Win, Win, Lose, Lose

by digby

I get accused of being unnecessarily gloomy, but I’m positively giddy with optimism compared to K-Drum:

John McCain has obviously decided that he can’t win a straight-up fight, so he’s decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?

If McCain wins, he’ll face a Democratic congress that’s beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won’t even return McCain’s phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It’ll be four years of all-out war.

And what if Obama wins? The last time a Democrat won after a resurgence of the culture war right, we got eight years of madness, climaxing in an impeachment spectacle unlike anything we’d seen in a century. If it happens again, with the lunatic brigade newly empowered and shrieking for blood, Obama will be another Clinton and we’ll be in for another eight years of near psychotic dementia.

Am I exaggerating? Sure. Am I exaggerating a lot? I don’t think so. McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course of his administration that we don’t have a lot of room for error left if we want to avoid losing the war on terror for good and turning America into a banana republic while we’re at it. We need to start turning the ship around now.

I think he’s probably right. However, I actually don’t think it’s because of McCain’s choice to wage a scorched earth presidential campaign. It’s because Republicans believe in scorched earth politics.

Until the modern conservative movement of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan has run its course, there will be no “post partisanship.” This kind of politics defines them. Even if Obama were comfortably ahead and the Republicans had no chance they would wage this kind of campaign and unless they lose by a substantial margin to someone who has completely repudiated their program, they will always fight a Democratic president with psychotic dementia. For them, the action is the juice. Conservatism itself has to be soundly defeated, not accommodated.

I’m not gloomy about that because I accept it as a necessary fight. I’m pretty sure that people are pretty tired of stale Reagonomics, preening chauvanism and culture wars, but they don’t have a clear picture of the alternative. I believe that if Democrats would make the arguments and take the battle to the Republicans, they might be able to break this deadlock. Call me a glass half broken kind of person.

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