La Donna Fortuna

Obviously, the Foley scandal is the greatest thing ever. It hits Republicans where they live -- their idiotic values -- and the GOP response (blaming George Soros and calling Dems homophobes) is the worst kind of disorderly crackpot nonsense. I don't want to break up the party -- and it's a huge party, just take a look over at Talking Points Memo -- but there's something I'm a little worried about here.

On Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a profile of Howard Dean, and his efforts to create a 50 state party infrastructure, rather than a purely battleground-state theory of political action. Dean essentially thinks that Democrats can't be a national party if they continue to concede entire states, or everyplace that there's not a competetive race. And he's right. And, as the Times points out, this particular race isn't likely to turn on Dean's recent efforts:

With polls consistently showing voters to be deeply nervous about a protracted war, high gas prices and stunted wages, this is that rare election that should turn less on tactics than on fundamental choices about the direction of the country; in other words, this election season is about the fear and fury of the electorate, not the addition of a few more door-knockers in New Haven or some negative 30-second spot broadcast in Columbus. As the Democratic strategist James Carville told Al Hunt, the Bloomberg News columnist, in August, “If we can’t win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.”

I've been thinking a lot about that Carville quote, especially in light of this Foley mess. If, given the state of the war and the economy AND on the heels of this fiasco, the Dems fail to take back either house of Congress this November, then we have to do more than question the whole premise of the party. We have to start over from scratch, and an important part of that needs to be a purge of absolutely all of the leadership of the party, with the possible exception of Dean, Emanuel and Shumer. Pelosi's gotta go. Reid, too. I have more ideas about what a reconfigured Democratic party might look like, that I'm still trying to articulate, and I'll write about that some other time. But that's not what worries me. What's actually starting to worry me is what happens if the Foley thing does what it looks like it will, and brings down those crucial few extra seats, such that the Dems get a thin lead in one or both houses. Then what?

I agree, such a win, no matter how much attributable to the whim of fortune, is a desirable outcome from the point of view of stopping the total madness of the current administration. But that's just it -- it's only luck. You can't run a party by hoping a pedophile scandal breaks out right before every election. If Dems win this thing, and if it's largely attributable to the Foley mess, then we need to be grateful for our good luck, and still do the purging and re-thinking that I mentioned above. Your opponent shouldn't have to screw up this badly (and sometimes when I start thinking about how badly, I literally wonder if I'm dreaming) for you to be able to win elections. The worry to me is that Dems will take a victory as an endorsement of their platform and methods, and that I think would be a very bad outcome. Winning in 06 is nice, but I want a party in 08 that is lean and vicious, and that doesn't rely on micro-tax plans and fake invocations of family values as a platform. I want Dems to get a voice, goddamn it. So let's take the Foley thing for what it is -- good times -- and not get the idea that it proves that voters actually like Democrats as they are.

Republicans may be the party of corruption and hypocrisy; but we should be able to beat them in an election even if they weren't .