PittsburghAfterDark
CAGiversary!
Problems for the Democrats
There is little sense in listening to the mainstream old media in very many instances anymore. This is especially so when it comes to the state of today’s Democratic party. The old media writes laundry list article outlining how their party can bounce back, but rarely do they carefully detail the problems that really face the party.
These cheerleading pieces don’t tell “the troops” how bad things are because the writers want to help their party without being accused of spreading defeatist talk. As Yul Brenner’s The King and I character would exclaim doing this is a “Puzzlement!”
Since it is very unlikely that we will see an accurate description of the problems facing the Democrats as the summer gives way to the political wars of the fall, what follows is my view of their problems. Being on the other side I have no worries about dealing with charges of spreading defeatist talk among the left. I’d love to do so.
In any war controlling the time and place of your battles provides a priceless advantage. Being able to wait until you are fully prepared before being joined in a fight makes all the difference once the whistle blows.
The Democrats have lost the advantage of time and place they had enjoyed since the first Roosevelt administration. In the past the old media was almost always able to manager the news so as to provide the Democrats with a running start in most political crises. They could bury a story. They could highlight a story. They could simply ignore the news if that was what it took. Consider today’s Able Danger problem for the Democrats. The New York Times has tried ignoring the story. It has tried burying the story. It has tried censoring it by excluding the words “Able Danger” from headlines for fear its “oh so erudite” readers would actually find it as they sunbathed in The Hamptons. Last year the old media assured Senator John F. Kerry that they would smother the charges from the Swift Boat Vets. They actually did among their dwindling readers, but charges that Mr.Kerry’s Viet Nam heroics were phony nevertheless bubbled up and into the public arena with lethal consequences. Everyday, since Katrina leveled New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the old media has been exposed as the slow ponderous dinosaur it truly is. The cable television twenty four hour news cycle is far ahead when it comes to showing us what is going on down there and the gap is widening. Monthly magazines are now sources of historic research. Weekly magazines are next in line to slip under the waves of information history. Ironically they have hastened their own decline by their public boasts of being able to provide John Kerry with 15 points on Election day. Apparently their belief in their own invulnerability had out run their common sense. Any claims of impartial reportage Time and Newsweek make these days evokes the same smiles we give five year old boys who announce that they want to be cowboys when they grow up. There is not confidence in their product.
The terrible destruction of New Orleans and the gulf areas of Mississippi and Alabama will drive the old media’s newspapers further into their consignment to irrelevance. While the print divisions of the Democrats attack army are focused on the problems on the ground, the new media has already moved on to what is going right. Within a few days and certainly by mid month talk of what was/is wrong will necessarily give way to the real stories. Even the old media will turn to examining the role of the Democrat controlled state of Louisiana and New Orleans. These stories will be ugly. Yet, I believe those stories will be over shadowed by the ones that demonstrate the best of the human spirit. An early favorite is the one about a strong willed and smart 19 year old man commandeering one of the hundreds of school buses left idle by the Mayor. The teenager then filled the bus with a full compliment of refugees and drove them to Houston. The new media will tell us stories like that. The old media will find them too inconvenient.
The old media’s rush to its usual over kill in all manners pertaining to any attack of George W. Bush leaves them nowhere to go. They have leveled every possible charge against him including actually blaming him for the hurricane itself. Once you insist that the president caused the hurricane, the only attack left would be a “secretly” taken group photograph proving his callousness and glee at the misery of poor Black people. I can see such a “photo shop” mock up now. It would show three men sipping mint juleps on the veranda of and “ole Miss” plantation great house. It would The President, Mississippi Governor Haley Barber, and the little man in top hat and tails from a monopoly board, laughing and lighting big cigars with $100.00 bills. Predictable some foaming at the mouth Bush haters would believe it, I’m sure. While Fox and a reluctant CNN are showing heart warming scenes of great human compassion the New York Times will have to follow suit or give us headlines predicting a shortage in the soybean crop somewhere around the world. Pity the old media at a time like this. Not even the Iraqis are cooperating. They are now dancing in their street chanting hosannas to America in gratitude for our sacrifices for them and the constitution they are getting because of America led by George W. Bush. Now to the specific problems that will have Democrats wanting to hide under their beds.
The multi-front problem
Among the several fronts they have opened in the last two months these loom largest and demand the most attention from the Democrats as they go into their forced prioritization of issues.
1) Cindy Sheehan. What started out with a promise of a possible 21st century Woodstock has turned on the Democrats. It has been led by a woman who has revealed herself to be so far out of the mainstream that even her status as the mother of a combat killed soldier has been disregarded by a large portion of the people her crusade was “sure” to awaken to the evils of George Bush and of course Halliburton. Now the Democrats can only hope that the horrors of Katrina can distract the nation from the repulsive language being spewed by the dangerous Mrs. Sheehan. My prediction is Sheehan will be the first one thrown overboard as the Democrats try to bale out their ship.
