Dan Gerstein, who has been the target of the angry crowd over at the Daily Kos on a number of occasions, says that the angry left is beginning to collapse. He acknowledges the contributions of the kossacks, but says they have already peaked and are now in decline.
The Kossacks and their activist allies — who skew toward the Boomers — believe that Republicans are venal bordering on evil, and that the way Democrats will win elections and hold power is to one-up Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics. Their opponents within the party — who skew younger and freer of culture war wounds — believe that the way to win is offer voters a break from this poisonous tribal warfare and a compelling, inclusive vision for where we want to take the country.
The country got an initial taste of this tactical tussle in 2006 when the Lieberman-Lamont Senate campaign in Connecticut went national — and an initial test of the relative merits in the general-election portion of that race (in which I was Joe Lieberman's communications director).
With a discredited Republican candidate in the race, the choice came down to two Democrats who actually agreed on most issues outside of Iraq, but differed on the kind of change we need in Washington. Mr. Lieberman called for a new politics of unity and purpose; Mr. Lamont mostly called for Messrs. Bush's and Lieberman's heads.
The hope candidate soundly beat the Kos candidate — Kos actually taped a commercial for Lamont — by 10 points. More importantly, Mr. Lieberman won independents (the biggest voting bloc in the state) by 19 points, which is all the more remarkable because they opposed the war by a margin of 65%-29%.
This year's Democratic nominating battle is a far better barometer of the respective generational approaches within the party. That's because it is happening within the context of a true intra-party competition, there is no real disagreement on Iraq or any other core issue, and there is no incumbent. Not least of all, the two young attractive change candidates (Edwards and Obama) running against the establishment candidate (Hillary Clinton) have been offering opposite conceptions of change.
Gerstein acknowledges that some people are going to charge that he is indulging in a little grave-dancing, having been on the receiving end of the koz kidz venom. But he also points out that the results of the primaries show that people really are getting sick and tired of vicious partisanship. Read the whole thing. You may or may not agree with all of what Gerstein says he sees happening, but there is certainly a cautionary tale for those on the right who are heading into that angry territory that the left has lived in for so long. Gerstein points out that page views on the Kos site are down dramatically and that Kos himself has reluctantly endorsed Obama. And now the MoveOn folks – a group that originally formed to support Bill Clinton – has jumped over to Obama as well. Something to think about.
It really doesn’t matter if it’s a Democrat or a Republican, war hawk or peace chicken, black or white or hispanic or purple or red, male or female, religious or not, or about who would be the best judge on the Supreme Court; in the end, it all comes down to who can get the elder vote.
Who has the largest demographic transends all else; it isn’t partisan it’s just the nature of things to come; Rove made this point many times over, it’s why Bush offered the perscription drug plan in 2000.
Romney knows this too when he recently said the two most important things are supporting the military and ‘taking care of our elderly’.
The media/entertinment industry may be gearing towards the youth(18 to 25 yr olds is how they make money) however it’s the elderly who have the numbers, the elderly are not interested in change or the future they’re interested in their last years of living.
I place no blame in them, it’s just the nature of being. If I were in that voting block I’d be thinking the same thing and most probably will when I reach that age.