Far From Brooklyn

There are a thousand and one reasons the Democrats lost control of the Senate, but the main one is this: They didn’t stand for a goddam thing.

The GOP ran on a single talking point – “We’ll stop Obama” – whereas the Dems couldn’t even work up the guts to admit they voted for the man.  

What a bunch of empty suits, lacking vision, courage, values, goals – indeed, lacking any sort of apparent dream other than that of being elected to public office.

It’s become a commonplace to criticize President Obama for failing to lead.  I call bullshit on that.  What happened is that his party has failed to follow.

How hard is it to campaign alongside a man who ended two wars and staved off a second Great Depression?   How hard is it to remind the electorate of what life was like in 2008, when there was a very real possibility of mass failure of our bank system, the collapse of much of our mutual fund infrastructure, and erasure of wealth on a scale never before seen in history?

But the 2014 Democratic candidates, this cluster of zymotic panderers, no, they didn’t even dare to share a podium with the man, let alone attempt to argue for anything that’s happened in the past six years.

So they deserved to lose.  They deserved to have the Senate wrested from them.  They deserved the shame of listening to the victorious GOP talk magnanimously about the need for bipartisanship.

Which in this case is shorthand for, “Bend over.”

And really, that’s the richest part of this GOP victory – this idea that the GOP-led Senate will “do something.”  This, from a party whose sole idea, for 30 years, has been: Government Is Bad.

But at least they had that idea.  At least they had something.  

The Dems? They had nothing.  They had no ideas.  They had nothing they wanted to talk about.

Because Obama.  

Healthcare plan? No, no way, don’t want to talk about that. Because website.

The end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Rather not talk about that stuff. Because ISIS. Because Putin.

The economy? Well, shouldn’t say much about that. Because Bernanke.  Because Yellen.  Because GM. Because socialism.

Because reality, motherfuckers!  The world is complicated and perfect solutions don’t exist, except in abstract terms like, “Government Is Bad.”

I consider myself a fairly far left-leaning liberal but even I agree: Yes, government pretty much is bad.  It’s inefficient.  It’s unresponsive.  It tends to grow and grow and grow, and the growth leads to abuses like the NSA, and militarized police forces, and excessive attempts to throttle the free press, and overuse of new military technology, like drones. 

But there are some things that don’t happen in the free market.  Common good stuff.  That includes armies but it also includes protections for the poor, the weak, and the unlucky.  It means public education and smooth roads and investment in solar power and maybe even shoring up a bank or an automaker once in a while. That’s what government is good for.

Shouldn’t the Democrats be able to articulate that argument?  It can’t just be Obama on the stump – and yes, he could have done more, yes, it would have been great if he were a happy talker, a flim-flam man, like Clinton or Reagan or FDR, but he wasn’t, and his platform pitches were dry and professorial (not unlike his campaign presence back in the Democratic primaries in 2008, I would add) – it has to be the Senate and House candidates too.  They have to be out there fighting the good fight.

Instead, they denied their own heritage.  They denied their own blood.  They denied their leader who they once championed and who, being human, had not granted their every wish.

So don’t cry for the Dems.  They don’t deserve your tears. Suck-ass losers.

Photo Credit: Anthony Quintano, via Wikimedia Commons