Beltway Snark

I’m assuming they like it, because they’ve gotten really good at it. They excel at it. For years I thought I was the only one who noticed this extreme talent, but Bob Herbet at the NYT has taken note of it too. This pretty much sums up the Democrats for the past 30 years:

Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.

Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.

That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.

And they have taken 2008, what was supposed to be a cakewalk for them, and turned in into one of the bloodiest primary years ever. The GOP actually stands a chance of winning in November. I told you, the Dems capacity for losing elections is mind-blowing.