All this talk about Kerry lately got me thinking
that the real problem, on both sides of the polit-
ical fence, is attachment to the past. The Christo-
Republicans seem to want to return America to some
idealized Ozzie and Harriet past in which the
Collective American Identity was clearly defined,
and so were its enemies. And the Democrats seem
to counter this by being so averse to their own past
defeats at the hands of these backward-looking
Republicans that they get sidelined into protracted
arguments about how the defeats weren't really
defeats.
They were defeats. The Republicans WON in the last
two elections, hands-down. It doesn't MATTER that
they won as a result of dirty tricks and fraudulent
vote tabulation; they still WON. Seems to me that
the aversion many Democrats have to accepting this
is hurting them badly, and hurting the country at
the same time.
What ever happened to the idea of reacting to a
failure in the past by trying to learn from it and
come up with a better strategy for the future?
Too many Democrats seem locked into either denial
("We didn't really lose...the election was stolen")
or the same tactics that have been used against them
("Since we obviously can't win an election on our
own merits, let's put our energy into impeaching
the President").
It seems to me that Democrats won in the past with
leaders who had a vision of what to do about the
Here And Now, and how that would help to shape a
better future. Kennedy, FDR, and to some extent
Clinton all had that quality. And who did they run
against George W. Bush? A man with a record of
rarely rocking the boat on *any* issue, and who
allowed himself to get sucked into obvious attempts
to get him to focus on the past rather than bringing
the focus back to Here And Now, and proposing actual
Here And Now solutions. The fault is *theirs*, not
the Republicans'. Duh. You want to win? Pick a
winner.
Here And Now rocks, in my opinion. The US is going
to remain firmly locked into its past until someone
appears on the political scene who has gotten over
his or her attachment to the past and can help
others to do the same thing by focusing on Now.
Unc, ranting on a Monday morning, but at least
in the Now of that Monday morning... :-)
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