An email from our friend Jeanne A. E. DeVoto, states some obvious and not so obvious truths about the bipolar disorder currently afflicting the Democratic party:
Subject: What gets to me
...is that, as far as I can tell from here, the recall *wasn't partisan* until the election was over and the Democrats started trying to make it partisan.
The recall wasn't a popular idea because Californians had suddenly gotten it into their heads that they preferred Republicans; it was because everyone in California wanted Gray Davis ground up and sold as fiber supplement.
I doubt one voter in ten voted along party lines in the replacement election, and Ahnold (for that matter) could have run just as credibly as a fiscally-conservative Dem candidate and I doubt it would have changed the overall outcome.
But. As soon as it became clear that their man had lost, out come the core activists, screaming at the tops of their lungs about how the voters are dumb, we're going to recall Schwartzenegger immediately, this is all Bush's fault, and so on.
Now that's one thing. Core activists are a little crazy, that's why they spend so much energy on factionalism. [emphasis added.]
But here are the Democratic party leaders and spokescreatures, and they're doing exactly the same thing. Bob Mulholland, Terry McAuliffe, that crack from John Vasconcellas about how voters who would do such a thing as elect a Republican don't deserve his service so he might not bother going back to the legislature, that crack from Sheila What's-her-name about how she doesn't think she'll bother going to the State of the State... because the governor's a Republican.
What kind of fool takes a non-partisan situation and makes sure the voters will see it as partisan, AFTER it's clear that their party will be on the losing side if partisanship comes into it? Do they not understand that the voters' feelings about Gray, heretofore not particularly directed at Democrats qua Democrats, are about to be? Do they not realize they are shooting themselves in both feet? --
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed@jaedworks.com http://www.jaedworks.com
What does not kill us makes us stranger.
