Great Moments In Political Awareness

Denial runs deep:

While the American heartland found great comfort in the president's re-election, there was melancholy and stunned disbelief in San Francisco and other cities along the avowedly left West Coast.

"There is a sense of helplessness that we couldn't tip the election in any way," said Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who helped to push gay marriage into the national spotlight. "We couldn't do it rhetorically or in an actual vote. You feel powerless."

Oh, you played a role.

UPDATE:  The Times explores this a bit:

Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own

...with his party reeling from Senator John Kerry's defeat on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom's decision in February to open City Hall to thousands of gay weddings has become a subject of considerable debate among Democrats.

Some in the party were suggesting even before the election that Mr. Newsom had played into President Bush's game plan by inviting a showdown on the divisive same-sex-marriage issue.

Most of the talk has been behind closed doors. But when Senator Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat and Newsom supporter, answered a question about the subject at a news conference outside her San Francisco home on Wednesday, the prickly discussion spilled into the open.

"I believe it did energize a very conservative vote," Ms. Feinstein said of the same-sex marriages here. "I think it gave them a position to rally around. I'm not casting a value judgment. I'm just saying I do believe that's what happened."

"So I think that whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon,'' she added. "And people aren't ready for it."

Comments

[Brad DeLong]

But this is a Bay Area tradition! To his dying day, Mario Savo refused to acknowledge that the biggest mark he left on American politics was in greatly boosting Ronald Reagan's campaign for governor of California.

Indeed, I could start a fight right now by walking 200 yards toward the Golden Gate, entering the Free Speech Movement Cafe, and say "Why are we celebrating the source of Ronald Reagan's political power?"

We're naive and clueless! It's our specialty!!

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Gasp! When Professor DeLong beats me to saying it, what is there left to blog for.

[TM]

From Grover Norquist:

"Social conservatives are a very important part of the base, but they are not enough alone," said Grover Norquist...

I think it is the Party of the Naive and Clueless versus the Party of "Who are these people that call themselves my allies?"

[Neo]

It's not like they are bad people, they are just a bunch of intellectually vain folks whose insulation has led to a complete intolerance of any other point of view but theirs.

[TM]

Well, Patrick, the Prof is going to be a lot more influential in re-making his party than either you or I will be, and good luck to him.

[Jim Glass]

Talk about very smart people being stupid to the point of imbecilic (not to mention 'intellectually vain, insulated, completely intolerant of any point of view but theirs'), note the story of how the likes of Richard Dawkins and John LeCarre turned an Ohio county from Gore in 2000 to Bush in 2004.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109217

Of course it's among the most common of human failings to believe that one's expertise in one's own field carries over into other fields.

But when the other field is politics, it's like one's expertise in one's own field entitles one to remove one's own brain and leave it in a locker in the bus station, scrape out whatever instinctual common sense might still be attached at the open nerve endings, and just be a pure dufus.

[Mantis]

Just a little humor from leftieland:

The new world.

[Jim Glass]

God will smite them for that.

[Slartibartfast]

We've got two major parties in this country, both hell-bent on committing suicide. The Democrats are just better at it.

It's the extra intelligence, I guess.

[TexasToast]

Looks like the first things on the agenda are making the tax cuts permanent and changing the rules on appointments to the SCOTUS. Its not just the war. I’d say Roe v Wade is going to be going to Paris like Arafat did – with probably the same result.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

"the Prof is going to be a lot more influential in re-making his party"

He already epitomizes his party. What's to re-make?

[TexasToast]

Slarti - I know lots of folks who make the same kind arguments as Smiley does - mostly people reacting to a strict evangelical upbringing who are mad as heck about it. As you point out, thier anger can be rather , er, counterproductive.

[Lurking Observer]

TXToast:

Yup. Did you see how Dubya ordered the military in Iraq to stand-down 'til after the first new SCOTUS is appointed? Damn the man, apparently he's prepared to put the entire War on Terror on hold 'til after Rehnquist resigns and the Senate confirms.

What an idjit. Can't do two things at once, unlike that Mr. Kerry. Nosiree.

[TexasToast]

Lurking

Did I say he wasn't going to flatten Fallujah? Don't think I did. I think we are about to squash the place - pacify it if we make every last one of them a martyr. Wonder if the survivors will get to vote?