Now that the 2006 mid-term election is history one thing that has become very apparent to me is the difference in the way that Democrats/Liberals/Leftists and Republicans/Conservatives/Right-wingers handle defeat.
When the Dems lose, rarely do they admit that it was any fault of theirs, or that their opponent out-campaigned them, or had something more appealing to offer. In fact, it’s quite to the contrary. It’s now the norm to hear the cries of “we were robbed!”, or “the election was stolen!”, or “my vote was tampered with!”, or “I was disenfranchised!”.
And then of course, instead of graciously accepting defeat we’re forced to endure the endless vote recounts and accusations of voter fraud because they didn’t get the result they wanted (i.e. were “entitled” to).
The Repos on the other hand tend to look, as they are now, introspectively, acknowledging that they lost, or in this case, got their asses kicked and ask of themselves and their fellow party members “how did this happen?”, “what can we do to fix it?”, and “what can we do and what must be done to correct the problem?”.
Granted, these are generalizations, but as a general rule they are accurate and indisputable. After all, where are all the cries of stolen elections and voter fraud and disenfranchisement this time around? It seems that as long as the Dems win, the system worked just fine.
Look, the Repos deserved to lose. They handed power back to the Dems on a silver platter. But now we’ll have to see what they do with their new-found majority status. For the last three years they’ve been able to get by on nothing but bashing the President over the head with the Iraq War, without offering any real alternative other than “cutting and running”.
But that’s not going to fly anymore. They’re going to have to put forth some real ideas now. Simply railing on about what they’re against is no longer going to cut it.
And if all they use majority status for is to conduct witch hunts and impeachment hearings in an effort to placate the radical far-left, anti-war, Bush-hating segment of their party, then their majority status will be short-lived.
On that you can rest assured.
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4 comments:
Six: I agree with this assessment, but the Repos have some of their own objectionable behaviors. This includes, I would say, portraying their War in Iraq as the only possible correct response to 911, rather than their best choice among a few options that they deem logical. This includes claiming that opposition to the Iraqi invasion, or advocacy of a soon-as-possible pullout, equates to opposition to fighting islamic crusaderism. Surely Pat Buchannon and George Will favor fighting islamic crusaderism.
I will be very interested to see what happens the next time that Bush gets to nominate somebody. He and the repos very correctly had claimed that when a Repo president had a Repo House and a Repo Senate, that the president was entitled to get anybody passed who could get a simple 50% majority vote approval, whereas the Demos incorrectly demanded a "super majority." Now that the Demos have majorities in both houses, they can correctly demand somebody who earns their approval. Let's see if the Repos acknowledge this.
This means that Bush no longer has a philosophically justification for end-arounding the UN Rep, whom the Demos hate. Bush previously had a 50% support for him in both houses, and used his trick to get him in because the Demos were using tricks to deny Bush's legal authority. But Bush no longer has 50% support for that guy, and thus Bush should dump him.
We must also see if the Repos now blast the Demos for deplorable acts that only the majority party can conduct, such as gerry-madering; and will the Demos now commit such acts that they deplored when they were minorities?
And will the Demos really prove to be less corrupt now that they have power?
I agree with much of what you say here, Six. And since I am not a democrat, I have no problem criticizing them.
Evidence suggested that votes were tampered with in 2000 and 2004, and one last Florida congressional race is yet to be decided (http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/11/13/florida/index.html), so your characterization of lefties as basically cry babies is unfounded.
I agree with everything else you said, however. It's time for the Democrats to put up or shut up, and to prove that they are worthy and able to lead.
There's appalling historical amnesia at the heart of this post. By any reasonable standard, the 2000 election was a wreck. If the roles had been precisely reversed, it would have been just as much mired in controversy and full of charges of election theft. The two sides went after each other like pit bulls; no reasonable person denies that there's strong evidence that Gore won more votes than bush in Florida. But Six behaves as though the Dems were making frivolous claims. I have little regard for the Democrats; but willful forgetting of events that happened so recently is inane.
Tom: As I recall my readings, most objective recounts gave Bush more votes. "Objective" means: without either party's biased request, which used frivolous criteria to discard precincts that favor the other guy. And I did agree that at least two of the Supreme Court justices should have recused themselves.
However, it is impossible to arrive at an accurate figure for Florida, as anybody with an understanding of statistics will tell you. The populace there was approximately evenly divided between Gore and Bush, within the margin of error of the voting machines. When that happens, and that is exactly what happens, it is scientifically impossible to declare a true victor. Consider that I have a voting machine that is 99% accurate. If 100 people vote for me, my machine will record 99, 100, or 101. We can be certain that more than 98 people voted for me, and less than 102, but we cannot be certain if the tally was 99, 100, or 101. Likewise if 100 people vote for Nadir, he will also get a score of 99, 100, or 101.
If the official count is Paul 99 and Nadir 100, we do not really have a clear victory, and a coin toss would not be any less accurate or less valid a method.
If instead we have a final tally of Paul 91 and Nadir 103, here we are certain that Nadir won, though we cannot say with certainty that Nadir received 103 - 91 = 12 votes more than me.
As for those "hand recounts", we can hardly believe that they were more accurate than the voting machines. To the contrary, they were certainly LESS accurate, if you remember the details of eyeball-reading those punchcards.
So what happens when the voting is closer than the accuracy of the vote-counting system? Florida represented a "statistical tie." I propose a re-vote in cases of statistical ties. That makes sense to me, with the top tied vote getters running again (even if it's three or four statistically tied).
(This analysis assumes, of course, a voting population stupid enough to slightly favor me over Nadir.)
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