May 16, 2003

Hope for the Worst

What is at the core of the Democrats' strategy to wrest the White House from George W. Bush? Hope for the worst, says this story by AP political writer Ron Fournier:

Democrats, who are fielding nine candidates in search of the presidential nomination, believe that continued economic woes, problems in postwar Iraq or even another terrorist strike on U.S. soil could change Bush's political fortunes.

Disgusting. No, worse than that.

That some Democrats running for president are staking their political future on the expectation and perhaps even the hope that one or all three of the above issues will go badly for Bush indicates a party that has lost its heart, soul and mind.

UPDATE: Over at South Knox Bubba's blog, they seem to have lost the ability to read and react to things in context. As a result, I'm being accused of saying that millions of Democrats wish for a bad economy, an Iraqi calamity and a terror attack. Of course, I never said that - not when you carefully examine the totality of my post and the article which I was commenting on. It's called context.

My post was written as commentary on a specific paragaph within a specific article, which I linked to, in which the writer of that article - not me - said Democrats (and its clear from the context of his article he was talking about top national Democrat strategists and candidates, not SKB's mom or your neighbor) were banking on things not going well.

Perhaps a toning down of my rhetoric above would make things more understandable to the rank-and-file Democrats who read SKB's blog. Okay - Democrats as a whole obviously do not actively wish for the economy to suck, but the many of the ones in Congress are doing their best to keep Bush from fixing it. You can bet every dollar you have that if the economy sucks a year from now, the Democrats at the top of the party and in Congress and on the campaign trail will be glad they have an issue to run on.

And they may not wish for post-war Iraq to become a mess. But you can bet they (and by "they" I mean many of the Democrats in Congress - not SKB's mom or your neighbor down the street) will do their best to block Bush's policies that will fix it (i.e. pushing for the hapless State Department and the inept United Nations to ruin run Iraq). And they may not wish for a terror strike, but some of them sure are laying the rhetorical groundwork to blame Bush for it if it happens. Bob Graham and Howard Dean come to mind.

The thing is, generally, in an election, the party out of power needs things to be going badly in order to defeat the party in power. So while the top Democrats may not wish for a bad economy, they'll sure not help Bush fix it. And while the top Democrats may not wish ill for the Iraqi people, they know an Iraq that is showing real signs of positive progress next year is bad news for them on election day. After all, many of them were predicting calamity in Iraq. And while no Democrat wants another terror attack to occur, they are poised to blame Bush if it does, instead of acknowledging that Bush was right when he warned us almost two years ago the war on terror would be long and difficult. They will, in short, play politics with national security and work hard to convince people the economy is in bad shape, and stand ready to wave the bloody shirt if our enemies manage to complete another attack.

UPDATE #2: Rich Hailey posted a great comment over on SKB's blog regarding this topic:

OK folks, there are prominent Democrats on record as wishing the War on Iraq had gone worse. Just one example is the editor of Salon.com, Gary Kamiya, who opined that if a Bush success in Iraq led to 4 more years of Bush in the White House, then it was not immoral to hope for things to go badly in Iraq. He also stated directly that he was not alone in his beliefs. I posted on this the other day and to date not one prominent liberal has stepped forward to censure Kamiya, or disavow his remarks.
I'll give you the money quote:

"Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world."

It doesn't get any clearer than that. Kamiya is not a extremist, representing some fringe point of view, but a prominent mainstream Democrat. Bill's analysis is dead on. There are prominent Democrats who want things to go badly, just to get rid of Bush, and as long as they enjoy the support, whether tacit or explicit, of rank and file Democrats, then all Democrats will be judged by their statements. Don't like it? Then tell it to Kamiya and his ilk.