Democratic Snore

I hope everyone had a happy and prosperous Scott Brown Day!

Everyone was a winner in our celebratory rounds here at Who Is IOZ?! But Tyler DiPietro, who has a blurgh about math-uhhhhmm-matics, deserves plaudits for pointing us to an hilarious Donk blog that we too often neglect, Pandagon, erstwhile home of L'Ezra Klein, current cavern of one Amanda Marcotte, who opines:

[W]hen Democrats are ineffectual, Republicans win. Not because of switch voters, but because the Democratic base gets demoralized.

Oh yeah, and because of swing voters. I don’t really think most American voters, Republican or Democratic, are stupid. Most vote their resentments or their hopes (Rs the former and Ds the latter, mostly), or their financial interests (tax cuts or social spending). But those people are pretty consistent voters. It’s the people who can swing an election that are dumb as bricks, and the Coakley campaign is a perfect example of this---it’s upsetting that you’re going to lose votes because of sports team affiliations, saying arrogant but kind of meaningless things, and other pointless mishaps. It’s frustrating that enough people to swing an election are motivated more by dumbfuck things like that rather than passing health care reform. But you know, Republicans and the good Democratic politicians are willing to sweep those votes up, and Coakley wasn’t, and the results were to be expected from that angle.

Caveat! I have in the past been guilty of calling AMERICA! an idiot stepchild and American citizens a murder of morons, porcine and complacent, sated with cheap goods and lousy entertainment, an embarrassment of bad manners and mediocrity, the most distressingly backward global hegemon since, well, the British. That said, I am no defender of democracy. I regard it warily. I cross to the other side of the street when it approaches in its baggy pants and oversized tee-shirts. Not because I am prejudiced, mind you. Not a bone in my body! Just to be on the safe side. Just to hedge my bets.

But Marcotte and the Gang, these are gals who believe. Believe in democracy. Believe in progress. Believe in America, its potential betterment, its perfectability. Also: in the inherent goodness and rightness of their plan, and since their own self-evident superiority is so . . . self-evident, any countervailing activity among the electorate must indicate some moral and intellectual failure on the part of the voters. Yes, the very foundation of our politics. Those fucking idiots.

What's interesting about her analysis is that it locates this moral imbecility solely in those voters who can be swayed by political campaigns. Party-line voters--Dems who pull the lever for vague hope; Goops who pull the lever for vague hate--are taken to be rational. Isn't adulthood, after all, little more than the solidification and cementing of cognitive biases? Those who waver, meanwhile, are damned fools, man-children, slobbering degenerates who cannot be trusted at the tiller of the ship of state.

Of course, had these voters chosen Madame Jokely, we would find Marcotte praising their sagacity. Yes, they may have wavered, but at last they came to understand that the GOP is jut the Party of NO and the Donk is gonna breathe life into the dust of health care. Obama is not a bought-and-sold corporate stooge. Though hemmed by institutional disfunction, the Dem congress is actually trying to get things done. And isn't that what we want? To get things done. To Govern! Lord, let us be governed. Forbid and forfend any pause in the increase of obligations and regulations.

Liberals were once fond of arguing that behind the patriotic gauze, Conservatives really hated America. They were always traducing its core, Constitutional values. It was a parochial but pithy observation that had, that has merit. On the other hand, liberals like Marcotte secretly despise the very system of representative government that they purport to venerate. They hate voters and think them ignorant. They believe in a sort of bowdlerized, near-universal false consciousness. They harp constantly on the poor fools who just don't know what's best for them, who are "dumb as bricks"! What an odd view of the best and noblest form of government, the highest development of human society yet to grace the Earth.

All together now on three. The food in this restaurant is terrible! And the portions! So small!