Election Analysis: Winners and Losers and Winning Losers and Losing Winners and…Nov 04 '04 (Updated Sep 08 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Here's the post-mortem, whilst the Democratic Party holds its wake.
… Well, you get the post-mortem drift, right down to who won by losing by winning. Or not. Anyway. To the post-mortem – though this cannot, obviously, be anything but a brief overview. LOSERS: The legacy media. I need hardly explain. LOSERS: The exit polls. In 2000, VNS imploded. In the 2002 midterms, it decomposed. The new version for 2004 was a total disaster. There just might be a moral in here, you think? WINNERS: Bloggers on the right. It was a good year for the pajamahadeen. LOSERS: Bloggers on the left, who were not only stupid, offensive, and wrong on the numbers (see further Kos, JMM, Oliver Willis, Atrios, &c), but also were played for fools by those who disseminated faked poll and ‘exit poll’ numbers (see also: Wonkette). LOSER: Andrew Sullivan. Months before the election, regardless of which way it might go, it had become evident that Sullivan had jumped the shark. The only charitable explanation is medical. LOSER: Terry McAuliffe. WINNER: Hillary. ‘But wait,’ you say, ‘McAuliffe is the Clinton Man at the DNC, and the sharks are circling!’ Silly child. There is nothing more dangerous than being a friend of the Clintons. Their enemies are much, much safer. McAuliffe did his job, and was always expendable. Meanwhile, John Kerry is NOT an incumbent in 2008, Ted Kennedy is a footnote of history, and the Clinton wing is still firmly grasping the organizational levers of power. Howard Dean? Who dat? A vague memory. [UPDATE: Okay, so I was wrong. Instead, he is a farce who is, for the GOP, the Gift That Keeps On Giving.] WINNER: The junior senator from Illinois, Mr Obama. LOSER: The junior senator from Illinois, Mr Obama. Remember, the book value starts dropping as soon as the new car leaves the lot. Moreover, now the senator has to live up to his centrist, values-laden campaigning and his centrist positions. If he abandons them, he becomes Just Another Hack. If he doesn’t, he’s liable to become as popular at caucuses as Zell Miller was. Irony lives! LOSER: Nancy Pelosi. Watch her implode. And people complain about GEPHARDT losing ground for the party? WINNER: Tom Daschle. Obviously, he doesn’t think so now. Ask him in six months, though. LOSER: Senator Reid of Nevada. As minority leader, Harry the Dim Dim Bulb From Searchlight Reid’ll be in the same spot Tom Daschle was, a Democrat in a blood-red state. The only real reason Chris Dodd refused the poisoned chalice is because being minority leader is a thankless job at the best of times; when the party is engaged in all-out internecine warfare, it’s hell on earth. When, in addition, your own state votes for the other party all the time, well…. LOSERS: The other red-state Democrats in the Senate, especially the four from the South. It’s going to be cold and lonely where they are. WINNERS/LOSER EITHER WAY: Everyone involved in the minority whip contest. Durbin, Dorgan, it’s Russian roulette. Especially for Senator Dorgan (D-ND), who’s in the Daschle box: North Dakota is as ‘red’ for W and the GOP as is South Dakota. WINNER: Joe Lieberman. Few men have ever been better positioned to say, ‘I told you so.’ WINNER: John Kerry, whose unexpectedly gracious and patriotic concession speech gave him his dignity back and made him more popular than he’s been since he was in prep school. LOSER: John Edwards, for reasons too many to count. See preceding entry for one reason. I am sorry, though, to hear that his wife is unwell. No one deserves that. WINNER: Bill Richardson, quite likely the next Democratic presidential nominee. LOSER: Ed Rendell, who’s going to be in Club Fed if he keeps this crap up. LOSERS: Everyone who committed, encouraged, winked at, ignored, or was unwittingly affected by vote fraud. Something must be done. LOSERS: The ‘youth vote.’ WINNERS: The ‘youth vote,’ in that no one ever has to live with the consequences of inaction. LOSERS: The hard left, the moonbats, &c. LOSERS: The hard right. Pat who? The other Pat who? Isolationism? Whazzat? And the New Mark Hanna, Mr Rove, is getting close to having numbers firmed up that will prise the evangelical grip from the GOP throat: they are on their way to useful-but-not-necessary. WINNERS: Paradoxically enough, social conservatives. This time. Why? Because … LOSERS: Leftists who believe in judicial legislation. They finally pushed it too far. Hello, backlash. WINNERS: Assuming the center-right is now firmly GOP and permanently increased in number, only to grow, why, Senator McCain and Rudy Giuliani and others of like mind – Mitt Romney, even, perhaps? – are in far better position in the primaries; and there’s no social-conservative presidential timber out there, in case you missed seeing the wood for the trees. LOSERS: The moonbat-left wing of the Democratic Party. They didn’t bolt, and they weren’t enough. The center-right wing did, and would have been. Thus … WINNERS: The DLC and the Democratic right, especially the social centrists who are foreign policy and defense hawks. WINNERS: Marc Racicot and Ed Gillespie. ’Nuff said. WINNERS: Tony Blair and John Howard. LOSERS: Chirac et Cie. REALLY BIG LOSERS: Kofi Annan and Benon Sevan. REALLY BIG WINNERS: Hamid Karzai and Iyad Allawi. HUGE HONKING LOSERS: Those deservingly doomed thugs in Fallujah. BOOK THE DNC OUGHT HAVE STUDIED: David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. SCHOLAR THE DNC OUGHT HAVE HIRED: Walter Russell Mead. POLITICIAN THE DNC OUGHT HAVE LISTENED TO: Zell, when they still had time to fix things. BOOK THE RNC OBVIOUSLY MEMORIZED: Zell’s A National Party No More. WINNERS: The whole country, really, in one particular area at the very least: we all win in that, as Arafat heads for Hell, there is neither an election contest, nor a lame-duck and a transition team trying to share responsibility and react together. LOSER: The Guardian, which did so much to improve W’s showing in Ohio. LOSER: Arlen Specter, who may soon wish he’d retired. WINNER: Evan Bayh, who’ll have suitors lined up into the hall in hopes he’ll be the next Zell Miller. He may well be. WINNER: Blanche Lincoln. Ditto. LOSER: Jim Jeffords, the first rat ever to flee to a sinking ship. BIG, FAT LOSERS: Al Franken and Michael ‘Tubby Riefenstahl’ Moore. LOSERS WITH A BLACK EYE APIECE TO PROVE IT: CBS and Dan Rather. LOSER WHO REEKS LIKE KIM-CHI: Kim Jong-Il. LOSER CAUGHT RED-HANDED: Mohammed El-Bareidi. (Dishonorable mention: Ed Rendell and his pet wardens.) WINNER: Silvio Berlusconi. LOSER: Jose ‘Tap-A-Zero’ Zapatero. WINNER: Israel. LOSER: Israel. C’mon, the Usual Suspects were going to Blame-the-Jews anyway, no matter what happened. LOSER: Zogby. WINNERS: Pew, Mason-Dixon, and SV. WINNER WHO IS GUARANTEED TO GLOAT: Dick Morris. LOSERS: Democratic 527s and their moneymen (oh, Mr Soros…), who delivered no bang and few whimpers for all those bucks. WINNER: The GOP GOTV effort. The elephants owned the ground-game this year. LOSERS: Election-contest lawyers. Oh, well, even sitting and waiting is billable time, right, boys? LOSER: CNN. WINNER: FNC. WINNERS WHO MAY NOT QUITE REALIZE IT – YET: Catholics, Hispanics, Blacks, and Jews. And any other group that stops letting a party take them for granted. Hellloooooo, leverage. WINNERS: Karen Hughes and Karl Rove. LOSER PERMANENTLY BRANDED WITH AN ‘L’ ON HIS FOREHEAD: Bob Shrum. And of course, we may close with the Big Awards: GLOBALLY HUGE WINNERS: The American armed forces and their personnel, past, present, and future. WORLD-HISTORIC LOSERS HEADED FOR THE ASH-HEAP of HISTORY: Osama, Zarqawi, and all their acquaintance. Not a bad day’s work for a rainy Tuesday in November.  |
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