Pondering the current Democratic Party Demoralization foray
Something worth watching is the frequent dailykos reader poll of support for the various Democratic Party leaders. Generally they have been high in this post – 2006 Election cycle. I expect to see one huge humongous dip in the support for Reid and Pelosi and Emanuel — and probably a minor dip for Dean — who is out of the picture somewhat.
I expect the Democratic Party Demoralization foray has been of a sort that has calculated that they can push this all aside, a series of 15-minute news cycles will turn Americans’ attention elsewhere.
One of the difficult things I had in digesting the 2004 election was that the performance of the Democratic Party– in their minority role — had never really did anything to suggest that Ralph Nader — always further to the left than I have ever been — was wrong in 2000, even with every liberal in America shouting “See? See? This is what is wrought with your precious Nader vote!” Granted, there wasn’t much the party held a horrible hand up until somewhere in 2003, but it took until the second term of the Bush presidency for the Democratic Party to find a holding on how to oppose the Republicans. After a flurry of moderately successful tidbits, they appear to have thrown themselves back to square one, unable to foot themselves.
We are now in a holding pattern of inertia until the next president. The similarity is with the Democratic Congress of 1931-1933, the last two years of the Hoover administration, which was a party that was more than willing to out-Hoover Herbert Hoover. It’s a long two years of inertia, the Congress making themselves a bigger laughing-stock than the president. All we can really do, in terms of electoral politics, is tend to your various local and state pictures and elect a better-than above average president. Reid and Pelosi are largely useless without one.