Necessary Roughness

Not much intellectual capital being spent on the opinion page of the Newark (Ohio) Advocate these days. The only article on the web site today was Democrats lack a streamlined message (link dead), by Ric Bolton in Granville. All quotes are complete, with the author’s grammatical errors. I feel guilty about even commenting on this, but there are bits that need addressing.

The first thing I have to ask is, “Why did this person write this article?” Are people asking him why the Democrats lost? Is he in a position to deliver inside information from Democrat Party Headquarters in Ohio? What is the hook? The closest I can find to an answer is thus: “I analyzed the question and I realized that the Democrats never really had a chance in this election and that answer is liberating. I stopped asking what more could we have done.” Pity that Mr. Bolton didn’t realize this sooner, perhaps months in advance, so that the Democratic Party wouldn’t have spent so much money in an election where they never had a chance! I do envy him slightly that he can find a losing scenario “liberating”, unless of course that liberation means a trip to Canada.

Paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 lay the complete fault of the Democratic message as “it is too broad”. What was the author’s first clue: the Party’s dependence on both black churches and anti-Christian groups that support gay rights and abortion on demand, or its reliance on both environmental groups and industrial labor unions? Perhaps it is not the breadth of a message but rather the lack of any single message, other than anything but the incumbent.

Without any supporting hard or even anecdotal evidence, the author makes sweeping generalizations about the Republican vote:The Republicans were able to get their vote out because they appealed to three groups. The lines were blurred but the groups look like this: 1. The evangelicals. 2. The uniformed. 3. The true believers. Assuming Mr. Bolton means uninformed it follows the author takes comfort in realizing that his candidate was beaten by ignorant, unwavering, religious people!

Skipping the next four paragraphs, filled with contentious definitions of these groups and a resignation that Ohio and Florida “have now joined the South”, we find this:

Rather than trying to build a maginot line around the states they currently hold, they need to go back into the heart of the South, the Heartland and the Mountain states and find a coherent message of appeal so they can rebuild. It is grueling work and it will take time but there is no alternative. The Republicans did it, and as invincible as they now look and as dismal as the Democratic prospects’ appear, history teaches us that life is fluid and success is not etched in stone.

Let me attempt to inject some common sense into this strategy, since our author doesn’t provide any details as to how to re-invade the South with a coherent message:

In order for anyone to win an election, they must either agree with the majority of the voters, or convince the majority of the voters to agree with them. Disdaining them will get you nowhere.