2) The Judge John Roberts confirmation hearings. With numbing predictability the Democrats have said the most outrageous things they could think of to try to drag Mr. Roberts through the mud. While it is indeed difficult to decide which attack on this good man is more ridiculous, one has to give strong consideration to the one that implies that since he once made a point of calling the Civil War the “War between the states” he is ergo a Confederate sympathizer and of course therefore an ardent supporter of slavery. Now that panic and blind hatred have compelled the Democrats and the old media to throw everything they possibly can at Judge Roberts, what is left to credibly say? The untimely death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist puts the Democrats in a very dangerous situation. With the swiftness of a striking tiger, the president has turn the issue into a huge plus by changing his nomination of Roberts to Chief Justice. This move has slammed the Senate Democrats down flat on their backs. They tried to argue that the president should wait on a nomination because the position of Chief Justice is so important. Thanks to a decisive stroke by George Bush, their “concerns” have been addressed. Now the Roberts hearing will force the Democrats to make a choice. They can try to stop Roberts by throwing more ridiculous charges at him and in doing so continue to re-enforce their image as the “No” party. This will show them to be devoid of anything but “No” to say, and push them further away from mainstream voters. Their other choice is to admit defeat on Roberts and risk upsetting a leftist fringe that grows bolder and more impatient with them by the week. We have even seen reports that the crazies on their left are threatening to destroy the party out of a sense of disgust over its current refusal to move even further to the left. My prediction is they will put up a face saving “fight” over Roberts and hope for the best knowing he will be confirmed.
3) The reemergence of the O’Connor opening. This is where the Democrats will have to fight as if their very political lives depended on the outcome because certainly it will. One thing about George W. Bush that has got to have sunk into even the most Kennedyesque of the Democrats is that while they can say George Bush is a “dopey frat boy” for the consumption of their George Soros and Michael Moore brigades, they act as if that were true at their own peril. Mr. Bush is a tough and smart politician. This opportunity to appoint another rock solid conservative to the Supreme Court, Ann Coulter notwithstanding, will not slip through his fingers. Old media and Democrat wishful thinking that he will appoint anyone less is just that, wishful thinking. The president will send up a strong conservative and the Democrats will fight him or more likely her with every tactic they can muster. Watch for old media efforts to make the nominee Edith Clement because she is from Louisiana. Of course what they will not say is that Judge Clement is not the most conservative person Mr. Bush can find. My prediction is that stopping the O’Connor replacement will be job number one for the Durbins and Kennedys of the Senate. They will violate their flimsy “no filibuster” pledge and the old media will try to paint them as modern day “Mr. Smiths”. It won’t work. The old media will burn any residual credibility it has left and in the end Bush and the GOP will prevail.
4) Iraq. At some point soon there will be a vote on the new Iraqi constitution. If it carries and at this point its rejection is by no means a sure thing, the war will take on a new luster. The new media will be able to project it as the general success it has always been and the old media will have some difficulty reversing the tide. This will be a serious blow to the Democratic psyche. They have lied about this issue from day one and painted themselves into a corner. All of their chips are in this basket. Being proved wrong on this will be devastating. The process of our winning this issue has begun already. We have begun to point to reduced violence in Iraq and an absence of further terror attacks on our soil as signs we are winning. It is worth noting that while the numbers of those “approving the way the war is going” are not especially encouraging, the question of whether the respondent has selected “disapprove” because he/she wants stronger action is rarely if ever asked. If I were asked such a question I would opt for honesty and say I did not approve, because I want our troops to be tougher and kill more insurgents. People who think about the world as I do would never support the “pullout sentiment” the old media tries to extrapolate from a “disapprove” response. Herein lies another problem for the old media, and their Democrat comrades, to iron out. False poll results are corroding the ability of Democrat strategists to plan their moves. The fact that the old media lies when it reports its poll findings is well established. Nationally respected pollster John Zogby was telling John Kerry he would win in a landslide as late as 3PM EST on Election day. The old media’s pollsters are still doing the same thing with results of today’s polls. Saying “look it’s not just us. Every poll, even Fox is saying the same thing.” doesn’t cut it because none are asking the “disapprove because I want kick ass and take names action” question. My prediction is that trashing America’s efforts in Iraq will remain a sacrament to the Democrats and they will have to continue to act as agents of Bin Laden lest they risk losing the support of the strongly anti American fringe who now control their daily agenda.
5) Managing Able Danger. This is one item that the old media has been hoping to keep under the radar. Nevertheless, the very nature of this issue will make it stifling it by neglect impossible in today’s world. Issues in the public arena sometimes take on a life of their own and this is one of them. There is nothing the old media will be able to do to hide the truth. Given the dizzying pace of events these days, it’s actually better that this does “run under the radar” while it ferments. When this one does pop up it has the potential to destroy the Democrat’s God Bill Clinton. If it gets hot enough we will see fanatical Democrat Kamikazes falling on their swords to protect their God-king. Those that wrote the memos come to mind. Jamie Gorelick can be a living saint in her world if she is willing to give her public life as a martyr for Bill Clinton and by extension, Senator Hillary Clinton. My prediction is that this will become a mid level priority for the Democrats. This is not to say that Able Danger it is not a potentially lethal blow, to contrary it certainly is. This is to say that the Democrats have no choice but to trust to the dwindling powers of the old media to bend this onrushing torrent of accusations against the Clintons. The dye is cast on this one. There will be no escaping this one.
