The Liberal Meltdown

After last week’s stinging rejection of Senator Kerry, the Left is in the process of having itself an understandable good cry. Mind you, El Jefe does not mean to gloat: he has too many liberal friends, and he remembers all too well that 70,000 votes the other way in Ohio and it would be El Jefe and his compadres wailing and gnashing their teeth, and howling at the Moon at the injustice of it all. El Jefe understands that, as the editors of the New Republic put it in "51-48" (4 November) "[t]his hurts."

Still, some of this introspection is hard to take. Jane Smiley, in “Why Americans Hate Democrats – A Dialogue” (Slate, 4 November 2004) blames Kerry’s loss on the “[i]gnorance and bloodlust [that] have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.” Smiley’s relatives from Missouri, who voted Republican, are “…not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.”

Keep it up Ms. Smiley, and El Jefe hopes your friends listen and repeat your insults, because the louder and longer you rave, the more certain it is that the Democratic Party won’t be able to elect a dog-catcher between the Chesapeake and the Rio Grande for the next 50 years.

Bob Herbert, in Monday’s New York Times, seems to agree with Ms. Smiley, telling us that “ignorance played at least as big a role in the elections’ outcome as values.” Mr. Herbert laments: “[h]ow do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put. . . part of their brain on hold ? No wonder Bush won.” Democrats need to “shrink the ranks of the clueless” and presumably add to their vote totals by adding “teach-ins to their outreach efforts.”

Hmmmm, perhaps Mr. Herbert thinks that we need to lock up Red State voters in Commie style Thought Reform camps and make them read nothing but, say, Bob Herbert and New York Times columnists ? That would certainly bore your average Red State voter to death, so El Jefe supposes that there may be some method in Mr. Herbert’s madness.

New York Times columnists seem to have had a general meltdown. On 4 November, in her column “The Red Zone,” Maureen Dowd was just beside herself, telling us that President Bush “doesn’t want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.” Ms Dowd further tells us that the Vice-President is a “cuckoo clock” and, as US soldiers and Marines prepared to go into Fallujah, Ms. Dowd denounced the President for “sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy.”

An “immoral position ?” Is Ms. Dowd meaning to say that the rebels killing our soldiers and Marines in Fallujah are occupying a MORAL position ? How can the defenders of a regime which fed dissidents into wood chipping machines; and who film themselves hacking aid workers and civilian contractors to death be anything resembling moral ? What planet is Ms. Dowd on ?

Oh, but Ms. Dowd wasn’t done. On Sunday, in her column “Rove’s Revenge” she told us (presumably, in part because President Bush was going around putting us in “immoral positions") we were entering another “dark age” that “America has always had strains of isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism” (El Jefe thinks Ms. Dowd’s got the waterfront of “isms” pretty well covered). Anyway, Bush and “his crew” don’t want to keep these impulses under control, they “don’t call to our better angels; they summon our nasty devils.”

“Nasty Devils.” That sounds like it’s out of some speech the mullahs in Fallujah would give. Begging your pardon, Ms. Dowd, but a few nasty devils came calling on 9/11, so maybe you’ll forgive us if we aren’t so keen on keeping some of those impulses under control as we might be.

Not to be outdone, that sunny New York Times optimist Paul Krugman exhorted his troops on 5 November to keep the faith, entitling his column “No Surrender.” He then announced that he’d be starting a “long-planned break” next week to “work on an economics textbook” but that he’d be back in January. Yeppers, no surrender guys, and good luck, but see ya later.

No tale of woe would be complete without an inspirational word or fifteen from Barbra Streisand. In a piece on her website entiled “We Must Have Patience,” dated 8 November, quoting Thomas Jefferson, Ms. Streisand tells us that we shall see “…the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve” with just a "little patience.”

Hmmmm, throw in a couple of cat hairs and a clove of garlic. No, wait a minute, El Jefe was confusing this with the end of Sleeping Beauty.

Actually, El Jefe would rather have a margarita anyway.