Conservatives will be fighting on two fronts after today. First, Establishment Republicans will be peddling stories, as they have in the past week, that conservative gains in the Senate were really not significant compared to the Establishment pickups.We’ll deal with those later, but you can get a flavor for those here and here.But there is a bigger effort, which the media will be more sympathetic to. That is that this election is not a game changer, just a temper tantrum. It is the “Angry White Male” election. This is important for two reasons — it helps push the narrative that this election is against the first black President and therefore somewhat illegitimate because of racism. Second, it makes it an election premised on the anger of one demographic group.Consequently, this election can be seen as an anomalous fluke and not a full scale rejection of Democratic policy. The Democrats are desperate to build that narrative. Contrast this year with 2008. The pundits on television were orgasmic that America had become a “center-left” nation. Time’s front cover was of the Republicans as an endangered species.A number of analysts and pundits said if the GOP tried to be obstructions after the devastation wrought by the Democrats, the GOP would be further decimated come 2010.And yet . . .It is important to understand why the Democrats will seek now to delegitimize Tuesday’s gains and how.The “How” is the easiest. There are a number of ways they will do it.
- They will, in the next 24 hours, predict astronomical gains for the GOP and when those numbers are not reached, the Democrats will proclaim there is no mandate.
- They will say it was just angry, white, racist men — not the whole country and therefore the GOP must pursue policies designed to attract (insert your favorite minority group here).
- They will say it was just a temper tantrum.
- They will say it was a one time fluke and Obama will now win in 2012.
- They will say the new Republican caucus is “moderate” and this was a repudiation of the right.
- They will say Karl Rove and the Chamber of Commerce used foreign money to steal the election.
They will say a lot of things designed to distract from the gains.The “Why” is very important.The Democrats bought into the idea that the nation was now a center-left nation. They believed the nation wanted universal healthcare, a stimulus, etc. They are convinced that 70% of Americans want socialist healthcare policies.In short, the Democrats must delegitimize this election because to admit to its consequences is to recognize that the nation does not and never did want the Democrats’ socialist agenda. It will be easier for the Democrats to believe in a grand conspiracy that stole the election, than to accept rejection by the American people.So they will come up with every possible excuse to excuse what is going to happen to them.