In July, I gave the Democratic Party the campaign plan they needed to stave off a complete hosing in the election. Obviously, they chose a different path. Here are various lines from that column (July 17):
“In ’09, things weren’t real good. Unemployment was in the 9s. The Dow had been gutted, falling to below 7,000, thereby chopping many middle-class 401k and retirement accounts in half. The real estate market was hemorrhaging. We were still fighting a crummy war in Iraq, and things weren’t getting any better in Afghanistan. It was time to suck it up and get back on track.
“Cut to now, July ’14. Latest unemployment number is 6.1 percent. … The Dow has rebounded heroically, now at about 17,000. … This is a major positive, the hugeness of which simply can’t be overestimated or overvalued or overappreciated. One crummy crapfest of a war is over, and by the end of this year, the other will be finished, too. Interest rates remain microscopic. Amazingly enough, so is inflation. Democrats—would you please take the previous two paragraphs and begin pounding that stuff into the ever-thickening skulls of Americans for the next four months?”
The Dems, as you now know, avoided this advice the same way the Koch Brothers avoid reggae albums. Honestly, it ain’t rocket surgery to figure that, during your campaign to gain office, you go ahead and dare to tout the positive accomplishments of your party. Jon Stewart, Dave Letterman, and many others brilliantly lampooned this “We’re embarassed by Obama” stance, hilariously pointing out its disastrous shortcomings in the days after Election Day.
Democratic voters who didn’t show up at the polls also deserve a fair chunk of blame for Democalypse ’14. This jive about how there were no “hot button issues” to get minority and student and indifferent white voters out to the polls could not be more impotent, lame and pitiful. What the hell do you mean, you need a “hot issue” to drag your ass to the goddamn poll for all of what … six minutes? Isn’t that about what it takes these days to vote? Six minutes? Hell, it takes longer to walk into the polling place than it does to actually vote.
So when registered Dems decline to vote because they “can’t be bothered” since it’s an “off year” and there are no “hot issues” like the legalization of heroin or nationalized phone sex or whatever, well, they’re forgetting that they always have a very important job to do in every election and that’s to keep the goddamn Republicans out of the goddamn government. Yes, the current Dems are stumps, lumps and humps, but they do have one attribute—they’re not Republicans! Therefore, they need to be fervently supported. This blasé and casual “I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-midterm-voting” attitude is best critiqued by the late Lyndon Johnson, who would have said the day after the election, “Just what exactly were you fuckin’ idiots fuckin’ thinkin’?”