Council who will argue that Tuesday’s results demand a repositioning of the Party to the right. On the other, the “progressives” who will refloat their own formula that success resides in simply moving the Democrats leftward (as evidenced by what? The 2% primary draw of Dennis Kucinich). Both notions are simplistic and insufficient. The Democrats have not won the sort of absolute national majority pocketed by Bush in more than a quarter of a century. The party doesn’t need to be reformed or repositioned. It needs to be rethought and reborn.

The re-election of George W. Bush is a tragedy for which we all pay dearly—some much more than others. And the only succor I cling to is the notion that the President’s punishment for being re-elected is that he will now have to manage the myriad catastophes he has conjured. Good luck to him -- and to us

In the meantime, I shed no tears for the humiliation of this Democratic Party-- only for those who suffer for having invested their hopes in it. But that the Democrats richly deserve to go down-- no question. My deepest regret is only that the Republicans don't go down right alongside it.

Comments

"I think that the demise of the inner cities can be attributed to some liberal policies--but, let's not go there."

As I recall it, deindustrialization and union busting has been prevalent since Jimmy Carter-Reagan-Bush Sr.-Clinton-Bush Jr.'s presidency...

Posted by: steve | Friday, November 05, 2004 at 05:29 PM

rosedog: received and absorbed.
I'm pouring ashes over my silly head
m(_ _)m

Posted by: youpickone4me | Friday, November 05, 2004 at 05:32 PM

Working class voters were willing to consider a Democratic option, but when they didn't hear a compelling enough economic narrative from Kerry they let cultural issues drive their vote. "'Democrats need to have a bold economic narrative. Not just policies," said Greenberg.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html#greenberg

Posted by: steve | Friday, November 05, 2004 at 05:43 PM

Dear youpickone4me...

No need for ashes. We've probably all got more than enough to go around. ; -)

Posted by: rosedog | Saturday, November 06, 2004 at 12:45 AM

Nice analysis.

Now that Bush has won, history will either prove Bush was a great president and that the majority of Americans were right to vote him back into office or history will prove that the Europeans are smarter than us, Bush is an idiot, and that he was a terrible president.

Only time & future history will tell.

Tom Keating
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/

Posted by: Tom Keating | Monday, November 08, 2004 at 10:40 AM

I am very confident now that Tony Blair will lose his next election, one more bright side to the Bush victory!

Posted by: steve | Monday, November 08, 2004 at 12:57 PM

Marc Cooper is right on the mark, ( yes, I know), with this editorial. Thank you for saying what needs to be said Marc. Let's hope that the party leadership can change things around. And if neccesary, I believe it is, we change the leadership to bring about such change.

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