Creative Scapegoating

by digby

Wow. It’s rare to see conventional wisdom being created right before your eyes, but this Chuck Todd piece is a masterpiece. Cokie just got her cocktail party chatter in nice bullet pointed talking points:

“From 30,000 feet, all of the elements for a big Democratic triumph seem to be in place, but zooming in closer on the nation’s landscape reveals a Democratic Party that just isn’t sure enough of itself to lead.

Consider:

• Ned Lamont’s Democratic primary challenge to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. (You’ve heard of “rose-colored” glasses; well, some in the party view everything through “war-colored” glasses.)

• Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha’s (D) incredibly premature bid for House “majority” leader against longtime party stalwart, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. That introduced a level of cockiness the party didn’t need, particularly after last week’s less-than-stellar performance. Moreover, challenges like this only serve to divide the party. At least Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is showing signs of knowing when a bad idea has been launched by squelching the Murtha campaign.

• The rigorous “party credential” test Reagan Secretary of the Navy James Webb (D) was forced to undergo in Virginia. Republicans throw parades and clear primary fields for Democratic Party interlopers; former Reagan Navy secretaries-turned-Democratic Senate aspirants don’t grow on trees.

• The tepid response Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is receiving among liberal bloggers. Love her or hate her, it’s surprising that liberal activists seem to be turning their back on someone who has carried an enormous amount of water for the party.

• The throwback ticket of statewide nominees California Democrats picked last week. There’s nothing like stunting the growth of the party in the biggest state of the union by nominating throwbacks. The biggest thing the party has to fear is a victory of the Democratic ticket.

• Pelosi’s difficulty in purging her caucus of Rep. William “Freezer Cash” Jefferson, D-La. When are some in the party going to realize that not everything is about race?

Not one of these intraparty disputes is cause for alarm, but collectively, they paint a picture of a party that’s not yet ready to lead.”

I particularly like the phrase “throwback ticket” to describe progressives. And the biggest thing the party has to fear is victory. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

“The Democrats are not ready to lead.” I think we all know why, don’t we? The “war colored glasses” crowd is a terrible influence, don’t you know. We’re so out of control we are supporting a challenger in a Senate primary! Call out the guard!

The DC press corpse has been terribly distressed having to report so negatively about Republicans all the time. After all these years of being mau-maued by the right about being liberal I suspect the current political situation feels like their fur is being rubbed the wrong way. This Chuck Todd narrative gives them a much more comfortable way to report this.

And the best part is that if we win, they can use this narrative to describe us as immature and unready to govern right up through 2008, at which point they can deliver their favorite tough talker, John McCain, as the grown-up Daddy who will save us all.

You see, this “immature” label goes back a long, long way — all the way to the 60’s. It’s the standard baby boomer narrative that gets more absurd by the day as huge numbers of us greying lefties get closer to the grave. But I suspect it won’t die until we do, and maybe not even then. Liberals do tend to be idealists, which jaded insiders always find distasteful (unless it’s Junior Codpiece blathering on incoherently about the “Almighty’s gift of freedom” in which case they applaud wildly.)

Coverage of the Clinton administration from day one was all about the “undisciplined” atmosphere. Indeed, you’ll recall that the very last story of the administration was the RNC manufactured lies about the rampaging Clintonites trashing Air Force One. It was so silly it was hard to believe the press would go for it, but they did. Democrats, you see, are perpetual teen-agers. Cokie and her friends will tell you all about it, even as they gleefully rummage through underwear drawers and babble about haircuts and earthtones with all the gravitas of a seventh grade slumber party.

As much as Todd’s piece is pure CW drivel, he does make one point I think may be important. He notes:

…some realism has finally entered the equation when it comes to 2006, mostly based on one result — the Calif.-50 special election.

The race told us two things:

* There’s no extra excitement in the Democratic base, as there was no increase in the Democratic vote in Calif.-50. (The same was true of the entire state.)

* Immigration is an issue powerful enough to rally the Republican base.

These lessons run counter to the conventional wisdom from just two weeks ago that presumed Democrats were more fired up about the 2006 elections than Republicans, who supposedly were having their own problems firing up their base.

I don’t know if that race actually proves that, but I think the general observation may be correct. I have to agree that Democrats have yet to fire up the base enough. And the reason is that although many voters are unhappy with Bush they can’t see how things will be any different with Democrats in charge of the congress.

The Democracy Corps memo of a week or so ago said this:

Democrats have a strong and consistent lead in both the “real” Congressional vote and
Senate races. In our latest survey, Democrats enjoy an 8-point advantage in the “real” vote for Congress and have led by an average of 9 points over the past three months. In the race for Senate, the Democrats hold an 11-point edge in the “real” Senate vote over the past three months and even more impressively, lead by 10 points in races with vulnerable Republican incumbents. These advantages are impressive, but they are not big enough for Democrats to recapture the House or Senate.

The Democrat’s current advantage in the “real” vote for Congress is still a couple points short of the swing needed to match 1994 and what the data says is possible for the party to achieve. On virtually every test of message and policy direction in this survey, the Democratic advantage is twice that of the current vote margin. The voters want to give the Democrats a bigger margin than they are currently achieving. If the challenger campaigns are effective, they can catch this wave.

If the Democrats and challengers fail to show voters something more, this disillusionment could show itself in fragmentation to smaller parties and more likely, a stay-at-home protest. The current measures of potential Democratic turnout and enthusiasm are not impressive. And while it is likely that a low turnout election will hurt Republicans more than Democrats, a stay-away protest vote could also cut into the margin Democrats might have achieved.

Democrats can ignore this and fret about the immature and distasteful grassroots — or they can start giving their base a reason to vote for them. Mid-terms are about turn-out. Until rank and file Dems see that their party won’t just excuse, enable and endorse GOP policies they have no reason to get off the couch.

Let’s be clear about this: if we lose this fall, it will not be because the “war colored glasses” crowd was immature and failed to behave properly at the debutante ball. It will be because the Democratic establishment blew off its own voters in order to please David Broder and the stale DC punditocrisy — the same thing they have been doing for more than a decade and losing.

Don’t look at us. We’re trying to get Democratic voters charged up about being Democrats again. Pissing and moaning because Joe Lieberman is facing a primary challenge is having the opposite effect. If we lose, it will be because the party establishment once more showed contempt for Democratic voters — a fatal error the Republicans never ever make.

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