Thursday, October 14, 2010

Who or What to Blame for Looming Election Disaster?

Ezra says blame the base,

If Democrats get wiped out in this election, it'll be because the base stayed home. And the conventional wisdom on the base's apathy is that they've had to compromise too much, swallow their pride too often. They lost the public option. They shaved more than $100 billion off the stimulus. Further stimulus proposals were much too small. Cap-and-trade is dead. 

I'm confused. When the Democratic base comes out on the losing end of a policy debate it is pointed out that the base isn't actually all that powerful and is relatively small in comparison with the GOP base. But now that the Democrats are poised to lose 50 seats in November the Democratic base is to blame? If we're big enough to doom the Democratic Party at the polls then we're big enough to take seriously the rest of the year too.

Or you know, it could just be that the economy fucking sucks and it's a mid-term election so the incumbent party is destined to get rolled. 

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