Why can't I be wrong when it counts?
When it comes to choosing which women are worth pursuing, I am almost always wrong. Why can’t I be wrong about politics sometimes? Or at least about Election 2004?
As long-time readers of Trouble Sells will no doubt hazily recall, my previous eight brief posts on political subjects, written over the course of a year, may well be the most insightful ever written on a blog. Mostly that’s because I’m the only Democrat I can think of that always knew we would lose if we picked Kerry and didn’t change his mind once we did. How could we possibly have won with this guy? I think we figured it was because Bush is so awful. But, you know, a lot of people voted for him before, and we needed some of them to vote for us this time.
Now, on the Ides of November, after a week and a half of hiding under the covers, let me give a brief postmortem based on my earlier theory of the “greater fool”. This is a term from investment, of course, which supposes that it doesn’t matter at which price you buy a stock as long as you can find another idiot who will buy it at an even higher price. In other words, there’s no reason to research good stocks as long as the market is controlled by people who are not paying attention. Doesn’t “control by people who are not paying attention” describe American democracy?
My feeling during the primaries was that people were voting for Kerry because they thought other people were misinformed enough to support him. This didn’t make any sense to me, but it was the only way I could interpret their claim he was “electable”. But their strategy was consistent with what happened after both parties had their nominee. The wrong information was used to select the Democratic nominee, and subsequently the wrong information was used to select the president.
We wanted a nominee who was “electable”. (I’m not sure what the definition of that is, but clearly Kerry is the only guy who we know definitely wasn’t electable, because he lost the election.) We chose “electability” over shopworn talents like the ability to make a good speech, raise a lot of money, or appeal to swing voters. It turns out that, if you have those other things, you might in fact be electable. There is no electability without skills that get people to vote for you. Kerry got an A on the course after getting zeros on all his exams.
The same thing happened with Bush in the general election. Most Americans agree with the Democrats on every issue — way more than 50%. However, less than 50% of Americans want to vote for the guys they agree with on the issues. Why is that? Because we give Bush a string of zeros and then pass him. Because we use the wrong information to pick these guys. We decide that something else is more important than actual issues that affect our lives — Bush the First tried this with the flag-burning amendment, but that was way too irrelevant: the flag-burning amendment failed because no one was used to hating flag-burners because there weren’t any. As the current revision of Bush knows, it’s much easier to propose amendments that affect traditional targets of hate crimes. The market is already there.
But even if you think the election was decided on issues, Bush managed to pass despite his poor marks. His number one issue was, of course, defense against terrorism, even though he managed to inspire more terrorists and turn more actual governments against us than ever before in history. How he could garner support on this issue I really don’t know. Republicans continue to have a kind of mystique that supposes they are the ones to pick for economic and security issues. This has been the case for generations. However, under Bush’s term we had a market crash and the largest attack on U.S. soil ever. This didn’t change people’s minds. (In fact, it seems that the New York mayoral race of 2001 was largely decided by the events of September 11, since the Democrat was leading two-to-one before that happened, and the Republican, who had no particular interest or background in security — let alone plans for what to do — won.) These guys somehow have ownership over the very issues they are incapable of handling.
I knew we would lose, in short, because we picked a “safe” candidate when obviously anyone who wanted a “safe” choice would go with the incumbent, because that’s why they call them incumbents. And we had him run a campaign saying he was better suited than Bush to deal with the world’s issues, when few voters seemed to make a connection between such suitability and being the president. How the Democrats could go forth with their strategy when they knew I disapproved, I don’t know.
I’m not going to pretend to tell you what we should do next; at least not yet. But it really comes down to the fact that there is a disconnect between what people think the Republicans do and what they really do, and the same is true with the Democrats. If we can’t persuade people that we’re the ones who understand their concerns, what’s the point of being Democrats? (Except getting to go to Meetups, I guess. I hate Meetups. They are like book clubs without the books.)
So don’t give up. But next time, don’t believe that you will win because the other guy is an idiot. That’s called “being an idiot”. And as Harry Truman famously observed, when you run an idiot against an idiot, the idiot wins every time.
by Jack, November 13, 2004 4:17 AM | More from Election 2004 | More from The Damned Human Race
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Vin checking in here. Just reminding you that "we" didn't pick Kerry for his electability - some 45,000 chuckleheads in Iowa chose him for us. And from there, New Hampshire, and so on and so on.
Passing the buck?
Unfortunately, your analysis doesn't hold up. The winner(s) of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary need not inevitably become the nominee. Plenty of times that hasn't happened. What happened in this case was that Kerry won almost all the primaries, which generally does lead to becoming the nominee. That's why I say that "the Democrats" "picked" him.
You may reply that the Kerry phenomenon had nothing to do with the voters nationwide: that the media created his "landslide" after his surprise upset in Iowa. I say, the media is there to be manipulated. If Democrats didn't want Kerry to win nationwide after Iowa, they would have put resources toward the success of that message. Instead, they nervously decided to give him a try. The results of this gutless gamble speak for themselves.
I say the media was going to create a landslide for whomever won the Iowa caucuses - and that this media-created landslide was something no one could had the power to "manipulate."
No one except, apparently, the Republicans?
Not only a buck-passer, but a defeatist?
You may not work on my campaign! Unless you are hot.