6) Covering the incompetence of the on the ground Democrats in Katrina’s path. While Haley Barber was calling out his National Guard on Monday night, Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco was disregarding George Bush’s personal phone call recommending that she do the same. While the mayor of New Orleans was on the air spewing vulgar street language about the president, some those members of his police department who had not quit ( reportedly 200 did) and run away were looting the every stores they were sworn to protect. While the mayor was doing his foul mouthed “oh woes is me” act on radio, his fleet of school buses sat idle and transported no one to safety. If it had not been for a smart teenage boy who simply took a bus and used it to take a full compliment of refugees to safety, we would not know about this failing on the part of Mayor Nagin. The truth about the Sierra Club’s successfully lobbying against a levee that might have saved the City of New Orleans will come out. The stories of Louisiana National Guardsmen and New Orleans City police being playing cards because there was no leadership to get them to where they were needed, will come out. The fact that the City’s police are so ill trained that they resigned in panic and cowardice will come out. The old media and the Democrats have staked out a position of “No” once again and will have very little to stand on when the after action report is written. They have once again put themselves way out on a limb with the crazy Bush haters and they will end up with egg on their faces when the truth comes out. Once this is all sorted out, the initial failings of the federal response will look like complaints about the lack of snow shovels compared to the gross incompetence of those charged with making the first response to this disaster. Senator Clinton has already obliged us and called for a commission to find out what went wrong. She doesn’t seem to understand that you should be careful what you pray for because you might get it. My prediction is that time will help the Democrats here but it won’t help much. They will put this far down on their on “hills to die on”. The great potential danger for the party of Ole Hickory is that since the Republicans run the show these days, they will recognize what a problem this will be for them and release the findings next October. The Democrats will be forced to go into next year’s elections with all of Blanco and Nagin’s failures hanging around their necks.
7) The oil supply problem. The truth is that if we had started to drill in Alaska in 1995 when the current push for this advantage started, Alaska would be supplying one third of our daily shortfall of 3 million barrels of crude . Everyday we use 20 million barrels of crude oil and we produce just 17 million of those barrels. Reasonable estimates of the value of Alaskan drilling say we can get a million barrels a day from its frozen ground. Since 1995, people have gotten smarter and now understand who is to blame for there being no new oil refineries built in this country in the past twenty years. People know we can also drill cleanly off the coast of California and the Great Lakes and off Florida. People are beginning to make the connection between the Democrats having sold their souls to the crazy fringe of the environmentalist movement and their $3.50 per gallon gas. It has taken a long time but we are now at that point and it will get worse not better for the Democrats and their masters in the Sierra Club. The argument that a natural disaster would blow down oil pumping rigs in these waters and cause a major oil spill has now been thoroughly disproved. If the workings of a category 5 hurricane did not cause crude oil to drain unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico, it is all but certain that nothing will. The Democrats are in a very tight bind now. For years Americans have been like the slowly boiling frog we learned about in college behavioral science class. The frog, who sits in water that is only slightly increasing in temperature, will stay there unaware of the danger and finally boil to death. When the next frog is placed in the now boiling water he jumps right out. Katrina and our friends at the Sierra Club have now dropped America in the boiling water of increasing gas prices and we will certainly demand action to get us out of it. My prediction is that this will be the fight they take up immediately after they lose the Roberts and O’Connor replacement fights.
8) Republican progress among Blacks and Hispanics and the voter fraud issue. In another ostrich-like denial of the facts, the old media rushed to the defense of the Democrats last fall with tortured logic to explain away the ground gained among Black and Hispanic voters by George Bush and the Republicans. They mocked the “puny” 2 point increase in overall Black votes for the GOP while purposefully refusing to look at where those votes came from. Absent the large urban centers that could turn out one third of the Blacks they do and still comfortably elect Democrats, the gains were real and important. In California fully 18% of Blacks voted for Bush and the numbers are just as encouraging in Maryland and Georgia and other places. This is the reason why George Bush showed improvement in his numbers in 47 states. These votes came from somewhere. Blacks turned out in numbers above national average so one has to ask for whom did these newly turning out Black voters pull the lever? The Help America Vote Act is a slowly tightening noose around the Democrats collective neck. Their efforts to convince people and courts that minority voters need not show photo id in order to vote, as everyone else has to, have fallen flat. As states that have finally seen control of their legislatures move into Republican hands, one of the first orders of business is to address the issue of Democrat voter fraud. The stories, while unknown to adherents of the old media, are all too familiar to those of us that prefer truthful unbiased news. Without voter fraud there are a number of districts in the country that will be lost to the Democrats. My prediction is that this will be put on the back burner and also entrusted to the old media to try and stir up resentment among minorities on this issue. There really is no choice here. The Democrats simply can’t get to this one right now, even as they watch some of their worst voter fraud cesspools drained. Milwaukee comes to mind. Getting vagrants to vote Democrat in exchange for cigarettes is hardly an honest campaign tactic.
