Democratic "Tea Party"

I have written before about my feelings of the recent trend in politics, in which the discussion in liberal circles is not to talk about what our side should be doing or what policies we should embrace, but rather to dance around with glee over the seeming incompetence of the other side and anticipate a victory at the polls by default. I don’t find such a victory anything to celebrate, any more than I would celebrate receiving a trophy for a race merely because no one else showed up.

I read one post where the writer said that he is enjoying the election, and his next words were about how even Republicans are stepping away from Romney because he is such a terrible candidate. He spoke of Tim Pawlenty leaving the Romney campaign for a lobbying job. He went on to admire how Obama is able to capitalize on Romney's mistakes with counter punches. Every bit of the enjoyment he described had to do with the ineptitude of the other side, and he said nothing about our side winning on its own merits.

When I was first in the sales department my boss drummed into me that I should never, even in my own mind, disparage my competition. "It is they," he would say, "who challenge us to produce excellence. If they were mediocre then we could sell garbage. Good competition is our biggest asset." His point was that when I thought poorly of my competition I did not do my best work.

What I see too much of is Democrats enjoying the lead not in terms of our side having a winning message, but rather in terms of the incompetence of the opponent. We are not enjoying our good candidate so much as we are gloating over the missteps of the other one. It weakens our message because the more the other side screws up, the less of a real message is required from our side. It is, in fact, producing a very uninspiring Democratic message, and it tastes bad to me.

Obama at one time knew this principle. When McCain "suspended his campaign to support passage of TARP" there was considerable media talk about the stupidity of that. Did Obama pounce on that and join the mocking of McCain for his misstep? He did not. He stayed with his message of hope and change. In this campaign he pounces of every slip of Romney's tongue, and his supporters do likewise. This is, in fact, the nature of the campaign, and it is the sum of the discussion in liberal discussion.

I joined in the discussion on that post, stressing that I was not a Romney fan and that, while I would take such a victory, it is not the kind of thing that I can enjoy, even when my side is winning. I'll take it, but there is no nobility in it, and no joy.

I was met with open hostility told first that it sounded like I was engaged in “sour grapes” and then that I was a “Democrat who hates Democrats” and that I was “looking for any excuse to find fault with his fellow libruls.”

The liberal side has its own “Tea Party.” They haven’t formed a formal club or given themselves a name, but it’s a large group and for them discussion consists of “you agreeing with what I say or me screaming at you.”

They’re not very smart, either. One of the rebutters said that “the only important thing is to keep Romney out of the White House and how we do that doesn’t matter.” I rejoined that, since we were rejecting such things as principle and honor, we should simply shoot Romney in the head. He replied that “I'm surprised you couldn't find something better than an extreme exaggeration/extrapolation as a basis for this latest slam.” Actually, the “extreme exaggeration” was a deliberate selection to illustrate the absurdity of his claim that “how we do that doesn’t matter” and, of course, he missed the point.