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The self-absorption of America's ruling class

By Glenn Greenwald

...

People aren't running around thinking: who is a liberal and who is a conservative? They're running around thinking: we have no jobs and no economic security, and thus will punish those in power. As I made explicitly clear in my original post about (Lawrence) O'Donnell my objection to his comments was not that the massive loss of Blue Dogs proves that conservative Democrats can't win. Democrats didn't lose because they're "too conservative" any more than because they are "too liberal." My objection was that he was attempting to derive shallow meaning from the loss of specific liberal candidates -- see, voters don't like liberals! -- when that plainly was not what motivated voters; merely to negate his reasoning, I pointed out that if one did want to use O'Donnell's fundamentally flawed method (i.e., look at which candidates lost and that's how you know which ideology voters rejected), then one could far more easily make the case that they were rejecting conservative Democrats, since Blue Dogs are who bore the brunt of the bloodbath.

People are suffering economically and Democrats have done little about that. Beyond that, they failed to inspire their own voters to go to the polls. Therefore, they lost. By basing their power in Congress on Blue Dog dependence -- rather than advocating for the views of their own supporters and implementing those policies -- they failed, and failed resoundingly. Building their party around a large number of muddled, GOP-replicating corporatists not only creates a tepid and failed political image, but far worse, it prevents actual policies from being implemented that benefit large number of ordinary Americans. Democrats repeatedly refrained from advocating for such policies in deference to their Blue Dogs, failed to do much to alleviate the economic suffering of ordinary Americans, and thus got crushed. Anyone who thinks that Democrats lost because they were "too liberal" -- rather than because Americans are suffering so much economically -- is wildly out of touch, i.e., is a multi-millionaire cable TV personality who has spent decades wallowing in trite D.C. chatter.

The Republicans have long lived by what they call "The Buckley Rule": always support the furthest Right candidate who can plausibly win. This year, knowing that it would be a wave election, one that would sweep in huge numbers of Republicans in districts where they ordinarily couldn't get elected, they changed that to: support the furthest Right candidate, period. That's because they believe conservatism will work and want to advocate for it. Democrats don't do that. The DCCC constantly works to prop up the most "centrist" or conservative candidates -- i.e., corporatists -- on the ground that it's always better, more politically astute, to move to the Right. Even in the pro-Democratic wave years of 2006 and 2008, the Democratic Party blocked actual progressives and ensured that Blue Dogs were nominated, even though the anti-GOP sentiment was so strong that any Democrat, including progressives, could have won even in red districts (as Alan Grayson proved).

With that strategy, the Democratic Party now reaps what it has sown. Its message and identity are profoundly muddled, incoherent, unclear, uninspiring, and self-negating. Worse, its policies are mishmashes of inept half-measures that, with a handful of exceptions, produce little good for anyone (other than Wall Street, the Pentagon and other corporate interests). They are perceived as -- and are -- beholden to Wall Street, special interests, and the corporations they vowed to confront. They are without any ability to confront the massive unemployment crisis and financial decline the country faces. And as a result of all of that, they lay in shambles. Anyone who can survey all of that and cheer for the strategy which Democrats have been pursuing -- let's build our majorities by relying on GOP-replicating corporatist Blue Dogs -- or who thinks that this election loss happened because "Democrats are too liberal," resides in a world that has very little to do with reality. And that's true no matter how many times they repeat the simplistic snippets of exit polls to which they've obsessively attached themselves.

Appaholic wrote:Because more people are paying attention....

This is the third electionin a row that incumbants have been turned out on their ear (relative to elections past). Hopefully, the Repukes will take heed this time....

Skjellyfetti wrote:Because there was an anti-incumbent mentality in the voters... and Democrats had more incumbents.

CitadelGrad wrote:

Skjellyfetti wrote:Because there was an anti-incumbent mentality in the voters... and Democrats had more incumbents.

How many GOP incumbents lost?

Cap'n Cat wrote:

CitadelGrad wrote:
How many GOP incumbents lost?

Far fewer than deserved.

Cap'n Cat wrote:That's my disappointment with the President - he doesn't fight for what he believes in.

89Hen wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:That's my disappointment with the President - he doesn't fight for what he believes in.

Change you can believe in.

Cap'n Cat wrote:The complete opposite of idiots like you and others who defend that numbskull Bush to this very day.

Believe that.

Ivytalk wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:

Far fewer than deserved.

At one point, only 3 seats had shifted from GOP hands to Dem hands, including the DE seat vacated by Mike Castle's retirement. There may be a few more, given the handful of seats that haven't been called.

Both Blue Dogs and liberal Dems lost last week. The Alan Grayson loss was the best result of the night, in my view!

89Hen wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:The complete opposite of idiots like you and others who defend that numbskull Bush to this very day.

Believe that.

Good luck finding that.

Cap'n Cat wrote:I have people who do that. You're the board's 2nd largest Conk apologist.

89Hen wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:I have people who do that. You're the board's 2nd largest Conk apologist.

Top 5 maybe.

Baldy wrote:Lawrence "I'm a Socialist" O'Donnell and Glen Greenwald.
Two peas in a pod having a catfight and getting it totally wrong...priceless.

Skjellyfetti wrote:Because there was an anti-incumbent mentality in the voters... and Democrats had more incumbents.

Skjellyfetti wrote:Because there was an anti-incumbent mentality in the voters... and Democrats had more incumbents.

Skjellyfetti wrote:

Democrats:
43% favorable
52% unfavorable

Republicans:
42% favorable
53% unfavorable

CitadelGrad wrote:It appears that the sentiment was against incumbent Democrats who didn't represent gerrymandered safe districts.