At Opinion Journal, Jacob Laksin looks back at why the Move.On's and the Air America's failed to foment political change in 2004. Should his conclusion be any surprise?
It is the anger that does them in. Resting his case on much original reporting, Mr. York convincingly shows that the activist left mistook its base--2.5 million strong and anti-Bush to the (mostly white) man--for the mainstream electorate, as if fury and contempt were the only logical responses to the Bush presidency. Reciting the mantra that it was "too big to fail," the left wing bought into the conspiracy of its own vastness. An inability to connect with swing voters followed, and electoral defeat.
Especially trenchant is Mr. York's analysis of the Center for American Progress. Convinced, mistakenly, that modern liberalism's problem was its deficit of sound bites, the think tank gave short shrift to compelling policy ideas. A disgruntled Democratic source--the book is densely populated with this species--offers an apt postmortem: "Just getting bigger amplifiers doesn't make the music any better."
Imagine, the liberal brain trust, who have packaged their message on foreign car bumpers across America for generations, was concerned with the absence of a quickly digestible message.
I haven't yet heard an angry sound bite regarding Sandy Berger's theft of classified documents, but it is doubtful that this paragraph from David Limbaugh would fit on a protest sign. Still, consider it a suggestion.
Berger deliberately took the documents knowing it was against the law to do so. He acted with malice aforethought. He later lied repeatedly in saying he took them by mistake. The documents pertained to the competence of the Clinton administration in responding to the terrorist threat when that question was directly at issue before the commission and part of the fiercely partisan political debate of the day. Berger had every interest in making the Clinton administration look good in the very area addressed by the Clarke memo.
What the angry really need is something positive to focus their energy on, something aside from decorating Volkswagens with colorful bumper stickers and mass producing posters depicting the Bush/monkey. One thing they could do, and still lift nary a finger in support of the war on terror, is assist the emergence of democracy in Lebanon, where Spirit of America is working overtime. Jim Hake, via Powerline, explains the needs:
They need our help to sustain their struggle. Our project is raising support for them (food, shelter, water, etc.) While I'm here we're looking into other things to help (e.g., Internet access at tent city)People can go here to help . 100% of all donations go directly to the things that will help the pro-democracy demonstrators.
Another deed that needs doing is the improvement of Iraq's agriculture. If it helps, even the United Nations is on board with that mission. Heck, that's a coalition.
Just think of the energy protestors in Beirut could draw from 2.5 million votes of confidence, or what 2.5 million advocates could do to bridge Iraq's agricultural void. Republicans might even promise to resist giving them the needle about the dredlocks or sandals.
These things fit so nicely into the left's core mission of spreading human rights and feeding the hungry, don't they? Alas, the anger...
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