The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Hillary, Democrats and the Blame Game

Posted on | April 21, 2018 | 1 Comment

November 8, 2016: The best night in American history.

Haunted by the ghost of her Nixonian paranoia:

[Campaign manager Robbie] Mook eventually delivers the news of impending defeat to Clinton. “I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,” she answers. “They were never going to let me be president.”

Winners win and losers make excuses. Hillary Clinton ran for president twice and lost both times. In 2008, she lost the Democrat nomination to Barack Obama. Eight years later, she won the nomination (because the fix was in at the DNC) but lost the general election to Donald Trump.

Never in my memory have Democrats accepted defeat sensibly. Keep in mind that (a) I’m nearly 60, and (b) I used to be a Democrat myself. After Jimmy Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) created a narrative that Reagan’s success represented the Triumph of Fear, Hate and Corporate Greed. Because they were unwilling to admit the truth — i.e., liberalism doesn’t work — Democrats convinced themselves that all they needed to do was to put the same old crap into a more appealing package. They believed they had a marketing problem, rather than a policy. This misguided belief led Democrats into the wilderness. In 1984, Reagan was re-elected in a landslide over Walter Mondale. In 1988, Democrats nominated Mike Dukakis, who lost in another landslide to George W. Bush. The errors of Bushism (and the third-party populist challenge of Ross Perot) helped Democrat Bill Clinton win in 1992 with 43% of the vote. Imagining that Clinton’s election heralded the arrival of a New Camelot, Democrats then proceeded to enact a bunch of left-wing policies that were hugely unpopular, resulting in the 1994 “Republican Revolution” when the GOP took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

A “temper tantrum” — that’s how ABC News anchor Peter Jennings dismissed the Republican landslide in 1994, comparing the American electorate to an angry 2-year-old. The widespread belief among the media elite that Democrats are morally superior to Republicans, so that it is always wrong when Republicans win elections, has the effect of insulating Democrats from confronting the true causes of their own failures. If you are unable to admit error, to confess that the voters are right and you are wrong — that you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting — you probably need to stay away from politics.

Ed Driscoll called attention Friday to a 2006 Bill Clinton quote:

There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies — and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new-media excesses.
“We’re all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the ’60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate,” [Bill] Clinton said. “Those of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations.”

“Almost”? Do you even understand what you’re saying? The invincible hubris of liberals — their belief that they are “on the right side of history,” and that opposition to their policy agenda is morally wrong — is sufficient reason for any American to become a diehard Republican, if only for the pleasure of destroying the fond hopes of such fools.

 

Why did Donald Trump get elected? Democrats are still making excuses, adding “Russian collusion” to the Fear, Hate and Corporate Greed narrative by which they previously explained GOP victories. The “collusion” narrative is imploding (along with the credibility of Comey and Mueller), and the reality of Trump’s success — the booming economy, the defeat of ISIS, etc. — is undermining the confidence of Democrats that they can win a congressional majority in November.

What happened in 2016 was a revolution of sorts. Donald Trump’s candidacy attracted voters to the GOP primary who had previously been ignored or taken for granted by the Republican leadership. Some of them had been Tea Party voters in 2010, some of them had been Ron Paul voters, and others were attracted by what Steve Bannon called Trump’s “economic nationalism.” All of them, however, were sick and tired of the Play Nice and Lose approach to politics embodied by Mitt Romney. To a certain kind of grassroots American voter, the typical attitude of Republican politicians — that they must always be polite and avoid saying mean things about Democrats, so as to maintain a spirit of bipartisan civility — looks a lot like unmanly cowardice. What many grassroots Americans admire most in a leader is toughness, manifested as a willingness to speak blunt words: “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It must be recalled that many of Ronald Reagan’s advisers didn’t want him to say those undiplomatic words, and to this day the Republican Party struggles to overcome the influence of those within the party who consider “respectability” to be the correct standard of political discourse. It is better to lose an election in a respectable manner than to win rudely, according to the Play Nice and Lose school of GOP strategy, and Donald Trump’s success is an embarrassment to them.

Despite my own populist impulses, I am still uncomfortable with many of President Trump’s personal tendencies, but this is like me saying as an Alabama fan that I don’t like Nick Saban’s coaching style except for the fact that he keeps winning national championships.

Winners don’t need excuses, and if Republicans can somehow overcome their disadvantages in the November midterms — if the GOP maintains its congressional majority despite all the anti-Trump rage on the Left — the Democrats will be hopelessly shattered by their defeat.

Less than seven months remain until the midterms, and the Democrats, who held a 13-point advantage in the so-called “generic” congressional poll as recently as December, now lead by less than six points.

“Conan, what is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!”

Can we make that happen, Mr. President?



 

Category: Bill Clinton, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Media Bias

Comments

One Response to “Hillary, Democrats and the Blame Game”

  1. “Winners win and losers make excuses.” | 357 Magnum
    April 30th, 2018 @ 10:29 am

    […] This is so true. Hillary, Democrats and the Blame Game : The Other McCain […]