"Dirty tricks" are in the air. Senator George Allen, currently in a difficult fight for re-election in Virginia, is fighting charges that he hid his Jewish background, that he used racist epithets (the "N" word) and that he knowingly used a vicious racial slur ("macaca"). Points have been cherry-picked from the NIE to "show", in the pages of the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post that our invasion of Iraq has worsened the threat of terror.
Not long ago, everything seemed to be lined up properly for the Democrats to take over control of one or, perhaps, both houses of Congress.
The minority party has historically gained during mid-term elections
The MSM had done an exemplary job painting the Iraq War as an unmitigated disaster, with an emphasis on "body counts" (though, in contrast to the Vietnam War use of "body counts" of enemy soldiers to show we were winning, the MSM uses "body counts" of American soldiers to show we are losing)
The polls showed high levels of disatisfaction with the Bush administration, especially their handling of the War (the Republicans have tried to help via their poor articulation of the war strategy)
The Republicans were divided, with one wing attacking their own President for violating the "rights" of detainees
The Republicans seemed to be doing everything they could to mishandle the immigration and border security debate
In essence, all signs pointed to substantial Democratic gains in November. In fact, the Party core were already planning their impeachment hearings, and just yesterday, Charlie Rangel was quoted describing how the House would cut off funding for the Iraq War.
Yet "dirty tricks" are not a sign of a confident party; rather, they have always been the sign of a desperate party.
Sometimes the desperation comes from internal sources; when Richard Nixon resorted to the extensive use of "Dirty Tricks" which ultimately led to Watergate, his re-election was not in any doubt, yet his paranoia overwhelmed his good sense.
The current Democratic desperation comes primarily from external sources.
The Democrats are the party most closely identified with the Welfare State (Socialism-lite). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, historical trends have been away from socialism. The ideology that underlies the welfare state has been thoroughly repudiated and nations are increasingly embracing Capitalism, harnessing competition for the greater good. Many of Europe's problems are seen as stemming from the kinds of Welfare Statism that the Democrats have traditionally held up as exemplars. Time, the evolution of systems, and greater attention have shown too many Americans that the old Welfare State model does not work.
A second pillar of the Democratic party, closely tied to Socialism-lite, is Identity Politics. It is in this area that the Democrats are showing the greatest desperation. The votes (and money) of American Jews and American Blacks have been reliably Democratic, overwhelmingly so, since the 1960s. The Democrats know that if they lose the Jews and Blacks, they will be permanently consigned to minority party status; there are not enough well-to-do liberals to carry the party to a majority.
A third trend working against the Democrats is the increasing stress on their quasi-pacifistic isolationism which animates an important part of the party's core. If the only news about the Muslim world was related to Iraq, the Democrats could have continued to make the argument that Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror; that was the point of the leaks from the NIE that the MSM so helpfully published this week. Unfortunately, the Islamists are refusing to cooperate with the Democrats, even though it would be in their best interests to lay low and encourage American isolationism. Daniel Pipes has documented the increasing aggressiveness of the Islamists and their assertions of supremacy over the dhimmis in Intimidating the West, from Rushdie to Benedict. Pipes documents the increasing frequency of Islamist outbursts of outrage and reviews six rounds of outrage:
1989 – Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses prompted Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death edict against him and his publishers, on the grounds that the book "is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran." Subsequent rioting led to over 20 deaths, mostly in India.
1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court refused to remove a 1930s frieze showing Muhammad as lawgiver that decorates the main court chamber; the Council on American-Islamic Relations made an issue of this, leading to riots and injuries in India.
2002 – The American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell calls Muhammad a "terrorist," leading to church burnings and at least 10 deaths in India.
2005 – An incorrect story in Newsweek, reporting that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," is picked up by the famous Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan, and prompts protests around the Muslim world, leading to at least 15 deaths..
February 2006 – The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes twelve cartoons of Muhammad, spurring a Palestinian Arab imam in Copenhagen, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, to excite Muslim opinion against the Danish government. He succeeds so well, hundreds die, mostly in Nigeria.
September 2006 – Pope Benedict XVI quotes a Byzantine emperor's views that what is new in Islam is "evil and inhuman," prompting the firebombing of churches and the murder of several Christians.
These six rounds show a near-doubling in frequency: 8 years between the first and second rounds, then 5, then 3, 1, and ½.
He concludes that this campaign of intimidation is having an effect:
No conspiracy lies behind these six rounds of inflammation and aggression, but examined in retrospect, they coalesce and form a single, prolonged campaign of intimidation, with surely more to come. The basic message – "You Westerners no longer have the privilege to say what you will about Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an, Islamic law rules you too" – will return again and again until Westerners either do submit or Muslims realize their effort has failed.
One does not need to know the dates and times of these episodes to sense that the Islamic World (as represented by the Islamists and abetted by the MSM who thrive on images of violence) has become increasingly aggressive and short-tempered. One response to this growing awareness is appeasement but, at least in America, the much more prevalent reaction is irritation at the Muslim World's irrationality, followed by outrage at their reprehensible behavior. This works against the Democrats, whose first reaction always seems to be to appease the "victims of America", rather than fight back. (Whether or not this is an accurate description of the Democrats, and I am sure they would dispute my comments, it is unmistakably the impression they leave by their comments and behavior.)
The Democrats believe that the greatest danger facing the Republic is from the Republicans, not from external enemies, and they have believed this for quite some time. Armed Liberal has a pertinent, and somewhat surprising, example of just such short-sighted thinking from a doyen of the Democratic establishment, Warren Christopher And Strong Reaction.
When a party loses confidence, they begin to focus more on ideological purity and become intolerant of dissent. Their inability to question their own point of view makes them especially vulnerable and brittle. A confident party can admit and accept the possibility that they have made mistakes and/or their positions are not infallible. Despite the constant complaint that the Bush White House never admits an error (it might more accurately be stated that the Bush White House is loath to admit error publicly to the MSM who would spin it in the worst possible light), the administration has on a number of occasions changed course, whether in Iraq, over the Department of Homeland Security, Borders, Harriet Meyers, etc. It is the Democrats who are demanding ideological purity (see Lieberman, Joe); it is primarily the Democrats who are resorting to nasty campaigns of innuendo and slime. At this point there is only one thing that can save the Democratic party. Just as it required the Goldwater debacle of 1964 to begin the process of renewal in the Republican party, it will require an election disaster to begin the process of renewal that the Democrats so desperately need.
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