A COUPLE of weeks ago, Michael Moore was touring the US offering
unregistered voters incentives such as free "clean underwear" in return for
a promise that they would show up at the polls. I'm not sure whose underwear
he was giving away - his own or someone else's - but, if it was the former,
the grateful recipients evidently accepted a pair, went and camped out in
them up in the Rockies, and forgot to return to town for election day.
The swollen turn-out on Tuesday -- the biggest since 1968 -- killed one of
Moore's most cherished myths: that if only more people voted, the natural
"liberal" "progressive" nature of the American people would manifest itself.
"Slackers are going to rise up in this election," he predicted. "The slacker
motto is: Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote Kerry."
Well, two out of three ain't bad.
According to Moore, there are hardly any conservatives in the US, but they
do a great job of persuading all the progressives to stay away from the
polling booths by putting obstacles in their path, like not giving them free
underwear. So the long queues reported at polls were assumed by the media to
be proof of that big pro-John Kerry youth vote we always hear about.
But, as always, the "youth vote" never showed up. Last year, I saw some
patronising BBC documentary (aired on Your ABC) claiming that George W. Bush
was controlled by fanatical Christian fundamentalists who believe in the
Rapture. The "youth vote" is the Left's equivalent of the Rapture: it may
happen one day, but not on any schedule you want to put money on.
If you had to pick a picture that summed up what went wrong for Kerry, it
would be the shot of Moore and Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the
Democratic national convention. All you needed was P.Diddy, aka Puff Daddy
(or vice-versa), of the Vote or Die mythical youth movement and it would
have been the Democrats' equivalent of those Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin
wartime summits. That picture is the Dems in a nutshell: yesterday's
politicians, today's show-biz colossi. It's the other way round at the
Republican Party: yesterday's show-biz colossi (well, Pat Boone) and today's
politicians -- Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani.
On the whole, that's a better combo.
The Michael Mooronification of the Democratic Party proved a fatal error.
Moore is the chief promoter of what's now the received opinion of Bush among
the condescending Left -- Chimpy Bushitler the World's Dumbest Fascist.
There are some takers for this view, but not enough. By running a campaign
fuelled by Moore's caricature of Bush, the Democrats were doomed to defeat.
Granted, Kerry was more nuanced about Chimpy: he ran an over-cautious
campaign putting up his supposed "competence" against Bush's "incompetence",
which naturally degenerated into reflexive anti-Bush oppositionism.
Meanwhile, everyone around Kerry sounded like they'd OD-ed on Moore: his
stepson, Chris Heinz, called Bush a "cokehead" and John Edwards went on
about war profiteering.
Happily, The Guardian, the fever chart of the British Left, decided to
arrange a controlled experiment in the effectiveness of the Bush-hating
strategy. They targeted the voters of Clark County, Ohio, one of the
swingiest counties in a critical swing state, by getting Guardian readers to
send them letters explaining why they shouldn't vote for Bush. Antonia
Fraser, John Le Carre and other celebrated Guardianistas put pen to paper
and marshalled their arguments.
Richard Dawkins demonstrated the incisive forensic analysis of Bush one
expects from one of Oxford's most celebrated professors: "An idiot he may
be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive ... thuggish ... pariah
state ... brazenly lying ... cynical mendacity." Gloomy film-maker Ken
Loach, who makes Moore look like Busby Berkeley, began: "Today, your country
is reviled across continents as never before ..."
In return, The Guardian received many responses, saying things like "real
Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions", which
was one of the more polite replies in that it eschewed observations on the
defects of British dentistry. In 2000, Clark County went narrowly for Al
Gore. On Tuesday, it went decisively for Bush. The local Republican chairman
claimed that Fraser and co had done a grand job of rallying the county's
Bush voters and getting them to the poll. Thank you, Guardian lefties! Had
they launched Operation Massachusetts, Kerry would have lost his own state.
Bush hatred flopped big on Tuesday. That's not a problem for The Guardian's
editors, who have to sell papers in Britain, but it is for a Democratic
Party that has to sell itself in the US. Michael Mooronification damages
everyone who gets it.
Look at the recently resurrected Osama bin Laden. Three years ago he was Mr
Jihad, demanding the restoration of the caliphate, the return of Andalucia,
the conversion of every infidel to Islam, the imposition of sharia and an
end to fornication, homosexuality and alcoholic beverages. In his latest
video he sounds like some elderly Berkeley sociology student making lame
jokes about Halliburton and Bush reading My Pet Goat.
The lesson of Moore's underwear, P.Diddy's "Vote or Die", Bruce
Springsteen's "Rock the Vote" and all the other celebrity props of the
Democratic Party is very simple: having the most popular figures in popular
culture on your side does nothing for your popularity. Every time Kerry was
seen cavorting with Hollywood A-listers, he was alienating the Z-listers --
the American people.
On election day, I was driving through Vermont and found myself behind a car
with a Kerry-Edwards sticker and an Instead of Being Born Again, Why Not
Grow Up? sticker. Fair enough, the feeling's mutual: the secular, coastal,
libertine Democratic Party has zero appeal to born-again Christians. The
problem is the crude numbers: 40 per cent of Americans identify themselves
as born-again. So right there you've written off 40 per cent of the
electorate. What have you got in return? The gay vote? Five per cent? And
Bush got a quarter of that.
Another significant sliver of their vote doesn't care much for the holy
rollers but recognises that on the big issue -- the war -- the Republicans
are right.
Feisty internet blogger Michele Catalano put it very well in her election
day declaration: "I voted for George Bush. I am not a redneck. I do not
spend my days watching cars race around a track while I drink cheap beer and
slap my woman on the ass. I am not a Bible thumper. In fact, I am an
atheist. I am not a homophobe."
In their desperation, the Democrats have wound up damning a big chunk of the
American people as stupid, bigoted and a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein
and al-Qa'ida. This is ridiculous. As Catalano continues: "You will not be
thrown in jail for the sole reason of being a liberal. Your child's public
school will not suddenly turn into a centre for Christian brainwashing. Your
favourite bookstore will not turn into puritan central."
She didn't add to that list of phony terrors my own choice gem from this
election season, courtesy of that eminent political analyst Cameron Diaz,
who advised Oprah Winfrey's viewers: "Women have so much to lose. I mean, we
could lose the right to our bodies. If you think that rape should be legal,
then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, then
you should vote." Poor Cameron. The scary people won. She's just lost all
rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she can't even move to France. Her
body was grounded in Terminal D.
As long as Democrats prefer phantom enemies to real ones, they will be
increasingly irrelevant. If I were a Dem, I'd support any candidate who
pledged to de-celebrify the party and disown the paranoid Left. That's the
big lesson of this election: on Tuesday, the bottom dropped out of Moore's
underpants.
Mark Steyn, a columnist with Britain's Telegraph Group, is a regular
contributor to The Australian's Opinion page. |
