Barbarians at the Gate
What has come to be known as the barbarian wing of the democrat party is in a state of shrill denial, as they scream and carry on, all the while seeking to curry favor and change opinion in that cohort of the American electorate known as the swing voters. Their frustration is understandable. What is not, is their irrational ranting and raving. After all, if one seeks to sway opinion, it is obvious that reasoned debate, and verifiable fact, are a much surer route to that goal.What moves them past the limits of polite discourse seems to be a belief that, if only the electorate would hear their message, their candidates would win in a landslide. What they seem unable to face is, it is their ideas that are falling out of favor. Poor liberals - they believe themselves, with some justification, to be smarter and more aware than the mass of the American polity. They consider themselves the elite, whether due to their superior creativity, intelligence, or net worth. Artists, intellectuals, and millionaires have always prided themselves as being in front of the curve of public opinion. Reality today is, they are behind it. As socialist states and systems everywhere in the world are crumbling or turning to the market, the leftists themselves continue to consider their ideas superior to market forces. Obviously, to them, their superior intelligence must be a better arbiter of truth than the anarchy of the masses and the competition of their capital. But in what is the ultimate example of reality beating out logic, trillions of dollars chasing willing buyers, or millions of voters making up their own minds, make better decisions than a dozen professors in a smoke-free room ever could.
As usual, Victor Davis Hanson makes the case better and more eloquently than anyone. The frustration of the left is palpable, as they have made clear that any election result other than the one that they believe to be correct must clearly be due to voter fraud and manipulation. Their candidates for high office believe that they can be elected using the Perot strategy of merely pointing out problems, without any need to prescribe solutions. We need only to believe that Senator Kerry is so smart that whatever he does will be done more competently than anything George W. Bush has done, or would do. The proven fact that Bush is smarter than Kerry, and the track record that Kerry could get nothing of consequence done in twenty years in the Senate, fail to make an impression in the elite minds of these people. Like Mike Dukakis before him, they believe that this election is about competence, not ideology. They fail to understand that Perot and Dukakis not only lost, they lost by a lot. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It is leftist theology. These true believers will be shocked, shocked, come November third. We can only hope that their defeat is massive enough that they get, or at least accept, the message.