An old political mentor of mine once told me, \u201cYou don\u2019t win a popularity contest pointing out how ugly your friends are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, sifting through the ashes of one of the dumbest and most counter-intuitive midterm campaigns in recent memory, the Democratic Party would do well to consider just that. It\u2019d be a good start considering the ass-kicking that was doled out last night.<\/p>\n
This morning, gripped by the type of political hangover that Teddy Kennedy would appreciate, we\u2019re looking at a political landscape that has become more gridlocked, dysfunctional, and, in a word, dumber. Forget any actual legislative agenda for the last two years of Barack Obama\u2019s lame duck presidency. Forget any bills being passed that don\u2019t involve A) repealing the Affordable Care Act, B) investigating the already-investigated-ad-nauseum attacks on the American embassy in Benghazi, or C) further deregulating the financial and gun-control systems that have been choked and starved beyond anything resembling real and binding control.<\/p>\n
And, for that matter, forget this putrid system of government improving in any foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
How could this have happened? With Obama\u2019s reelection and the Democratic victories across the board in 2012, pundits were preparing the GOP\u2019s obituary in spades just two short years ago. It was well understood in political circles that the Republicans had misplayed a terrible hand: the demonification of women and minorities of every stripe and creed. It was the type of bungled and ugly message that only Joseph McCarthy and that old bigot George Wallace could\u2019ve appreciated in terms of scope and rhetoric. For everyone else \u2013 every other conscientious citizen \u2013 it left them feeling dirty.<\/p>\n
So, what was behind this reemergence of the Right as political majority?<\/p>\n
Was it the work of a mastermind like Karl Rove?<\/p>\n
A message that resonated with voters thirsty for change?<\/p>\n
An organic groundswell that couldn\u2019t, and wouldn\u2019t, be stopped?<\/p>\n
When future historians perform the autopsy they\u2019ll find this midterm devoid of any of those explanations, a rarity in these cycles as usually there is a central issue or movement that leads to such an overwhelming sea change. What they\u2019ll discover instead is a simple and seemingly inexplicable explanation: these Democrats were simply afraid to run.<\/p>\n
For even the most casual of politicos it probably comes as little surprise that the Dems lacked the temerity and backbone to run as themselves. It\u2019s been a long held tradition that liberals are terrified to speak openly about their positions, at least to the voters, and that they prefer to whisper their true intentions among themselves at lectures and cocktail hours, passing between each other secret handshakes that confer preferences for a healthy social safety net and well-funded education.<\/p>\n
Thus, it stands to reason that if you want to beat a Democrat, if you want to truly run them into the ground, there\u2019s only one play needed deployed by a Republican hopeful: call them a Democrat early and often.<\/p>\n
Do that and watch them scatter like cockroaches on a wall.<\/p>\n
These Democrats, if you can even call them that, were too terrified of their own shadows to run on any platform that didn\u2019t specifically have a picture of their own president, the defacto leader of their party, with a comically large strike across his face. Look around your state, at your candidates, and see what I mean.<\/p>\n
In Georgia we had one of the most comically inept slate of Democrats in the country. Michelle Nunn, senate hopeful and pulseless corpse, couldn\u2019t run away from Obama and toward George H.W. Bush fast enough, a tactic that led to H.W. firing off press release after press release screaming that he didn\u2019t endorse her. And what did she do? She. Kept. On. Doing. It.<\/p>\n