Why the "vast left-wing conspiracy" failed

[Tigermike 3,047]

Look Back at Anger

Why the "vast left-wing conspiracy" failed to unseat President Bush.

BY JACOB LAKSIN

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

It was several months before Election Day. George W. Bush and John Kerry had pulled to a statistical dead heat, and the pundits were poring over the polls in an effort to divine the reasons for the latest shift in public opinion. But MoveOn.org had more pressing concerns. It was moved to ask its network of true believers: "Why aren't we talking about a landslide in November?"

Such groundless conviction "was not at all unusual in the world of MoveOn," writes Byron York in "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." The triumphalism flowed, he notes, from a deceptively simple rationale. Feeling a passionate contempt for the president and his policies, the MoveOn rank-and-file labored under the illusion that they represented the majority of the American people.

They weren't the only ones. In the months following the 9/11 attacks, there emerged an activist movement of left-wing loyalists, Democratic operatives and deep-pocketed financiers all united under one aim--to defeat President Bush--and all confident that history was turning in their direction. Mr. York, the White House correspondent for National Review, gives us an engaging account of the partisan passions that made this "the biggest, richest, and best organized movement in American political history" and that ultimately proved its undoing.

All the usual suspects are here: Bush-bashing billionaire George Soros; politicos like Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean; squadrons of Democratic strategists and spin-men; left-wing luminaries like Michael Moore and Al Franken. There are new players, too, like the so-called 527s, ostensibly nonpartisan lobbying groups that massaged campaign-finance laws in the service of the Democratic cause. (The Republicans had their versions, too, of course.) Mr. York even takes us inside the brain trust of the anti-Bush network, the new Center for American Progress. "Our goal is to win," announces John Podesta, the center's founder and head. He means it.

Beneath the patina of confidence, however, the left-wing conspiracy often seems pitiable, as desperate as it is determined. Above all, its members are angry--at the perceived injustice of the 2000 presidential election, at the prospect of long-term Republican governance, at John Kerry's inept campaigning. Even, it appears, at being called angry.

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."

Just so. The noisy rhetoric ranged through all manner of invective, much of it patently extreme and absurd. Thus Mr. York's point-by-point rebuttals of the more unbalanced claims can make for agonizing reading. He notes that Michael Moore's propaganda vehicle, "Fahrenheit 9/11," was not a "serious antiwar documentary." Similarly, he labels as not "true" Mark Crispin Miller's charge that Mr. Bush views his critics as "hateful sex-obsessed, unpatriotic demons." Of the Air America network, whose host Randi Rhodes wishfully mused about the murder of George W. Bush, Mr. York says that it cannot credibly be called "centrist." He is certainly on the mark with such judgments, but he might have made them with more humor and less earnestness.

If Mr. York occasionally goes too far in an attempt to be serious and fair, he does well to acknowledge the activist left's accomplishments--not least because he debunks several popular myths along the way. Pointing to the left's success in using tax-exempt organizations to raise funds, Mr. York puts paid to the meme that Republicans are the party bankrolled by the rich. Mr. York records that 92% of contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats. Pro-Democratic 527s, meanwhile, spent more than twice as much as their GOP counterparts. Mr. York also deflates Michael Moore's self-serving claim that "Fahrenheit 9/11" was well-received in "red state" markets. (Not even close.)

What does the future hold for the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy? Mr. York does not count it out. Should these activists "emerge from their closed loops and see that their views are not necessarily shared by all Americans," they may adjust their message and yet lift the Democrats to victory. For the time being, however, the landslide will have to wait.

Mr. Laksin is a writer at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. You can buy "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006516

[Piglet 0]

If this is accurate, it raises the question how come the super-rich would bankroll the Democrats, when the Bush Republicans are the ones pushing tax cuts that greatly benefit the richest Americans.

[Auburn85 432]

If this is accurate, it raises the question how come the super-rich would bankroll the Democrats, when the Bush Republicans are the ones pushing tax cuts that greatly benefit the richest Americans.

154380[/snapback]

and this is another reason democrats can't reach out...... we got a tax break too

[Piglet 0]

I didn't say we didn't get a tax break. I said the rich made out better financially under the Republicans than they would have under Democrats. Regardless of what happened to the rest of us.

Seems to me that just "being angry" doesn't explain much. I see screaming, raging right wingers all the time, from Tom DeLay to Bill O'Reilly. It don't hurt them none. Howard Dean was doing great by being angry. He lost because he couldn't do a decent rebel yell, and because his volunteers insulted the voters.

