Guardian: Welcome to the Great Liberal Hangover of 2014

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On Tuesday night, a lot of Republican-ish candidates got crushed by the official Republican candidates, confirming yet again that a gutless, wincing version of one kind of politics always loses to the robust one. Nobody first starts drinking Diet Coke because they think it tastes better, and the only people who keep drinking it are the ones who’ve drunk nothing else for so long that actual flavor seems weird. Why vote for someone hesitantly and semi-apologetically tacking toward the right when you can just vote for someone who goes balls-to-the-wall rightward and is damn proud of it? At least that person gives off the sense of actually enjoying his own beliefs.

If you’d been following the Twitter feeds of unabashed progressives like Zaid Jilani for the last few months, you could watch the gradual unraveling of optimism give way to negativity over, say, the Senate race in Georgia. On Tuesday, Jilani finally unloaded his disgust for the Michelle Nunn campaign. What populist message did she have to offer? Pro-trade agreements that outsource jobs. Pro-Social Security cutting “grand bargain” budget solutions. A pro-business attitude toward regulation that makes a screwheaded case for government by arguing that it “needs to get out of the way”.

In Kentucky, you had Alison Lundergan Grimes, who refused to admit that she voted for the leader of her own party when it was farcical even to suggest she might not have. Which was a loser move on two levels. One, God knows how you ask an electorate to place its trust in you when you lie that badly and meaninglessly. Two, how do you ask voters to adopt your principles when you hold them at arm’s length from your body with a clothespin on your nose?

Of course, whether the Democratic Party stands for anything is a perfectly valid question at this point. On a macro level, a party that is already thoroughly militarized and corporatized – and largely indifferent to Main Street whenever it poses a conflict with Wall Street – offers little alternative to the other party that already celebrates that. But on a specific level, things look just as bad.

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As is the case with the War on Women, Democrats enjoy a solid bloc of minority voters because the GOP can’t stop being ludicrously racist. When they convincingly sound like they consider minorities to be people – hello, Mr George W Bush – they fare better. Minority and women’s votes aren’t a Democratic entitlement. Just like labor, and LGBT and teachers’ votes, you don’t win them just for showing up and then get to spend four years ignoring them and expect your “base” to appear at the bottom of your pocket the next time you need some change for the election machine.

Just look back down to Georgia. It’s white population has shrunk to 52%, and it has 900,000 unregistered minority voters. Just think back to how many of those Michelle Nunn might have won if she’d actually run as a Democrat.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/05/liberal-hangover-2014-democrats?CMP=share_btn_fb