Pirate's Cove

It looks like some Democrats get it, while others are still in la la land, perhaps even having taken the blue acid*. Either way, most left over in government will probably not be the ones who understand what the American people want and voted against

The bodies aren’t even cold yet in the House, but the Democratic Party has already opened up a bitter debate over who’s to blame.

The party’s bloodied moderates Wednesday released two years of pent-up anger at a party leadership they viewed as blind to their needs and deaf to the messages of voters who never asked for President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-term agenda.

Liberals pushed back hard: The problem, they say, was those undisciplined moderates, who won delays, unsightly compromises and a muddled message from a too-accommodating administration.

Yet a third group of Democratic politicians and operatives blamed not policy but a failed sales job for the party’s woes.

The next few weeks will be fun, as Democrats and their peeps try and figure out exactly why they lost, usually resulting in a 3 pitch strikeout. And whining about the losses badly. Anyhow

One thing all sides agree on: The White House blew it.

“It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a ‘political realignment’ and a ‘new progressive era’ proved wishful thinking,” the retiring Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh wrote in a New York Times op-ed posted online as the scope of last night’s losses became clear.

Bayh can speak on what happened mostly honestly, since he is retiring. Most will probably be stuck in a logic loop that doesn’t involve the phrase “Americans hated what we were doing.”

Look, to me, and quite possibly most Americans, the idea of health care/insurance reform, stimulating the economy, Wall Street reform, expanding energy, consumer protections, and many of the other Dem policies were good ideas. The problem was in implementation. The Bills went way, way, way to far, they did not achieve the stated purpose (the real purpose was more government control, of course, as well as payback for backers and retaliation against opposers), they were so large that they were not read, they were, in some cases, rammed through, and they really didn’t help anything. Mostly, they seemed to make the problems worse. And then there was the absurd levels of spending.

The breadth of Obama’s defeat left some Democrats arguing that the White House’s real problem wasn’t policy and ideology but strategy and tactics.

“If you look at the stuff that we did, it was on an issue-by-issue level popular – but we have to do something different in the way we talk about the challenges we face and the way we deal with them,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.

Weiner almost had it. Refer back to (mostly) good initial ideas that translated into horrible legislation that no amount of spin would make palatable. No matter what you do, Castor Oil tastes nasty.

A Democrat axiom is that it is all about intentions, not end results. I doubt, early in 2009, that the historic bloodbath that occurred Tuesday was the end result they intended, though.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU. sit back and Relax. we’ll dRive!