9) The break up of Big Labor. The situation in the house of Big labor is a microcosm of the problem for the Democrats on the national level only it presents a more dangerous threat. Beginning in say, May or June of 1996 and repeating every even year spring until today, the leaders of Big Labor of sworn blood oaths to dislodge the GOP grip on control of the Congress. The same headlines have appeared each election cycle with only the amount to be spent changing to reflect inflation. “ John Sweeny ( president of the AFL-CIO) says he’ll spend 35 million dollars in 1996 to defeat the Republicans” was followed the next cycle by the same headline adjusted to read, “40 million dollars in 1998” It showed 45 million in 2000 and so on. It might as well have said 100 million dollars for all the good it did. These were, and continue to be, efforts by Big Labor’s leadership to show how devoted they are to hating Republicans. For years this relationship worked well. Now it has turned to ashes. The AFL-CIO’s leaders lost sight of the welfare of its membership. They have become more concerned about golfing with Democrat leaders and continuing to share in the Democrat’s dwindling power pie, then providing for the people that pay their salaries. These displays of fealty to Democrat causes has been a festering problem for years and this past summer it led directly to a decrease in union membership and real power. Two of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO camp have spun away. This is a serious problem for the Democrats. Already the percentage of private sector workers in unions has dropped alarmingly from 15% just a few years ago to just under 8% today. As this decrease has been taking place, John Sweeney and his staff have been demanding more and more dues money from its local unions. Doing this has driven more and more workers away. The AFL-CIO’s Republican hating approach has run contrary to forty percent of the politics of their own membership. It was these workers that successfully caused the split. Disenchanted with John Sweeney’s insistence upon spending their money to support Democrats, workers have begun to walked away from the parent union. In a breathtaking display of arrogance, when he was asked to changes his ways last spring, Sweeney’s response was to issue a proclamation supporting gay marriage. These new, union spin off group wants nothing to do with be walking ATM machines for Howard Dean. Recently, underscore the seriousness of their determination to start playing politics on both sides of the street, one of the two biggest unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) endorsed Republican Michael Bloomberg for re-election as mayor of New York City. Consider this for a moment: The Democrats have yet to hold their primary and a union has endorsed a Republican in New York City, before the Democratic candidate has even emerged. What the SEIU is saying is clear, “We don’t care who you nominate. We’re not throwing good money after bad any longer”. My prediction here is that the Democrats will correctly surmise that there is little they can do about this situation and thus they will not try. The Soroses of the nation and Hollywood will make up the shortfall in contributions enabling the Democrats to make believe that this is no big deal, but certainly is.
10) The mantra that a Bush re-election will further isolate America from the world and thus cheat us of the benevolent instruction of our friends in Europe and the rest of the world.
The snide description of the military forces who have helped us and continue to help us in our fight against terrorism, as the “Coalition of the bribed” made great copy but little sense. Since catch phrases rather then substance make up the stock and trade of the Democrat/old media propaganda machine, the destruction of the idea that “the world hates America because George Bush is our president” is an important one. Today we see Sri Lanka and even Venezuela offering help along side of France and Germany as well as our old standbys Australia and England. The world does not hate us. As is the case here, the world’s old media hates us, but the people of these countries understand that when Superman has a cold they’ll all sneeze. My prediction here is that the Democrats will wait a while before dusting off this one and offering it for public consumption.
These are ten problems the Democrats must deal with now and in the coming months. Besides these there will be others. The unavoidable loss of Senate and Congressional seats that will come in November of next year, comes to mind. Right now we can easily see a series of wins and losses for both the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate that will bring the GOP’s majority up at least 2 more seats and conceivably 3 more seats. In the Congress we will see disaffected Democrats quitting in frustration at seeing no let up in the ebbing of their power. Democrats in absolutely rock solid districts are taking flyers at running for local office. These are insiders. These are the people who know. Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey was the man in charge of recruiting new Democrats to run for Senate. He knows what’s not out there. He’s running away to step down and be a governor. I offer this essay because I share your frustration at having to listen to Idiotic “experts” saying stupid wishful thinking things like, “The presidents numbers are down so he’ll have to nominate a liberal to console the Democrats.” ;or “Bush will have to pull out of Iraq because everyone knows what a mess it is.” The Democrats have huge problems that run deep wide and continuously. It’s high time we started talking about their problems so we can hasten their demise as a party. It happened to the Whigs and it can happen to the Democrats.
