As Predictable as a Half-Assed Similie

Well, you all knew this was coming. Hardly any point in bringing it up.

Whenever Democrats lose elections -- and they've been on a royal tear on that score for a while now -- they and their liberal media Spirit Squad have three go-to explanations:

1. We didn't get our message out.

2. We're just too goshdarn principled and nice and civil to fight the mean Republicans as viciously as they fight us.

And, of course, their favorite:

3. We're just too smart for the American public; we've got to learn to dumb it down a bit, so that the troglodytes and neanderthals will understand that their lives will be better if we're controlling them.

Yawn. A friend of mine in college was turned down by a girl he really, really liked; she told him, get this, that she liked him too much to date him.

And of course he believed that, because it was pleasing to his ego to believe it. And I had to listen to him for a whole night carrying on about how sick and twisted it was that she wouldn't date a guy because she liked him just too damn much.

And I'm thinking, "Um, you know, there's another possibility you're missing here. Maybe she actually likes you too little to date you, and she's just being nice. Sounds crazy, I know, but think it through."

So, here we go again. Right on schedule. The American public likes liberals too damn much to actually elect them to the Presidency, or even to the Senate.

Over at the amateur leftist webzine Slate, the silly partisan William Saletan just can't get over how sick and twisted the voters are:

Simple but Effective
Why you keep losing to this idiot.

...

[I]f you're dissatisfied with Bush—or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory—you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off?

I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't—and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire—don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

...

What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. ....

If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry. You already have legions of people with preparation, stature, expertise, and nuance ready to staff the executive branch of the federal government. You don't need one of them to be president. You just need somebody to win the White House and appoint them to his administration. And that will require all the simplicity, salesmanship, and easygoing humanity they don't have.

But of course the Democrats won't.

Why not?

Well, the trouble is that, while everything William Saletan says is undoubtedly true, he's just too darn smart for the Democrats, and they like him just too much to actually take his advice.

I swear. Sometimes this less resembles a coherent political movement than it does some sort of positive-self-esteem cult. So much of liberal politics is identity politics, and not of the normal race or religion or sexuality kind.

It's an identity politics of ego-stroking, the idea that if you think the right things and vote the right way you are Very Intelligent and Quite Cultured and Morally Superior to the common trash that you pass in the street on your way to Starbucks.

If we just give them certificates-- duly signed by, say, the Secretary of the Interior -- declaring them Better Than All the Rest of Us Lumpenproletariat Trogs, do you think they'll go away, at least as far as politics? That seems to be all they're really after, anyway. Why not just give to them what they so desperately crave and get them out of our hair for forty years or so?

Update: Kimberly/#2 Pencil rips:

I love how lefties constantly insist that IQ is a fallacy, standardized testing is unfair, emotions are more important than intelligence, and such things simply don't matter (especially when testing is used for education reform).

But deep down, they're all just waiting for the moment to scream, "MY IQ IS HIGHER THAN YOURS! So you have to listen to ME because I'm SMART and you're DUMB!" Or something such as we get with all the sore losers today going on about how the "dumb Southerners" voted for Bush. The minute they lose, it's all about IQ.

I've noticed that. Then again, I think there's a touch of that in everyone. I'm proud to be kinda-smart, but when I meet someone who's smarter than I am, I immediately dismiss him as some sort of head-up-his-ass Poindexter.

My rule is that it matters than I'm smarter than Person X, but if Person Y is smarter than me, really, that extra bit of intelligence is entirely wasted, and is actually a drawback, when you think about it. He should spend more time outdoors, hiking or something, like I don't.

Or, as George Carlin (hate him now, but on-point) noted, anyone who drives slower than you is an asshole, but anyone who drives faster is a fucking maniac.

posted by Ace at 06:48 PM

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