Flash back to the first term of George W. Bush on September 25, 2002. Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle is standing on the Senate floor mad as hell. The news channels that night lead with: “In a blistering salvo delivered on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle lashed out at Bush, saying the administration was doing just that and had impugned Senate Democrats in the process. Daschle, D-South Dakota, read through a litany of comments from administration and GOP figures about Iraq, including one from Bush who was quoted by The Washington Post Wednesday as saying the Senate was "not interested in the security of the American people." The Senate is controlled by Democrats. “Not interested in the security of the American people?" Daschle said. "You tell Sen. Inouye he's not interested in the security of the American people. You tell those who fought in Vietnam and in World War II they're not interested in the security of the American people. That is outrageous. Outrageous. The president ought to apologize." (CNN.com)
The funny thing was that Daschle didn’t deliver a “blistering salvo” at all. When he spit out the words “outrageous” it wasn’t in a raised voice or with a slam on the podium with his fist. He stood there and just look, I dunno, miffed, irritated, like he just got a bad wedgie from the school jock.
And that was what a Democrat looked like mad(?) I just imagined the threatened pinch was gonna come next in the speech. The Democratic Party talked about getting mad. But never did.
So we lost in 2002 and then again in 2004 because there were too many that run the campaigns and the think-tanks that fought like Joe did in those movies.
I always laugh (inside because if you did it in their face they get insulted) when someone says if we had gotten 24,000 more votes in Ohio or whatever the number is this week, everything would have been different. Nah.
Every election cycle since Karl Rove showed up, the press and Rove spell out in clear, bullet-point releases what their plan of attack is going to be in the next election. And each time the Democrats end up the day after the election scratching their heads among the devastation going, “Wow- how did that happen??” The Democratic Party of 2004 should have blown away the GOP and we all know it.
The question is this: Are we going to do it again this year?
At some point, our party needs to dump the people with no balls and go for it. Follow our guts and just speak the truth. We have already seen the DC press corp start fawning over Senator McCain because, well, he IS the “straight-talking express”, right? So we already know that he’ll be given a pass on any flip-flop or back-peddle because, well, he’s McCain.
If we back candidates that aren’t “straight-talking” but are instead “poll-talking”, we’ll lose again. It won’t matter how much money we have or not. The American people want some blunt talk. Not safe talk.
We have to stop listening to and hiring the people within our Party that keep us as The Besser Party.