There is little sense in listening to the mainstream old media in very many instances anymore. This is especially so when it comes to the state of today’s Democratic party. The old media writes laundry list article outlining how their party can bounce back, but rarely do they carefully detail the problems that really face the party.
These cheerleading pieces don’t tell “the troops” how bad things are because the writers want to help their party without being accused of spreading defeatist talk. As Yul Brenner’s The King and I character would exclaim doing this is a “Puzzlement!”
Since it is very unlikely that we will see an accurate description of the problems facing the Democrats as the summer gives way to the political wars of the fall, what follows is my view of their problems. Being on the other side I have no worries about dealing with charges of spreading defeatist talk among the left. I’d love to do so.
In any war controlling the time and place of your battles provides a priceless advantage. Being able to wait until you are fully prepared before being joined in a fight makes all the difference once the whistle blows.
The Democrats have lost the advantage of time and place they had enjoyed since the first Roosevelt administration. In the past the old media was almost always able to manager the news so as to provide the Democrats with a running start in most political crises. They could bury a story. They could highlight a story. They could simply ignore the news if that was what it took. Consider today’s Able Danger problem for the Democrats. The New York Times has tried ignoring the story. It has tried burying the story. It has tried censoring it by excluding the words “Able Danger” from headlines for fear its “oh so erudite” readers would actually find it as they sunbathed in The Hamptons. Last year the old media assured Senator John F. Kerry that they would smother the charges from the Swift Boat Vets. They actually did among their dwindling readers, but charges that Mr.Kerry’s Viet Nam heroics were phony nevertheless bubbled up and into the public arena with lethal consequences. Everyday, since Katrina leveled New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the old media has been exposed as the slow ponderous dinosaur it truly is. The cable television twenty four hour news cycle is far ahead when it comes to showing us what is going on down there and the gap is widening. Monthly magazines are now sources of historic research. Weekly magazines are next in line to slip under the waves of information history. Ironically they have hastened their own decline by their public boasts of being able to provide John Kerry with 15 points on Election day. Apparently their belief in their own invulnerability had out run their common sense. Any claims of impartial reportage Time and Newsweek make these days evokes the same smiles we give five year old boys who announce that they want to be cowboys when they grow up. There is not confidence in their product.
The terrible destruction of New Orleans and the gulf areas of Mississippi and Alabama will drive the old media’s newspapers further into their consignment to irrelevance. While the print divisions of the Democrats attack army are focused on the problems on the ground, the new media has already moved on to what is going right. Within a few days and certainly by mid month talk of what was/is wrong will necessarily give way to the real stories. Even the old media will turn to examining the role of the Democrat controlled state of Louisiana and New Orleans. These stories will be ugly. Yet, I believe those stories will be over shadowed by the ones that demonstrate the best of the human spirit. An early favorite is the one about a strong willed and smart 19 year old man commandeering one of the hundreds of school buses left idle by the Mayor. The teenager then filled the bus with a full compliment of refugees and drove them to Houston. The new media will tell us stories like that. The old media will find them too inconvenient.
The old media’s rush to its usual over kill in all manners pertaining to any attack of George W. Bush leaves them nowhere to go. They have leveled every possible charge against him including actually blaming him for the hurricane itself. Once you insist that the president caused the hurricane, the only attack left would be a “secretly” taken group photograph proving his callousness and glee at the misery of poor Black people. I can see such a “photo shop” mock up now. It would show three men sipping mint juleps on the veranda of and “ole Miss” plantation great house. It would The President, Mississippi Governor Haley Barber, and the little man in top hat and tails from a monopoly board, laughing and lighting big cigars with $100.00 bills. Predictable some foaming at the mouth Bush haters would believe it, I’m sure. While Fox and a reluctant CNN are showing heart warming scenes of great human compassion the New York Times will have to follow suit or give us headlines predicting a shortage in the soybean crop somewhere around the world. Pity the old media at a time like this. Not even the Iraqis are cooperating. They are now dancing in their street chanting hosannas to America in gratitude for our sacrifices for them and the constitution they are getting because of America led by George W. Bush. Now to the specific problems that will have Democrats wanting to hide under their beds.
The multi-front problem
Among the several fronts they have opened in the last two months these loom largest and demand the most attention from the Democrats as they go into their forced prioritization of issues.
1) Cindy Sheehan. What started out with a promise of a possible 21st century Woodstock has turned on the Democrats. It has been led by a woman who has revealed herself to be so far out of the mainstream that even her status as the mother of a combat killed soldier has been disregarded by a large portion of the people her crusade was “sure” to awaken to the evils of George Bush and of course Halliburton. Now the Democrats can only hope that the horrors of Katrina can distract the nation from the repulsive language being spewed by the dangerous Mrs. Sheehan. My prediction is Sheehan will be the first one thrown overboard as the Democrats try to bale out their ship.
