The coming Democrat election disaster

It's beginning to take form, and it's as easy to see as A-B-C.

"A" is for Apathy

Just like the Republican base was demoralized in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic base seems increasingly despondent. Polls are bad enough - even from in-the-bag media organizations like NPR:

NPR concentrated on the 435 congressional districts and asked voters in those districts with an incumbent on the ballot: “As you may know, there will be an election for your representative to Congress in November this year. Do you think you will definitely vote to re-elect [your incumbent House representative] to Congress, probably vote to re-elect [your incumbent House representative], probably vote for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else?”

...

In Democratic districts, 56% said they will not re-elect the incumbent.

In Republican districts, 39% said they won’t vote to re-elect the incumbent.

39% opposed to their incumbent is very high in this land where re-election rates for the House have exceeded re-election rates for the Supreme Soviet. But 56% opposed is simply off the chart. Remember, these are Democratic districts, and they don't like their Democrat. Will they vote against him? Almost certainly not. Will they turn out and vote for him? Good luck with that. Democratic voter turnout will be very low this November, while Republicans and Independents are energized.

"B" is for Bungling

The media looks fed up with the incompetence coming from the White House. They even put up with the contemptuous way the Administration treated them, but now with the Gulf oil spill the cracks are appearing all over:

[The Left's] hatred and contempt for George Bush made them actually believe that he was every bit as stupid as they said he was. A village in Texas was missing its idiot, to be sure.

So it couldn’t be hard to improve handily on what he’d done as president. And what better person to do so than the smart, articulate, liberal candidate Obama? No experience necessary.

Well, as things have turned out, they are starting to learn that it’s not that simple. Obama’s handling of the oil spill is making Bush’s Katrina response look good, much to their anger and chagrin.

The media is already bleeding, and staked pretty much their entire reputation on getting Obama elected. They didn't report all sorts of things that are now clear to any fool who bothers to look. Do they turn on Obama, or on a massively unpopular Congress that passed a massively unpopular (and unread) Health Care bill? The Press is a Herd Creature, and the herd looks like it's starting to break. They have to blame someone, and political correctness suggests that they can't bring themselves to turn on Obama in a way that will hurt. But they'll need a target, and that target will be Congress: savaging incumbents will be popular, and will attract readers and viewers.

C is for Clinton

C is also for "Cunning". She'll be 65 in 2012; 69 in 2016. If she doesn't take on Obama in 2012 and he loses to the Republican, she'd run against an incumbent in 2016. Her shot is 2012.

This one is really interesting, because her supporters may be so turned off by the party that they won't vote even for her:

That vote they took [Health Care Reform], in as much secrecy as possible, rushing through an economy-killing piece of legislation that none of them even read, let alone comprehended, was the [Hellen Thomas] “Go back to Poland!” moment for every Democrat in office. They showed their true worth, abilities, and colors that day. Not a single one of them deserves to be in elected office.

So, this is an area where we have to break from the Clintons, whom we’ve supported and admired our entire political lives.

The Clintons, clearly, are trying to save the Democrat Party by propping up Democrats like Lincoln, and other moderates across the country. In the midst of the Democrat Civil War, the Clinton and the DLC are trying to save these Clintonian/Jacksonian Dems from not just angry voters, but the vitriol thrown at them by the Left.

It’s a continuation of what the Left started in 2008, actually, where Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, and others in the DNC hatched their plan to purge the party of moderates. They deliberately have alienated working class, rural, and conservative Democrats (now former Democrats) to drive the party squarely to the Left, putting radical Leftists in the nation’s driver’s seat for the first time in history.

The results speak for themselves.

The Clintons know a shellacking is coming in November. It’s sad and hilarious the Left doesn’t realize this, and keeps insisting the problem is that the Left just isn’t communicating its ideas better. No — the problem is that the Left’s ideas and agenda are insane and destructive, and that the tactics they employ to advance their pet projects are rooted in base thuggery, intimidation, fraud, and all things un-American. The electorate is having a visceral reaction to all of this, and just as Democrats purged the Clinton Coalition from the party in 2008, American voters are poised to purge Leftists from office in the fall.

And the problem for the DNC is that they rebranded ALL Democrats as Leftists in 2008. Proudly so.

The Clintons are trying to mitigate the damages to the party and save people like Lincoln, in the hopes that after the Obama Democrats fall, the Clintons can take back the party, move it back to the middle, rebuild it, and then probably try to run Hillary Clinton again in 2016 once Americans see Democrats as centrists again.

We just don’t think this will work.

We believe the Democrat Party is a dead man walking.

The Obama people did so much damage to the Democrat brand in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change that we don’t see any way for even the best Madison Avenue agencies to repackage the party and make it palatable enough for a Democrat to be trusted enough by the public to occupy the Oval Office again for another generation.

And this post is by Democrats, on a Democrat blog. It's a very long post, with a lot of comments, and you should absolutely RTWT.

These people are in the grip of the apathy described above, but Hillary is running out of time and opportunity. Come Thanksgiving, she will start to position herself as the savior of the Democratic Party, which will mean publicly throwing Obama's agenda under the bus. This will include Health Care Reform, although she'll position it as "badly done". The comparisons of Obama to Carter will then include Hillary playing the part of Ted Kennedy in a primary challenge. Unlike Kennedy, she might win.

More sober heads are cautioning against overstating the Republican's chance in November. I think that things are much, much worse for the Democrats than anyone is saying, because turnout patterns will give Republicans a ten point advantage that they wouldn't normally have. I think that the Stupid Republican Party is fixin' to sweep the board in November.

I think that this is probably a Bad Thing, since the Republicans are likely to think that people are voting for them rather than against the Contemptible Democratic Party. Many people will feel the temptation of the tactical - a big win for Republicans. A more strategic play is to vote all incumbents out, because the message needs to be "we hate all of you".

Only when they fear us more than they are tempted by the existing power game rewards will we break them to our will.