Too much red meat can kill you: the magnitude of the Democrats’ self-inflicted problem
In the post immediately below, we took a seemingly benign piece of data from a Washington Post poll — that 69% of Americans want Democrats to work with the administration, even at the possible expense of swallowing some objectionable elements — and looked at in a way way that made it appear much more ominous. Let’s tease this out further.
Let’s say the 28% who do not want Democrats to pursue this course are in fact all Democrats. Since Democrats comprised 37% of the voters in 2004, that would imply that fully three quarters of Democrats are opposed to compromise in the Bush legislative agenda.
Speaking as a former Democrat and current sane person, I am opposed (1) to cutting Social Security benefits by creating a phony crisis, (2) to sending American soldiers to die in senseless, unwinnable and unjust wars, (3) to running government for the benefit of big business, (4) to ruining the environment, and (5) to voter suppression or fraud — just to name a few issues. And this space supports the Bush agenda wholheartedly — even the parts with the big spending in the first term (we were entering a recession in 2000).
Here’s the problem: the average Democrat might think Republicans are in favor of all these awful things if all he did was listen to the leadership of the Democratic Party, whose comments are among those featured in the links immediately above.
Here at Dinocrat we think it’s almost always a good thing to vilify your opponent, but when your attacks are meritless or worse — election stealing comes to mind — they are going to backfire badly, as indeed they have for the world’s oldest political party.
UPDATE
Michael Goodwin argues that the red meat Democrats, like Kennedy and Boxer, threaten to take the party further down, if as the numbers may suggest, they speak for a majotiry of Democrats.