Quarterly Rant

There's a lot of discussion of fingerpointing in the comments below. Just to be clear: I'm not talking about pointing fingers. I mean, at this point, is fingerpointing necessary? Is there any question who is responsible for the debacle in Iraq? Who engaged in illegal wiretaps? Who is responsible for the budget deficit? Um, no. It seems to me that you only point fingers when assigning responsibility is at minimum debatable. Here, there's no debate.

I'm talking about holding people responsible for their actions. That's a good, old-fashioned, even conservative value. I'm also talking about attacking your opponent, something that establishment-D.C. Democrats are remarkably bad at. Remarkably. The Democratic establishment is all-defense, no offense, and they haven't had a turnover in ten years. For non-football folks out there, that means you cannot score.

As for swing voters, if I've learned one thing from Bush, it's that ideas are over-rated. Other than cutting taxes and "restoring honor and dignity to the Oval Office," what ideas did he have in 2000? (Of course, I know that he didn't really win in 2000, but let's pretend like he did. Like we always do.) In 2002, he ran on "strength." "Resolutenessitudity." Or something to do with testicles. It's hazy in mind: when I think of it, I just keep seeing triple-amputee and actual veteran Max Cleland morph into Osama bin Laden. Now there's an idea for you: Democrats support terrorists. That's how you win "swing voters": by attacking your opponents.

Or, how about the flyers in rural counties in 2004 saying that Kerry would ban the Bible and mandate homosexual marriage? How about the incessant drumbeat to the gun-owners in the U.S. that the Democrats will make private ownership of firearms illegal, just like in Soviet Russia? I'm old enough to remember how the GOP used the Democratic party's national position on race and civil rights to "swing" the South into the GOP column. Did they do that through "new ideas," or through, at the highest level of that discourse, coded messages, and at the basest level, racist appeals? I think we all know the answer.

Attack, attack, attack. Below the media radar, that's all the GOP ever does. Reagan's "welfare queens driving Cadillacs," Bush's coded "man-animal hybrids" nonsense. That's what they've been doing for thirty, forty years now. But if the big, bad Democrats do that, well, they'll lose. Because that never works. Voters don't like it when you're mean. (Unless, of course, you're mean to the right groups.)

If "going on the offensive" works when you're the party in power (GOP, 2002), it should work when you're the party out of power (Dems, 2006). Especially when the polls suggest that you have the upper hand on most issues and have pulled even, even on your weakest issues.

The worst thing the Dems could do, though, would be run on domestic issues (health care), where their greatest strengths are in the polls. Of course, that's what they'll do, as if on cue (Oh, but it will be one Hell of a moral victory!). Who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? It wasn't Howard Dean, that's for sure.

I said it in 2004, and I wish I had meant it: If the Democrats can't beat this band of crooks, kooks, and losers, then I just need to find another political party. Don't talk to me about "throwing my vote away": I live in D.C., and thus I don't get to vote in any elections that actually count anyway. (Freedom's just another word for living in the District.)