I think Democrats lose because they're wishy-washy and can't go to the bathroom without taking a poll to see if they should do #1 or #2. They spend half their time being me-too Republicans and the other half being liberals, depending on who they're talking to.

I didn't see much angry rhetoric from Kerry during the election. I did see a lot of waffling and doubletalk and voting for stuff before voting against it. People didn't vote against Kerry because of his mood. They voted against him because they didn't know what he stood for and therefore didn't trust him.

That and the fact that Bush looks like a cowboy while Kerry looks like a cigar store indian.

[Auburn85 432]

I didn't say we didn't get a tax break.  I said the rich made out better financially under the Republicans than they would have under Democrats.  Regardless of what happened to the rest of us.

Seems to me that just "being angry" doesn't explain much.  I see screaming, raging right wingers all the time, from Tom DeLay to Bill O'Reilly. It don't hurt them none.  Howard Dean was doing great by being angry. He lost because he couldn't do a decent rebel yell, and because his volunteers insulted the voters.

I think Democrats lose because they're wishy-washy and can't go to the bathroom without taking a poll to see if they should do #1 or #2.  They spend half their time being me-too Republicans and the other half being liberals, depending on who they're talking to. 

I didn't see much angry rhetoric from Kerry during the election. I did see a lot of waffling and doubletalk and voting for stuff before voting against it. People didn't vote against Kerry because of his mood. They voted against him because they didn't know what he stood for and therefore didn't trust him.

That and the fact that Bush looks like a cowboy while Kerry looks like a cigar store indian.

154585[/snapback]

Now Dean is insulting the Republicans

"I hate the republicans and everything they stand for"

paraphrase " For the Republicans to have blacks in their committee, they'd have to bring out the hotel staff"

And how many blacks did Dean have in his cabinet when he was governor of Vermont

[DKW 86 7,439]

I didn't say we didn't get a tax break.  I said the rich made out better financially under the Republicans than they would have under Democrats.  Regardless of what happened to the rest of us.

Seems to me that just "being angry" doesn't explain much.  I see screaming, raging right wingers all the time, from Tom DeLay to Bill O'Reilly. It don't hurt them none.  Howard Dean was doing great by being angry. He lost because he couldn't do a decent rebel yell, and because his volunteers insulted the voters.

I think Democrats lose because they're wishy-washy and can't go to the bathroom without taking a poll to see if they should do #1 or #2.  They spend half their time being me-too Republicans and the other half being liberals, depending on who they're talking to. 

I didn't see much angry rhetoric from Kerry during the election. I did see a lot of waffling and doubletalk and voting for stuff before voting against it. People didn't vote against Kerry because of his mood. They voted against him because they didn't know what he stood for and therefore didn't trust him.

That and the fact that Bush looks like a cowboy while Kerry looks like a cigar store indian.

154585[/snapback]

Now Dean is insulting the Republicans

"I hate the republicans and everything they stand for"

paraphrase " For the Republicans to have blacks in their committee, they'd have to bring out the hotel staff"

And how many blacks did Dean have in his cabinet when he was governor of Vermont

154589[/snapback]

Sir, that answer is... ZERO!

[Auburn85 432]

I didn't say we didn't get a tax break.  I said the rich made out better financially under the Republicans than they would have under Democrats.  Regardless of what happened to the rest of us.

Seems to me that just "being angry" doesn't explain much.  I see screaming, raging right wingers all the time, from Tom DeLay to Bill O'Reilly. It don't hurt them none.  Howard Dean was doing great by being angry. He lost because he couldn't do a decent rebel yell, and because his volunteers insulted the voters.

I think Democrats lose because they're wishy-washy and can't go to the bathroom without taking a poll to see if they should do #1 or #2.  They spend half their time being me-too Republicans and the other half being liberals, depending on who they're talking to. 

I didn't see much angry rhetoric from Kerry during the election. I did see a lot of waffling and doubletalk and voting for stuff before voting against it. People didn't vote against Kerry because of his mood. They voted against him because they didn't know what he stood for and therefore didn't trust him.

That and the fact that Bush looks like a cowboy while Kerry looks like a cigar store indian.

154585[/snapback]

Now Dean is insulting the Republicans

"I hate the republicans and everything they stand for"

paraphrase " For the Republicans to have blacks in their committee, they'd have to bring out the hotel staff"

And how many blacks did Dean have in his cabinet when he was governor of Vermont

154589[/snapback]

Sir, that answer is... ZERO!

154677[/snapback]

You're so right Carl