November 4, 2004

Coming tasks...

Our friend Andrew Cory writes in a comment to my post on gloating:

One would think, at this point, that hearing our cries and the lamentations of our women (wymon?) would be enough for you people...

Sheesh! I hope you’re right about the best direction for this country. For the next 2 years, you’ve got everything lined up your way...

More than the next two years. If my 70-Year Cycle posts are anywhere near reality, Dems will be flailing for 20 years or so. One generation. You will have occasional gains when Republicans mess-up (depend on it, we will) but generally your percentages will keep shrinking. Democrats of my generation, currently in charge, are too old to re-think and re-build. The current leadership will probably oscillate between being faux-conservative, much like Wendell Wilkie was a faux-Republican [Note to Mrs. Clinton: Your opportunity. Learn to bake cookies, and shoot a burgler. In the back.] and being more shrill-leftist than ever, as the people most alienated by conservative victories are and will be the most energized among Democrats.

During this decade and part of the next, things will be similar to the 1930's, when businessmen and bankers moved almost en masse to the Republicans, because they hated the New Deal. This was the wrong way for the Republican Party to move at a time when industrial workers were switching en masse to the Democrats. Republicans became very energetic, but as reactionaries. All they could say was "Stop! We don't like these innovations. We are the Party of Lincoln! We should be running things, the way we always have." They were also hate-filled and cranky. It was the heyday of Father Coughlin, and many people saw FDR as a communist demon who was bent on destroying America.

Your generation gets to start rebuilding the Democrat Party. You are roughly the equivalent of the WWII generation, of the Republican generation of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan, and thinkers like Irving Kristol and Bill Buckley...Your Jeffersonian roots are waiting to be re-discovered.

[It occurs to me that all the advice-giving going on right now is probably more irritating to Democrats than gloating. George Will: "the Democratic Party should purge its Michael Moore faction..." Yeah, like that's Sooo easy. Just build a bonfire of giant puppets and fling those guys on it.]

Posted by John Weidner at November 4, 2004 9:19 AM
Weblog by John Weidner