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February 13, 2005

An Elaborate Scheme

Currently, in American politics we have a huge gulf between the left and the right. The divide is not caused by a difference in ideology, so much as a difference in thinking itself.

Take this MD post from election day.

Earlier, in response to the Bush campaigns claim that they were leading in Ohio, the Kerry campaign claimed they were living in a very different reality and saw things in a very different way. And that reality showed Ohio for Kerry. Well isn't that the problem? The Democrats are living in a very different reality. And the problem is... their "reality" isn't REAL.

Perhaps because of the way they think, or perhaps because of the people they surround themselves, the left has come to believe that the world works in a certain way. The problem for them is that they are wrong, and that's why they keep losing elections. But worse, it's why they will continue to lose elections, because they are unable to turn the ship around. Here's an example of why, from the National Review's TKS/Kerry Spot.

Talk to any conservative or Republican, and they’re either giddy or shaking their heads in disbelief – pretty much in agreement that Dean’s promotion will stand as one of the all-time catastrophic mistakes in political history.

To listen to the Dean-friendly liberal grassroots at places like Daily Kos, these reactions from the right are crocodile tears. They contend that when a conservative says, “the Democrats would really be better off with a guy who has proven he can win in red states, like Tim Roemer,” it is actually a lie. In this scenario conservatives secretly wish the Democrats would move too far to the center, in order to depress the party’s liberals, and thus destroy the Democratic party.

Of course, the problem with this thinking is that it dismisses the possibility that the conservatives actually mean what they say – that a Democratic party with a centrist face is a more challenging opponent than one with a stridently liberal face.

Why is it so hard for Democrats to believe that conservatives are telling the truth? In order to accept the theory above, you have to accept that every single conservative is lying in order to trick the Democrats into nominating Dean. This means that, even amongst themselves, conservatives would have to be engaging in a very clever and subtle ruse. (Conservatives, according to liberals, are moronic and out of touch with the world, unless there is some sort of conspiracy involved, in which case they are fiendishly clever.) In this "reality", conservatives hide their TRUE feelings from the public, making sure never to tell the truth in interviews, opinion pieces, even on internet message boards and blogs.

Does this make sense to you? Is the right really that intelligent? Even if it's some plot hatched by the evil genius Karl Rove, how do they keep Cletus from speaking out at the Trailer Park Homeowners meeting?

Isn't this, perhaps, a case of partywide projection? The left, so used to saying one thing when they really mean another, now believes the opposition does the same. That's why they're insistent that Bush "lied" as opposed to made a mistake, is it not?

The left is losing touch with reality, and here we see the DNC moving to the left with Howard Dean at the helm. They don't seem to realize that they are further marginalizing themselves. Of course, they will now pick up those all important liberals... the ones who supported LaRouche or Ralph Nader. But didn't most of them vote for John Kerry last go round?

In my opinion, this is the divide that will define American politics for the next twenty years. The Republican majority will continue to grow, not just because Republicans are having more babies in Jesusland, but because slowly Democrats (I mean real, voting, work for a living Democrats) are going to abandon the faith, and they're going to start voting for the other side.

What, really, was the difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry in the last election? I don't think voters saw a big policy difference between the two. Wasn't it that Bush saw things one way, and he stuck with it, while Kerry just wasn't sure, wasn't able to articulate how he felt, or perhaps was simply unwilling to divulge the truth?

The left's version of reality goes something like this: the war in Iraq was a disaster, Bush is only exacerbating the terror problem, and oh, the horrible economy!

But the war has been, by any reasonable standard, a success. We haven't had a single terror attack since 9/11. And was the economy really that bad? Unemployment remained low by any historical measure. There was debate as to whether a recession took place at all. What we really saw was a slowing of growth. We saw a crummy economy, to be sure, but a crummy economy by the standards with which we were used to. In other words, times were really great, and then they were just good, and we've been waiting for them to be great again.

Voters recognize this. I think they both resent having the left tell them otherwise. But more than that, I think they just stop listening after a while.

That's where we are. The Democrats, hopelessly lost, need to get in touch with the real world again. And I'm just not sure they'll be able to do it.

Posted by March at February 13, 2005 06:20 PM

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