Portait Of A Loss-Prone Party

Portrait Of A Loss-Prone Party

Once again this year the dubious political achievement award may well end up going to Democrats and their party for doing what seemed virtually impossible a few months ago—turning a sure victory this coming November into a very possible defeat.

Who would have thought this could happen? Disgust about Iraq, sour job prospects and soaring inflation, a hugely unpopular Republican president, an apparently divided opposition party. How can one lose with these circumstances in place?

Granted, Democratic Party operatives have shown themselves enormously incompetent in times past, and Democratic activists have often exhibited a high-mindedness that bordered on political insanity. But the barriers to defeat this time around appeared too steep for even these worthies to surmount.

Yet, astonishingly, they just may have done so.

The process of turning sure victory into very possible defeat began with the casual, almost flippant elimination of the most qualified and electable candidates. The only reason being, as far as almost anyone who doesn’t attend party conferences regularly could discern, was because they were just a bunch of old white guys.

Thus, the legislatively most experienced and knowledgeable pair, Senators Biden and Dodd, were gratuitously ignored and ungraciously tossed aside, though either of them, without enemies within the party and able to focus on real issues rather than media ephemera, would certainly be 20 points ahead of John McCain in the polls now and likely to increase that margin by election time.

Next to be unceremoniously chucked was Bill Richardson, whose own extensive experience included a number of significant foreign negotiating successes, executive credentials as a governor, and even a minority group pedigree. He was almost instantly downgraded to possible vice-president status because, well, just because. These are Democrats we are talking about, after all. Those not fully immersed in the activist Democratic mindset can’t possibly fathom reasons behind their thinking. I certainly can’t.

And then, of course, there was poor John Edwards, who was articulating a populist rhetoric that was exactly in sync with the times, and could therefore have beaten McCain so handily in November that they might have appeared to be running in different elections. Edwards was a natural for a Democratic Party axing.

Which left primary voters with just two choices, Clinton and Obama, each of whom had enormous potential to put off a great many voting Americans. Questions about experience, past affiliations (marital and church), gender and race, all hung over this duo from the moment it became clear that one would end up the Democrats’ nominee.

Sound politically dumb? Wait. Everything up to this point was just a warm-up act. It was time to violate the first rule of politics: never turn critical parts of your base against one another. Feminists feel very strongly about Clinton. Blacks feel very strongly about Obama. So whichever one topped the Democratic ticket was well positioned to forfeit a big chunk of the party’s base.

There’s an old axiom among poker players. After sitting down at the table, if you haven’t spotted “the fish,” the usual loser, within five minutes, you’re the fish. Look across the political table, my fellow Democrats. Look for the fish, the loser. And if you don’t see one, think about what that might say about yourself.

One personal observation here. I have always voted Democratic. I have looked to this party to represent my own interests because I believed these were in tune with the interests of most other Americans. I think the Democratic Party has failed me badly and served the country badly in recent elections, and it may well have done so again because it focused more on making a point than on winning.

I hope this concern does not turn out to be well founded. I very, very, very much hope this concern does not turn out to be well-founded.