The Democrats' losing streak

Looking ahead to 2005, clear-thinking Americans can only hope that the Democrats' losing streak in US Congressional elections and Presidential elections continues. Joshua Muravchik, author of one of my favorite books, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, has written an interesting column in Commentary magazine titled Why the Democrats keep losing. Here's an excerpt:

The aftermath befitted the morrow of a civil war. Tens of thousands of Americans visited the website of the Canadian immigration service to learn how they could take themselves into exile. A Florida psychotherapist reported treating more than a dozen people for sudden depression. "Hard times, brutish times, lie ahead," intoned the New Republic.

The New York Times turned its op-ed page into a kind of wailing wall, where a procession of mourners poured forth their laments and imprecations. Garry Wills: "We now resemble [Europe] less than we do our putative enemies . . . al Qaeda [and] Saddam Hussein’s Sunni loyalists." Thomas Friedman: The Bush people "have used . . . religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad." Maureen Dowd: "jihad in America. . . . One party controls all power. . . . One nation dominates the world."

The proverbial visitor from afar might have been astonished to learn that all of this rhetorical tearing of hair and rending of garments was occasioned by nothing more than the results of a presidential election, and not even the wailers themselves could have doubted that this election would be followed by another four years hence. Clearly something else was going on.

Yes, it's true. Hard times, brutish times, lie ahead. What with about two million jobs created in the last year, with President Bush and Congressional Republican leaders scheming up ways of reforming our legal system to keep America competitive internationally, it's enough to drive a man to drink.