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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (1487)	5/26/2003 8:53:11 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 793838

How else do you explain the midterm ('02) election results? I'd be very interested in hearing what you have to say. Sure. If you will offer yours as well? Mine is that the midterms has nothing to do with Clinton. I think the Reps won a very small victory by: (a) nationalizing the election which was brilliant since it runs counter to the conventional wisdom; (b) taking advantage of the dumb Dem electoral strategy of opposing the homeland security bill thus putting themselves on the wrong side of that issue; and (c) lacking a compelling national voice (ex presidents are rarely, if ever that, so I'm referring to Daschle and Gephardt). And, even with this going for them, the votes creating their senate majority were extraordinarily slim. I forget exactly how much but very little. Then, of course, the Dems failed by letting the Bush folk spin that as some sort of landslide. Oh, gotta quit typing about the political inadequacies of the Dems. The list just gets too long. As for the Times piece on campus conservatives, yep, Bill saw to it that I read it. I thought the important point to recall from that piece is the well funded national effort the radical right wing of the Reps is putting in to getting publicity for these efforts. There have been college kids like that around since before Ronald Reagan was elected the first time and creating exactly these kinds of organizations. Two other things about that article. My experience is that the kind of kids featured in that article are among the best to have in class, with exceptions. They care passionately about the intersection of ideas and politics which are the very heart of good classes. There are, unfortunately, a few who consider their job is to disrupt classes. That's not acceptable regardless of ideology and I've had that from at least three points of view. The second thing is that the frame of the article was a right wing one. I'm convinced that Judis' argument is still correct: the Reps are increasingly trapped by their dependence on the hard right, which leaves them with less and less room to manuever to the center; and that the issue of the center are the Dems issues. In the briefest of terms. The one issue which runs counter to that argument is the national security issue and Bush is offering that issue to the Dems right now by failing to fund homeland security well enough. We'll just have to wait and see if the Dems are astute enough to use it well. No doubt they will talk about it but will it have electoral resonance. We'll see. Here's the Judis reference. amazon.com