2) The Judge John Roberts confirmation hearings. With numbing predictability the Democrats have said the most outrageous things they could think of to try to drag Mr. Roberts through the mud. While it is indeed difficult to decide which attack on this good man is more ridiculous, one has to give strong consideration to the one that implies that since he once made a point of calling the Civil War the “War between the states” he is ergo a Confederate sympathizer and of course therefore an ardent supporter of slavery. Now that panic and blind hatred have compelled the Democrats and the old media to throw everything they possibly can at Judge Roberts, what is left to credibly say? The untimely death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist puts the Democrats in a very dangerous situation. With the swiftness of a striking tiger, the president has turn the issue into a huge plus by changing his nomination of Roberts to Chief Justice. This move has slammed the Senate Democrats down flat on their backs. They tried to argue that the president should wait on a nomination because the position of Chief Justice is so important. Thanks to a decisive stroke by George Bush, their “concerns” have been addressed. Now the Roberts hearing will force the Democrats to make a choice. They can try to stop Roberts by throwing more ridiculous charges at him and in doing so continue to re-enforce their image as the “No” party. This will show them to be devoid of anything but “No” to say, and push them further away from mainstream voters. Their other choice is to admit defeat on Roberts and risk upsetting a leftist fringe that grows bolder and more impatient with them by the week. We have even seen reports that the crazies on their left are threatening to destroy the party out of a sense of disgust over its current refusal to move even further to the left. My prediction is they will put up a face saving “fight” over Roberts and hope for the best knowing he will be confirmed.
3) The reemergence of the O’Connor opening. This is where the Democrats will have to fight as if their very political lives depended on the outcome because certainly it will. One thing about George W. Bush that has got to have sunk into even the most Kennedyesque of the Democrats is that while they can say George Bush is a “dopey frat boy” for the consumption of their George Soros and Michael Moore brigades, they act as if that were true at their own peril. Mr. Bush is a tough and smart politician. This opportunity to appoint another rock solid conservative to the Supreme Court, Ann Coulter notwithstanding, will not slip through his fingers. Old media and Democrat wishful thinking that he will appoint anyone less is just that, wishful thinking. The president will send up a strong conservative and the Democrats will fight him or more likely her with every tactic they can muster. Watch for old media efforts to make the nominee Edith Clement because she is from Louisiana. Of course what they will not say is that Judge Clement is not the most conservative person Mr. Bush can find. My prediction is that stopping the O’Connor replacement will be job number one for the Durbins and Kennedys of the Senate. They will violate their flimsy “no filibuster” pledge and the old media will try to paint them as modern day “Mr. Smiths”. It won’t work. The old media will burn any residual credibility it has left and in the end Bush and the GOP will prevail.
4) Iraq. At some point soon there will be a vote on the new Iraqi constitution. If it carries and at this point its rejection is by no means a sure thing, the war will take on a new luster. The new media will be able to project it as the general success it has always been and the old media will have some difficulty reversing the tide. This will be a serious blow to the Democratic psyche. They have lied about this issue from day one and painted themselves into a corner. All of their chips are in this basket. Being proved wrong on this will be devastating. The process of our winning this issue has begun already. We have begun to point to reduced violence in Iraq and an absence of further terror attacks on our soil as signs we are winning. It is worth noting that while the numbers of those “approving the way the war is going” are not especially encouraging, the question of whether the respondent has selected “disapprove” because he/she wants stronger action is rarely if ever asked. If I were asked such a question I would opt for honesty and say I did not approve, because I want our troops to be tougher and kill more insurgents. People who think about the world as I do would never support the “pullout sentiment” the old media tries to extrapolate from a “disapprove” response. Herein lies another problem for the old media, and their Democrat comrades, to iron out. False poll results are corroding the ability of Democrat strategists to plan their moves. The fact that the old media lies when it reports its poll findings is well established. Nationally respected pollster John Zogby was telling John Kerry he would win in a landslide as late as 3PM EST on Election day. The old media’s pollsters are still doing the same thing with results of today’s polls. Saying “look it’s not just us. Every poll, even Fox is saying the same thing.” doesn’t cut it because none are asking the “disapprove because I want kick ass and take names action” question. My prediction is that trashing America’s efforts in Iraq will remain a sacrament to the Democrats and they will have to continue to act as agents of Bin Laden lest they risk losing the support of the strongly anti American fringe who now control their daily agenda.
5) Managing Able Danger. This is one item that the old media has been hoping to keep under the radar. Nevertheless, the very nature of this issue will make it stifling it by neglect impossible in today’s world. Issues in the public arena sometimes take on a life of their own and this is one of them. There is nothing the old media will be able to do to hide the truth. Given the dizzying pace of events these days, it’s actually better that this does “run under the radar” while it ferments. When this one does pop up it has the potential to destroy the Democrat’s God Bill Clinton. If it gets hot enough we will see fanatical Democrat Kamikazes falling on their swords to protect their God-king. Those that wrote the memos come to mind. Jamie Gorelick can be a living saint in her world if she is willing to give her public life as a martyr for Bill Clinton and by extension, Senator Hillary Clinton. My prediction is that this will become a mid level priority for the Democrats. This is not to say that Able Danger it is not a potentially lethal blow, to contrary it certainly is. This is to say that the Democrats have no choice but to trust to the dwindling powers of the old media to bend this onrushing torrent of accusations against the Clintons. The dye is cast on this one. There will be no escaping this one.
