Saturday, April 23, 2005
Looking for that Goldwater moment
Picked up Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus from the library based on Kevin Drum's recommendation. His interest (and yglesias and ...)obviously is based on the Dems on-going search for their "Goldwater moment". Despite their landslide presidential losses to Nixon, Reagan & (near-landslide) to GW Bush; despite their loss of the House of Representatives over a decade ago; despite their losses in the Senate that are close to costing them filibuster ability, the Dems still have not had that moment of self-definition beyond "preserve the status quo".
This last presidential race was just one more example of the Dems being undecided about their identity. The true war candidate Lieberman polled less than 10% and the true peace candidate Kucinich polled less than 10% (may add links later) while the sort-of for/sort-of against candidate won the nomination & added a VP who was another sort-of candidate.
Partial reviews to start tomorrow.
This last presidential race was just one more example of the Dems being undecided about their identity. The true war candidate Lieberman polled less than 10% and the true peace candidate Kucinich polled less than 10% (may add links later) while the sort-of for/sort-of against candidate won the nomination & added a VP who was another sort-of candidate.
Partial reviews to start tomorrow.
