Why Not Victory?
One of the great clichés of campaign punditry is the inevitable fall column explaining why such-and-such political party would be better off losing. Today, I read Peter Beinart arguing (via Ezra Klein) that “of all the disasters that have befallen the Republican Party in recent years, the most cataclysmic may be about to unfold: John McCain might win.” And yet it seems like only 102 weeks ago that Jacob Weisberg was explaining that Democrats would be better off losing the 2006 midterms, but actually the donkeys seem to be in okay shape.
The trouble with these columns isn’t so much that they’re wrong, as it is that they’re too correct. The two party system tends toward equilibrium so a party shut out of power is poised for a comeback whereas a party that monopolizes power is poised for a comeuppance. But this is really a trivial result and it doesn’t change the fact that a political party needs to play each election to win.
19 Responses to “Why Not Victory?”
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September 3rd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
If somehow there’s a strong Democratic victory, and the Republican stronghold ends up being the South, then that will force a much greater change in the Republican Party than a McCain victory — as there would then be a huge incentive to re-develop non-Southern moderate & liberal Republican alternatives. This would be good for the Republican Party and good for the nation.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
And if you never fire your guns you’ll never run out of ammunition.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Yep, their thesis seems to be that a party should always hope to lose, so that they’ll always be in the perfect position to win next time.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I’ve always taken a dim view of that kind of argument, too, just because nobody can see how events will unfold, and winning has lots of bird-in-hand advantages. But what seems a little different to me this time is the huge economic mess. Bill Gross, the mega-bond manager, has published an “open letter to Obama,” explaining how boxed-in Obama will be by Bush’s fecklessness, and how he will almost necessarily be the first president to run a trillion-dollar deficit, regardless of his intentions. It’s hard for me to imagine an outcome over the next few years that does not generate huge amounts of blame, and much of that will fall on the next administration. That is doubly true if the next administration represents a party for which higher deficits, higher spending, and higher taxes (the near-future that Gross spells out) play into a long-standing negative stereotype, “tax-and-spend.” This is not to say that the country wouldn’t be much better off with Democratic leadership — it would. And I don’t mean to trivialize our real problems by reducing them to political advantages and disadvantages: I will strongly support Obama regardless. But things will almost certainly be bad, maybe very bad, and we all know already how the story line will go.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
See: UK Tories, 1992.
I think it was Robert Harris who wrote back then that it was an election they needed to lose in order to avoid as long a period in the wilderness as Labour had spent by that time.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy speaking honestly about Palin, did not know microphones were on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrG8w4bb3kg
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
As Herm Edwards would say: “You play to win the game. Hello? You play . . . to win . . . the game!”
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I think Beinart’s argument is dumb and cynical, and surprisingly contrarian.
However, I think it’ll be bad for the GOP (and the country) if McCain doesn’t get blown out of the water. Basically, Obama’s the best candidate in 30 years and McCain’s the worst, in terms of having clear, concise messaging which can be charismatically communicated, along with reams of policy plans. Furthermore, Bush (with whom McCain agrees on almost everything) is hugely unpopular.
But, McCain’s still in it. Why? Voter ignorance? Voter apathy? The fact that self-identified Republicans are all authoritarians, and they’re not their own authority? The GOP can’t count on these things lasting forever–or rather, assuming that we don’t sink fully into a Mussolini-type fascist system, they can’t count on those things.
So, the GOP needs to lose this election real ugly, so that they can get rid of those in the party that rely on all that bullshit to win elections. Of course, that’s 95% of their politicians, but fuck it: kill ‘em, eat their brains, and new conservatives’ll be good to go.
Or maybe we just won’t have a pro-aristocracy, anti-libertarian party as a major force. Because seriously, being either of those things is despicable.
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