6) Covering the incompetence of the on the ground Democrats in Katrina’s path. While Haley Barber was calling out his National Guard on Monday night, Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco was disregarding George Bush’s personal phone call recommending that she do the same. While the mayor of New Orleans was on the air spewing vulgar street language about the president, some those members of his police department who had not quit ( reportedly 200 did) and run away were looting the every stores they were sworn to protect. While the mayor was doing his foul mouthed “oh woes is me” act on radio, his fleet of school buses sat idle and transported no one to safety. If it had not been for a smart teenage boy who simply took a bus and used it to take a full compliment of refugees to safety, we would not know about this failing on the part of Mayor Nagin. The truth about the Sierra Club’s successfully lobbying against a levee that might have saved the City of New Orleans will come out. The stories of Louisiana National Guardsmen and New Orleans City police being playing cards because there was no leadership to get them to where they were needed, will come out. The fact that the City’s police are so ill trained that they resigned in panic and cowardice will come out. The old media and the Democrats have staked out a position of “No” once again and will have very little to stand on when the after action report is written. They have once again put themselves way out on a limb with the crazy Bush haters and they will end up with egg on their faces when the truth comes out. Once this is all sorted out, the initial failings of the federal response will look like complaints about the lack of snow shovels compared to the gross incompetence of those charged with making the first response to this disaster. Senator Clinton has already obliged us and called for a commission to find out what went wrong. She doesn’t seem to understand that you should be careful what you pray for because you might get it. My prediction is that time will help the Democrats here but it won’t help much. They will put this far down on their on “hills to die on”. The great potential danger for the party of Ole Hickory is that since the Republicans run the show these days, they will recognize what a problem this will be for them and release the findings next October. The Democrats will be forced to go into next year’s elections with all of Blanco and Nagin’s failures hanging around their necks.
7) The oil supply problem. The truth is that if we had started to drill in Alaska in 1995 when the current push for this advantage started, Alaska would be supplying one third of our daily shortfall of 3 million barrels of crude . Everyday we use 20 million barrels of crude oil and we produce just 17 million of those barrels. Reasonable estimates of the value of Alaskan drilling say we can get a million barrels a day from its frozen ground. Since 1995, people have gotten smarter and now understand who is to blame for there being no new oil refineries built in this country in the past twenty years. People know we can also drill cleanly off the coast of California and the Great Lakes and off Florida. People are beginning to make the connection between the Democrats having sold their souls to the crazy fringe of the environmentalist movement and their $3.50 per gallon gas. It has taken a long time but we are now at that point and it will get worse not better for the Democrats and their masters in the Sierra Club. The argument that a natural disaster would blow down oil pumping rigs in these waters and cause a major oil spill has now been thoroughly disproved. If the workings of a category 5 hurricane did not cause crude oil to drain unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico, it is all but certain that nothing will. The Democrats are in a very tight bind now. For years Americans have been like the slowly boiling frog we learned about in college behavioral science class. The frog, who sits in water that is only slightly increasing in temperature, will stay there unaware of the danger and finally boil to death. When the next frog is placed in the now boiling water he jumps right out. Katrina and our friends at the Sierra Club have now dropped America in the boiling water of increasing gas prices and we will certainly demand action to get us out of it. My prediction is that this will be the fight they take up immediately after they lose the Roberts and O’Connor replacement fights.
8) Republican progress among Blacks and Hispanics and the voter fraud issue. In another ostrich-like denial of the facts, the old media rushed to the defense of the Democrats last fall with tortured logic to explain away the ground gained among Black and Hispanic voters by George Bush and the Republicans. They mocked the “puny” 2 point increase in overall Black votes for the GOP while purposefully refusing to look at where those votes came from. Absent the large urban centers that could turn out one third of the Blacks they do and still comfortably elect Democrats, the gains were real and important. In California fully 18% of Blacks voted for Bush and the numbers are just as encouraging in Maryland and Georgia and other places. This is the reason why George Bush showed improvement in his numbers in 47 states. These votes came from somewhere. Blacks turned out in numbers above national average so one has to ask for whom did these newly turning out Black voters pull the lever? The Help America Vote Act is a slowly tightening noose around the Democrats collective neck. Their efforts to convince people and courts that minority voters need not show photo id in order to vote, as everyone else has to, have fallen flat. As states that have finally seen control of their legislatures move into Republican hands, one of the first orders of business is to address the issue of Democrat voter fraud. The stories, while unknown to adherents of the old media, are all too familiar to those of us that prefer truthful unbiased news. Without voter fraud there are a number of districts in the country that will be lost to the Democrats. My prediction is that this will be put on the back burner and also entrusted to the old media to try and stir up resentment among minorities on this issue. There really is no choice here. The Democrats simply can’t get to this one right now, even as they watch some of their worst voter fraud cesspools drained. Milwaukee comes to mind. Getting vagrants to vote Democrat in exchange for cigarettes is hardly an honest campaign tactic.
