The Gloom And Doom Of Being A Leftie

Ugh. I don't know what's worse--the fact that Dems have lost so many recent presidential elections, or the loser mentality that's come to accompany them. This week Salon gives us a really lazy exercise in historical parallels by basically implying that Hillary is Mondale, and Obama is McGovern. This sort of hazy searching for historical precedent, as opposed to analyzing people as individuals existing in a unique time (as all humans do), is intellectually weak.

I once heard Norman Mailer inveighing against newspaper writers, asserting that half their job is spent looking for precedent and plugging people into predetermined narratives. He was so right. If Obama looses, it won't be because he's like McGovern, because he said that working class voters are bitter, or even because he's black. He'll loose because his campaign sucked, and he, as a candidate, wasn't ready for prime-time.