Why do the Democrats have no balls?

It’s a simple question that a lot of us have been asking for weeks and months.  Really we’ve been asking it for weeks and months leading up to most elections for over a generation.  No one seems to know the answer.  

I started asking it in 1988, the first year I remember the term “liberal” joining “communist” and “socialist” in the pantheon of labels no American would ever want to take on.  And the Democrats went right along with it, apologizing time after time after time.

I remember watching an interview with Michael Dukakis just before the election.  I didn’t have high hopes for the outcome at that point, but I hadn’t given up completely until that night.  The interviewer asked Dukakis flat-out if he was a liberal and instead of owning it, saying “You’re damned right I’m a liberal.  I’m proud to be a liberal.  And here’s why being a liberal is better than being a conservative.” he choked.   Instead of taking the strong and direct approach, Dukakis babbled something about how we’re all liberal in some areas and conservative in others.  That was when I knew it was over.

I was right.  Not only did Dukakis go down, he went down with an apologetic whimper.  It was humiliating not because of the loss but because he never fought to win.  He let the Republicans define him and spent the campaign running from that definition.

Incredibly, almost 30 years later, the Democrats don’t seem to have changed in any substantial way.  What was the message of the 2014 campaign?  We’re afraid of the GOP.  We’re afraid of the voters’ misinformed opinions.  We’re not for Obama, either.  We do not have the guts to stand up for ourselves and our achievements.

Politics is tough.  It takes a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of money.  I don’t understand why anyone would go into it without the strength of their convictions, ready to go balls out to make something happen.  The Republicans do it.  They don’t really want to make anything happen for the American people, but they have their goals and they’re going to get to them.  They sure as hell aren’t going to let a bunch of wimps on the other side stand in their way.

To me voting for Republican leadership is like shooting ourselves in the collective foot.  I look at the 2014 election and see the entire Democratic Party unable to convince the country that pointing a .357 Magnum at an extremity and pulling the trigger (again!) was a bad idea – even if the Second Amendment says they have a right to do it.  Couldn’t.  Didn’t.  Didn’t even try.  They ran on “Vote for us and you’ll only be shooting off your pinky toe, not the big one.”

Bill Maher put it really well on “Real Time” this week.  Voters don’t vote on issues, they just don’t want you to be a pussy.

That’s it.  Simple.  Don’t be a pussy.  And don’t be stupid.  Watching this election was like watching a teen horror flick.  The whole audience is screaming, “Don’t go into the basement!”  But the kid does it anyway.  The difference is that the characters in the movies can’t actually hear us while the Democrats could.  Lots of us were screaming at them to stay out of the basement.  They heard us.  They smiled or looked concerned.  Sometimes they told us why they thought going into the basement was the best course.  And then they walked apologetically into the basement and had their heads ripped off and waved around by vampire zombies wrapped in American flags.

Today I watched Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal resurrecting the meme that if the government gets shut down, it will have been President Obama who did it.  The GOP have all said they will fight the President tooth and nail and made it clear that the only way to come to an agreement will be to capitulate to them completely – as they have been doing since 2009.  They have said they will not budge.  And yet, it will be President Obama who shuts down the government.  After the 2012 elections, Jindal said the Republicans should stop being the stupid party.  So they’re trading at least a part of their stupidity for deviousness.  That’s something to be proud of.

So going forward I have only two requests of the Democrats:  1. Don’t be pussies.  2. Don’t be stupid.  Please, please, please.  You are fighting a loud, obnoxious army that has no real weapons. Lure them out of the basement and let the sunlight reduce them to ash.