9) The break up of Big Labor. The situation in the house of Big labor is a microcosm of the problem for the Democrats on the national level only it presents a more dangerous threat. Beginning in say, May or June of 1996 and repeating every even year spring until today, the leaders of Big Labor of sworn blood oaths to dislodge the GOP grip on control of the Congress. The same headlines have appeared each election cycle with only the amount to be spent changing to reflect inflation. “ John Sweeny ( president of the AFL-CIO) says he’ll spend 35 million dollars in 1996 to defeat the Republicans” was followed the next cycle by the same headline adjusted to read, “40 million dollars in 1998” It showed 45 million in 2000 and so on. It might as well have said 100 million dollars for all the good it did. These were, and continue to be, efforts by Big Labor’s leadership to show how devoted they are to hating Republicans. For years this relationship worked well. Now it has turned to ashes. The AFL-CIO’s leaders lost sight of the welfare of its membership. They have become more concerned about golfing with Democrat leaders and continuing to share in the Democrat’s dwindling power pie, then providing for the people that pay their salaries. These displays of fealty to Democrat causes has been a festering problem for years and this past summer it led directly to a decrease in union membership and real power. Two of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO camp have spun away. This is a serious problem for the Democrats. Already the percentage of private sector workers in unions has dropped alarmingly from 15% just a few years ago to just under 8% today. As this decrease has been taking place, John Sweeney and his staff have been demanding more and more dues money from its local unions. Doing this has driven more and more workers away. The AFL-CIO’s Republican hating approach has run contrary to forty percent of the politics of their own membership. It was these workers that successfully caused the split. Disenchanted with John Sweeney’s insistence upon spending their money to support Democrats, workers have begun to walked away from the parent union. In a breathtaking display of arrogance, when he was asked to changes his ways last spring, Sweeney’s response was to issue a proclamation supporting gay marriage. These new, union spin off group wants nothing to do with be walking ATM machines for Howard Dean. Recently, underscore the seriousness of their determination to start playing politics on both sides of the street, one of the two biggest unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) endorsed Republican Michael Bloomberg for re-election as mayor of New York City. Consider this for a moment: The Democrats have yet to hold their primary and a union has endorsed a Republican in New York City, before the Democratic candidate has even emerged. What the SEIU is saying is clear, “We don’t care who you nominate. We’re not throwing good money after bad any longer”. My prediction here is that the Democrats will correctly surmise that there is little they can do about this situation and thus they will not try. The Soroses of the nation and Hollywood will make up the shortfall in contributions enabling the Democrats to make believe that this is no big deal, but certainly is.
10) The mantra that a Bush re-election will further isolate America from the world and thus cheat us of the benevolent instruction of our friends in Europe and the rest of the world.
The snide description of the military forces who have helped us and continue to help us in our fight against terrorism, as the “Coalition of the bribed” made great copy but little sense. Since catch phrases rather then substance make up the stock and trade of the Democrat/old media propaganda machine, the destruction of the idea that “the world hates America because George Bush is our president” is an important one. Today we see Sri Lanka and even Venezuela offering help along side of France and Germany as well as our old standbys Australia and England. The world does not hate us. As is the case here, the world’s old media hates us, but the people of these countries understand that when Superman has a cold they’ll all sneeze. My prediction here is that the Democrats will wait a while before dusting off this one and offering it for public consumption.
These are ten problems the Democrats must deal with now and in the coming months. Besides these there will be others. The unavoidable loss of Senate and Congressional seats that will come in November of next year, comes to mind. Right now we can easily see a series of wins and losses for both the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate that will bring the GOP’s majority up at least 2 more seats and conceivably 3 more seats. In the Congress we will see disaffected Democrats quitting in frustration at seeing no let up in the ebbing of their power. Democrats in absolutely rock solid districts are taking flyers at running for local office. These are insiders. These are the people who know. Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey was the man in charge of recruiting new Democrats to run for Senate. He knows what’s not out there. He’s running away to step down and be a governor. I offer this essay because I share your frustration at having to listen to Idiotic “experts” saying stupid wishful thinking things like, “The presidents numbers are down so he’ll have to nominate a liberal to console the Democrats.” ;or “Bush will have to pull out of Iraq because everyone knows what a mess it is.” The Democrats have huge problems that run deep wide and continuously. It’s high time we started talking about their problems so we can hasten their demise as a party. It happened to the Whigs and it can happen to the Democrats.
up.
) she has. I am very curious, however, in finding out why you are to opposed to her (and you're likely to be the best to elucidate the reasons, compared to the likes of PAD or Scrubking).