WHEN IS A WIN NOT A WIN? When It's Democratic

[underpants]

Although I disagree with him on Afghanistan this is a great article. I can only post a few parts.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20061115/cm_ucru/whenisawinnotawin

Republicans get political existentialism. When they campaign for office, they promise to be uniters, not dividers. Once they win an election, however, talk of bipartisanship promptly sails out the window. They freeze out the Democrats, elected representatives and constituents alike. Rather than compromise to accommodate the millions who voted against them, Republicans play to their right-wing base: racists and Christianists. The GOP belligerently promotes the most extremist items on its legislative wish list by declaring their victory to be a broad manifesto for radical change and wholesale rejection of the other side. They nominate judges whose conservatism is far to the right of the average Republican. Sure, they want to unite the country--by forcing everyone to go along with what they want.

It helps to enjoy the complicity of the media. Whenever Republicans win an election, mainstream pundits cite the results as prima facie proof that the American people have handed them a mandate to do whatever they want.

When Reagan won in 1980, Newsweek hailed his triumph as "an idea whose time had come," "a rousing vote of confidence in him and his politics," and posited that the results spelled "nearly certain death for liberal causes." When Republicans picked up seats in the 1994 midterm elections, House Speaker Newt Gingrich drew upon media support to stampede Clinton into a year-long "copresidency," resulting in welfare reform and free-trade pacts.

When is a win not a win? When it's Democratic. When a majority of Americans cast votes for the Dems, the results are invariably interpreted by the media as a public desire for moderation and bipartisanship rather than some "radical left-wing agenda." Democrats are told to abandon their campaign promises and ignore their liberal base. The pain and divisiveness of the (Republican-ruled) past must be healed by big-hearted (and soft-headed) Democrats. Democrats don't get mandates.

[patrice]

1. We need strong Liberals who maintain their concrete connections to

everyone else.

This either-or BS is crippling us. Democratic leaders don't think they can say anything intense AND be centrists.

[Lexingtonian]

2. I don't buy that p.o.v.

Republicans do follow a triumphalist strategy. And their first day in office is their best day in office- it's all downhill from there. They leave their constituents behind in focussing their energy on their enemies, then double back for election campaigns.

Democrats start slowly. Their first day in office is rarely a bowl of cherries, and not because of Republicans. But once the consensus crystallizes, momentum forms, and stuff forms that is rarely or never actually torn down. (Which frustrates Republicans to no end.) And their last day in office is ultimately considered a high point relative to the Republican substitute.

Republican victory revolves around the day they take office. Democratic victory is scored during the middle or late phase of the term elected to.


It's a rather sad comment on where we are when we adopt Republican standards to Democrats. The punditry and media do, because they've come to assume (in all aspects of things political) that the measure that Republicans apply to themselves are the proper way to measure Democrats. That's just internalized propaganda and latent conservatism, and amnesia. It's unfortunate, but just about all published assessments at the moment have this fundamental error.