Dark Messenger

Where’s my rent-a-riot?

Where’s my firebreathing count-every-vote candidate?

Where’s my victory?

A demoralized blogosphere is not a pretty sight.

When it became clear that our GOTV mega-bomb was a dud; we were going to get spanked at the national, state, and local levels all over the country; we were going to lose the popular vote by an enormous margin…

…the will to sneak a victory in Ohio by any means necessary evaporated…

…and Democrat postings dissolved into bitterness, blame, and denial.

One person who can’t be blamed is John Kerry.

He was a good candidate, he ran a strong campaign, he won the debates, and he closed strong.

We did a good job, too, except for the non-appearance of the much-heralded slacker vote.

We didn’t lose it.

George W. Bush won it.

Or rather, Karl Rove won it.

He turned chicken manure into chicken salad, taking one of the worst presidents in history, saddled with a faltering economy and a failed war and a constitutional aversion to telling the truth…

…and engineered a convincing victory…

…when conventional models, common sense, and elite opinion told us this lousy president should be a one term aberration.

Of course, there were some brilliant tactical moves, like slotting the base-energizing anti-gay marriage initiatives on 11 state ballots.

And the institutional advantages of redistricting and control of key statehouses.

We knew about these challenges, and our GOTV model was supposed to overcome them.

But we didn’t, not by a long shot.

Sometimes democracy tells you things you don’t want to hear.

That’s why it’s so valuable.

Yesterday’s election told us that a large percentage of the electorate is comfortable with a George Bush presidency.

On a tactical level, I think that awareness of the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq and the reappearance of bin Laden backfired in the most remarkable way possible.

Reappearance of the 9/11 boogeyman, instead of heightening anxiety and evoking an impulse for change, reawakened nostalgia for the aftermath of the attack, with Bush blathering on his megaphone above the rubble, and his approval levels at 90%...

…before we threw it all away on Iraq.

By turning back the clock, we are able to retreat to the safe ground of “victims”, and pretend that we’re not occupying the morally compromised territory of “invader”, “dictator”, “torturer”, “fool”, and “liar”.

Nevertheless, you can’t call that many people “deluded”.

You can’t even call them “Republicans” or “Independents”.

In the exit poll I saw, Bush won the party crossover race by three points: 8% of Democrats voted for Bush, versus 5% of Republicans for Kerry.

There’s a consistent, deeply felt worldview at work here, one that somehow found reassurance and reinforcement in the weak, flawed person of George W. Bush.

The pundits are buzzing about those mysterious “values” that somehow compelled 59,000,000 Americans to vote against what you and I consider their own interests, common sense, and decency.

I think “values” is a code word, like “Dred Scott decision” for a collection of more selfish and less admirable attributes.

“Values” can be a principled flag of resistance against the transformative, redistributive impulses of 20th century American liberalism.

“Values” is also a cynical flag of convenience, meant to occupy the political high ground and dignify and legitimize the practice of an otherwise mean-spirited, polarizing discourse that ill befits the world’s only superpower and the richest nation on earth.

It’s a mindset founded on self-interest and self-serving laissez faire ideology leavened with poor-little-rich-guy-victimization,and garnished with Fox News opinions and pious self-righteousness.

Republicans want to believe that responsibility, pain, costs, and consequences can and should always be outsourced, at least beyond the red heart of the homeland.

And it’s George Bush’s job to keep the wolf from the door, or at least busy devouring somebody else’s sheep for the time being.

An insurmountable percentage of the electorate will only accept national unity on these terms.

And can we really blame them?

Instead of empowering us — I’m talking especially about the blogosphere here — the election delegitimized us.

We didn’t just get the numbers wrong. Dazzled by the glamour of the internets and seduced by the vision of 150,000,000 liberally-inclined cell-phones, we got the election dynamic wrong.

We misread the political will of a huge chunk of the electorate: its willingness to support Bush, and its adamantine imperviousness to our demands for engagement and sacrifice.

We assumed that the Democrats possessed enough political capital that America would vote on an ABB basis and trust us to work out the details.

In fact it wasn’t a safe call.

The Republicans have a logical, proven plan for running a deeply divided country: a de facto Red over Blue dictatorship.

Our only plan to obtain the active support or passive acquiescence of conservatives was to cow them with a red-white-and-blue landslide — a landslide that landed on us instead.

Maybe there was as much wishful thinking in our expectations of political success as there were in our election estimates.

For the time being, we’re the outliers, not the vanguard.

Democracy isn’t our friend and fellow traveler anymore.

It’s a dark, stern messenger at our side. Like Death with his scythe.

Every two years — every electoral cycle — we’ll get that tap on the shoulder: a bitter, necessary reminder about how far and where we can go.

We’re a minority.

A minority that has traditionally relied on the rhetoric and votes of majority rule to justify and implement its agenda.

A minority that now will have to re-examine its dependence on the national government as a tool for social good and national progress, and temper its faith in democracy as a reliable mechanism for mobilization and expression of progressive ideals.

Yes, we’re a minority.

But a minority of 55,000,000 united in an understanding of what’s right and good.

One whose power we will have to leverage — and husband — inside our Blue Bantu-stans with clear-eyed ruthlessness and energy while deciding what combination of circumstances, candidates — and accommodation — may give us a shot at national power again.

How do we keep faith with ourselves and each other?

Listen to the dark messenger at your shoulder.

And maybe, if we listen very hard…

We might get somewhere.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.