The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose.
Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.
Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.
That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.
Now comes 2008, a can’t-lose year if there ever was one. A united Democratic Party should be able to win this election in a walk. The economy is terrible and getting worse. The Republicans are demoralized. John McCain is no J.F.K. And the country wants to elect a Democrat.
So what are the Democrats doing? The Clintons are running around with flamethrowers, gleefully trying to incinerate the prospects of the party’s leading candidate, Barack Obama. As Bill Clinton put it last month: “If a politician doesn’t want to get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office.”
Yes, the economy is so bad that unemployment is below what economists thought that you could even HOPE for in the 1960s.
Now I know why my grandfather got out of politics!
I lived in Brazil when inflation his 900%. Bob Herbert doesn’t have a clue what a bad economy is.
How ironic that both of these candidates have claimed to want to lead us out of Washington’s paralyzing partisanship. A meaty, issues-oriented primary would have been a good start. But it has descended into partisan politics as usual.
The dems are beating each other up in a frenzy over who can raise taxes the most. Now let me see if I get this right: If we raise the capital gains tax and the dividend taxes, it will only affect 50% of the working class; if we raise the corporate taxes then the companies will pay the taxes and lose money instead of raising prices on the working class. Yep………..another brainstorm from the dems…..