Condescending Dems still don't get it

November 7, 2004

BY MARK STEYN

Mustn't gloat, mustn't gloat. Instead, we must try and look sober and

Condescending Dems still don't get it
November 7, 2004
BY MARK STEYN

Mustn't gloat, mustn't gloat. Instead, we must try and look sober and
reflective and then step smartly to the side and let the Democrats tear
themselves apart.

I'm reluctant to intrude on family grief, especially as the Dems are doing such
a sterling job all by themselves. But, when big shot Democrats look at
Tuesday's results and instantly announce the reason they flopped out was
because . . .

Whoa, hang on a minute, my apologies. There's been a clerical error here: That
was my post-election column from 2002. My post-election column from 2004 goes
like . . . well, actually, it goes pretty much the same. It'd be easier just to
take the second week in November off every two years and let my editors run the
timeless classic whither-the-Democrats? column. All that changes is the local
color. In 2002, I was very taken by the band at Missouri Democratic
headquarters attempting to rouse the despondent faithful with Steve Allen's
peppy anthem, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big,'' and noted that the
party faced the opposite problem: This could be the end of something small.

As they've done for a decade now, the Democrat bigwigs worried about it for a
couple of weeks and then rationalized it away: In 2000 they lost because Bush
stole the "election"; in 2002 they lost because of that "vicious" attack ad on
Max Cleland. The official consolation for this year's biennial bust hasn't yet
been decided on, but Tom Daschle's election-eve lawsuit alone offers several
attractive runners, including the complaint that Democrats were intimidated by
Republicans ''rolling their eyes.'' Could be a lot more of that if this keeps
up.

So it seems likely -- just to get my 2006 post-election column out of the way
here -- that in a couple years' time the Democrats will have run on the same
thin gruel as usual and be mourning the loss of another two or three Senate
seats. You want names and states? Well, how about West Virginia? Will the
88-year old Robert C. Byrd be on the ballot in 2006? And, if he's not, what are
the Dems' chances of stopping West Virginia's transformation to permanent "red
state" status?

It also seems likely -- just to get my 2012 post-election column out of the way
here -- that in eight years' time the Dems will have run on the same thin gruel
as usual and, thanks to the 2010 census and the ongoing shift of population to
the South and West, lost another five House seats and discovered that the "blue
states" are worth even less in the Electoral College -- though in fairness
their only available presidential candidate, the young dynamic Southerner
94-year-old Robert C. Byrd, managed to hold all but three of Kerry's states.

I had a bet with myself this week: How soon after election night would it be
before the Bush-the-chimp-faced-moron stuff started up again? 48 hours? A week?
I was wrong. Bush Derangement Syndrome is moving to a whole new level. On the
morning of Nov. 2, the condescending left were convinced that Bush was an
idiot. By the evening of Nov. 2, they were convinced that the electorate was.
Or as London's Daily Mirror put it in its front page: "How Can 59,054,087
People Be So DUMB?"

Well, they're British lefties: They can do without Americans. Whether an
American political party can do without Americans is more doubtful.
Nonetheless, MSNBC.com's Eric Alterman was mirroring the Mirror's sentiments:
"Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care
about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' say or believe about
anything." Over at Slate, Jane Smiley's analysis was headlined, "The
Unteachable Ignorance Of The Red States.'' If you don't want to bother plowing
your way through Alterman and Smiley, a placard prominently displayed by a
fetching young lad at the post-election anti-Bush rally in San Francisco cut to
the chase: "F--- MIDDLE AMERICA."

Almost right, man. It would be more accurate to say that "MIDDLE AMERICA" has
"F---ed" you, and it will continue to do so every two years as long as
Democrats insist that anyone who disagrees with them is, ipso facto, a
simpleton -- or "Neanderthal," as Teresa Heinz Kerry described those
unimpressed by her husband's foreign policy. In my time, I've known dukes,
marquesses, earls, viscounts and other members of Britain's House of Lords and
none of them had the contempt for the masses one routinely hears from America's
coastal elites. And, in fairness to those ermined aristocrats, they could
afford Dem-style contempt: A seat in the House of Lords is for life; a Senate
seat in South Dakota isn't.

More to the point, nobody who campaigns with Ben Affleck at his side has the
right to call anybody an idiot. H. L. Mencken said that no one ever lost money
underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Well, George Soros,
Barbra Streisand and a lot of their friends just did: The Kerry campaign and
its supporters -- MoveOn.org, Rock The Vote, etc. -- were awash in bazillions
of dollars, and what have they got to show for it? In this election, the plebs
were more mature than the elites: They understood that war is never cost-free
and that you don't run away because of a couple of setbacks; they did not
accept that one jailhouse scandal should determine America's national security
interest; they rejected the childish caricature of their president and paranoid
ravings about Halliburton; they declined to have their vote rocked by Bruce
Springsteen or any other pop culture poser.

All the above is unworthy of a serious political party. As for this exit-poll
data that everyone's all excited about, what does it mean when 22 percent of
the electorate say their main concern was "moral issues"? Gay marriage?
Abortion? Or is it something broader? For many of us, the war is also a moral
issue, and the Democrats are on the wrong side of it, standing not with the
women voting proudly in Afghanistan's first election but with the amoral and
corrupt U.N., the amoral and cynical Jacques Chirac, the amoral and revolting
head-hackers whom Democratic Convention guest of honor Michael Moore described
as Iraq's ''minutemen.''

At some point in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, your typical media liberal
would feign evenhandedness and bemoan the way the choice has come down to "two
weak candidates.''

But, in that case, how come the right's weak candidates are the ones that win?
Because a weak candidate pushing strong ideas is better than a weak candidate
who's had no ideas since Roe vs. Wade.