Democrat Drubbing

In the aftermath of last night’s evisceration of the Democrats, the biggest whopper I’ve seen so far comes from Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee chairman. Here is his explanation for the utter repudiation of the Obama agenda:

“Voters sent a message that change has not happened fast enough.”[1]

What? Change has not happened fast enough? That is what Kaine thinks the drubbing of his party means? Assuming the man is not joking, and giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is not simply a conniving liar trying to rally his pack of true-believers, I am left to conclude that he must be as innocent of facts, logic, and judgment as a new-born babe.

I hasten to add that I am not saying Kaine is stupid, of course. (Accusing public figures of stupidity is the refuge of the Left, which, being so bankrupt of ideas itself, resorts to ad hominem attacks as its primary form of argument.) On the contrary, I believe Tim Kaine is probably a pretty smart guy, and he certainly deserves to be in the company of other very smart people who are equally delusional--like, for instance, Paul Krugman, who thinks the recent expansion of government spending is a myth[2]; Ben Bernanke, who believes that government spending actually stimulates an economy; Harry Reid, who thinks paying income taxes in America is voluntary; and Nancy Pelosi, who thinks people who show up at Tea Party events are sponsored by large corporations.

To think that Democrats lost last night because they were not far enough to the left during the past two years is preposterous. Does Kaine think voters chose Tea Party candidates because they were angry at Democrats for being too “hands off”? Were Democrats kicked out of office because their President seized only General Motors instead of taking over the whole automobile industry like Hugo Chavez would have? Were supporters of Obamacare dumped because there was not enough bureaucracy, regulation, and redistribution of wealth built into the two-thousand-plus pages of the “health care” legislation? It’s completely absurd.

Barack Obama has, more than any politician in my memory, clarified the meaning of the so-called “liberal” agenda.[3] We owe the very existence of the Tea Party to that clarity; there is no way that such a spontaneous movement would have emerged if John McCain had won the election. Ordinary Americans talking about freedom versus socialism, reading Atlas Shrugged, and calling for sweeping cuts in government spending would not be nearly as widespread if there were a Republican in office, even though I think McCain is just about as horrendous a collectivist as Obama is.

The repudiation of the Democratic agenda is encouraging to me in the same limited manner as the Scott Brown election was earlier this year. I expect nothing good from the Republicans themselves--apart from some gridlock that will help retard the march toward statism, a march that has been accelerating alarmingly in the Bush-Obama era. However, I am pleased about the American spirit that the Democratic defeat signals. Evidently, there are still Americans not willing to let the government run their lives.

Hopefully, this will give us time to convince those Americans that they are right to live their own lives and seek their own happiness.

NOTES

1. “G.O.P. Captures House, Not Senate,” New York Times, 3 Nov 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/politics/03elect.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all.

2. Paul Krugman, “Hey, Small Spender,” New York Times, 10 Oct 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman.

3. See John David Lewis, “Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda,” The Objective Standard, Vol. 4, No. 3, http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2009-fall/obamas-atomic-bomb.asp.

UPDATES

I added the Reid and Pelosi examples to the fourth paragraph.