Coming to terms with defeat, or not

Some people say that there's a woman to blame
but I know: it's my own damn fault

Those who have just been shellacked in an election would do well to listen to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritville a few times, while searching for their lost shaker of salt. When Republicans get shellacked they inevitably whine about the biased press. That's a little bit harder now that Fox News dominates Cable, but when did reason ever persuade the wounded heart?

In 2006 and 2008 the Republicans got shellacked nationally. It didn't happen because the other side cheated or because the press was biased or because the moon was in Virgo. They got beat because they lost the confidence of the electorate. In a Republic that's getting beat fair and square.

In South Dakota this year the Democrats got shellacked from top to bottom. My esteemed Keloland Colleague and NSU Colleague Emeritus, David Newquist, is ready with excuses. He blames the "the socio-economic factors affecting the Democratic Party in South Dakota." He doesn't spell out those factors, but it doesn't much matter. In politics, as in golf, you have to play the ball where it lies.

I think it is a scandal that the Democrats did not run a candidate against John Thune. David again is ready with excuses. He seems to think that Senator Thune will do such terrible things to an opponent that no human being could dare to challenge him. I think that that is utter nonsense. Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky and Daniel Webster in Florida bore up under much worse abuse than any candidate has ever dished out in South Dakota. Instead of turning pale and withdrawing, they fought and won. I cannot believe that Democrats in South Dakota are such cowards as David imagines them to be. I think that the uncontested Senate race, the first in the state's history, was a deliberate strategy.

Nationally, Democrats are looking for their own excuses. One of the most common ones is that President Obama let his foes define him. Here is E.J. Dionne:

President Obama allowed Republicans to define the terms of the nation's political argument for the past two years and permitted them to draw battle lines the way they wanted. Neither he nor his party can let that happen again.

That's just another version of the standard excuse used by both sides after bad news: the voters didn't reject us or our policies! We just didn't explain ourselves properly.

Nonsense on stilts. When President Obama put forth health care reform as his highest priority (among his other highest priorities), he very clearly defined the terms of the argument. Health care reform would "bend the cost curve downward," i.e, health care reform would save the nation money spent on medicine. The problem was that no one believed it because it obviously wasn't true. Even if you believe the CBO estimates, the best you are going to get out of the health care bill is a wash. But the CBO estimates always include caveats indicating that the savings in the bill depend on Congress doing things that it has always promised to do but has never actually managed to do.

Here's why the Democrats took a bath in this election: First, the economy is in dreadful shape. The President today praised the unexpected growth in private sector jobs. But that growth is not enough to make up for population growth, let alone enough to depress the unemployment numbers. Voters are hurting.

But there are two kinds of pain. One is the kind you have when you break your ankle. It really smarts, but you aren't too worried because you figure you are going to get better soon enough. The other is the kind of pain that makes you think that something much worse is happening, something that you won't get over. Pain plus existential fear is a lot worse than just pain.

The trillion dollars a year deficits we are running really worry a lot of us. They make us wonder whether the economic pain we are suffering isn't more like the persistent cough or the ache in the gut that won't go away. Maybe the whole system is sick. Does the President have any plan to put us back on the road to fiscal health? That is one thing that he didn't define very well.

The deficits are the second thing that weighed down the Democrats. The third thing was the health care bill. As the economy stalled and the deficits mounted, the Democrats spent all their energies not on the present crisis but on the thing that they have wanted for decades. The people didn't want it. The voters expressed their dismay not only in opinion polls but in actual elections, but the Democrats in Congress pushed ahead anyway. That was the third thing.

The economy, the deficits, and the health care bill, in that order, did the Democrats in. They ought to come to terms with that. It might not get better.

Comments

[Sam Hurst]

I do not know why the Democratic Party ran no one against John Thune. But if it was a conscious decision, I think it was brilliant...perhaps the only smart thing Democrats did this election. My sense of political tactics was shaped by Sun Tzu's Art of War, and I am not much of a fan of sheep-to-slaughter campaigns. I fail to see the nobility in fighting an expensive, brutal, losing battle in order to tell the folks back home that you died with your boots on and your six gun blazing. The most painful question facing Democrats in South Dakota is not that they are unable to field a candidate against Thune, or elect anyone to the state legislature. The most painful question is why they will now fold up their campaign offices, cancel the town halls, and go to sleep for two years. Now is the time to organize, not a year and eight months from now. If Dems want to field viable candidates against Thune or anyone else, they need to exist between elections, not just down the tragic stretch.

[William]

Perhaps the Democrats can use the next 2 years to determine exactly what they are and what they stand for. At present, they appear to be for an overwhelming large central government, unrestrained spending and a diverse collection of special interests with little in common with each other except for government dispersed favors.

[Donald Pay]

Perhaps no one could be convinced to run against Thune. SD Democrats are too tentative in putting themseves forward. Pressler spent an extra term in office because Tim Johnson waited to run against him for six years. Among other things had Tim run and won six years earlier, we might not have had to deal with FOX News. There wouldn't have been a Pressler in office to be bought off by Murdoch.

I can't figure out why SHS didn't have the guts to run against Thune. She might have lost? So, instead, she loses to Palin-lite with the Bill Janklow speeding record. Probably a good idea to send Noem to Washington, where she'll be off South Dakota's highways.

Anyway, SHS isn't the type of candidate that might have a chance against Thune. You need a Wellstone-type, a grappler, rather than a hoopster, someone from the SD grassroots who will would call attention to Thune as a darling of Washington elites and the C-Street cabal.

People who were dumb enough to vote against Democrats because they couldn't pull the country out of Bush's Great Recession in two years pretty much deserve what they are gonna get from Republicans.

[Stace Nelson]

Is it irony or hypocrisy when the bitter left derides President Bush for supposedly being a bumbling inept leader and then claims he is to blame for the legislation rammed through by a Democratic controlled Congress for the last two years of his term?

Again the excuses... As long as the lesson of 2010 has not been learned, the American people will have more to say in 2012...

[Lynn]

A main reason that SHS lost was that she blew us off during the health care concerns last summer. She, contrary to what she claims with her two meetings in the state BEFORE the people were concerned about health care, did not meet with people in town halls, in discussions, in whatever when they wanted her ear regarding their health care bill concerns. She didn't want to listen to us, she didn't even want to talk with us this year after debates, basically she just wanted us to leave her alone so she could do what was "best for SD." Well, now we have done that. We voted for who was "best for SD" and that is Kristi Noem and her beliefs. A good lesson for all congress people to remember! Doing what is "best for SD" is much more than a line; it is listening, caring, having an office staff that will answer questions and concerns, stating positions instead of holding a finger to the wind.

[Pierre A Tedd]

Jimmy Buffet's MargaRETville ???? It's Buffett with two T's and MargaRITAville. Looks like someone's been drinking too much tequila. Ay chihuahua... Journalism is dead.

[KB]

Thankss Ted