Thanks to Gene C. for the e-mail, subject line: “You’re a soothsayer!”

“As long as the Democrats continue to spin their wheels around that fact, they will remain effectively a minority party.”

Yeah, they’ll never crush the Republicans in the 2006 congressional race!

The quote is from something I wrote while basking in the triumph of the 2004 election. Expanded for context:

The talking point now is that the Democrats simply failed to frame their issues using moral language, as if a few Biblical quotes and prayerful pleadings would make an issue like embryonic stem cell research suddenly appealing to conservative religious folk. However, the problem is not the language used to sell a policy of harvesting nascent human life for the benefit of Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox and indeed potentially any one of us. The problem is the policy itself. A lot of people don’t want any part of their tax money being spent in a search for a cure that they equate with cannibalism.

It’s not the packaging; it’s what’s inside that stinks. That’s true on this and a range of issues, including the war, taxes and health care. As long as the Democrats continue to spin their wheels around that fact, they will remain effectively a minority party.

Alright: I cannot but grant that I was foolish to imply that politics as we know it had somehow come to an end. The 2004 election was pretty historic, when you consider that Bush won with the largest popular vote on record and that the Republicans simultaneously increased their majority in congress (having already increased that number in the 2002 mid-term). However, politics goes on and there is not likely to be a point when either party can be written off as unable to control either congress or the White House. After all, the response to a loss is inevitably an adjustment in strategy to try and effect a win the next time around.

Nevertheless, I would say this: The Democrats won in 2006 not so much by strongly expressing what they really believe, but more by obfuscating it and by taking advantage of Republican errors (in particular the disillusionment of the Republican base with the perceived weakness of the Republican congress). The Democrats did not, for instance, run with a concerted theme of immediate withdrawal from Iraq, but rather with just a generalized theme of dissatisfaction with the President’s handling of the war. Since being in control of congress, however, Pelosi and Reid have reverted to something more like their core selves, and have focused on forcing a withdrawal, and it must be noted that congress now has the lowest poll ratings ever recorded. So you could argue (or at least I could) that the Democrats are in some sense still effectively a minority when they stand up for what they actually believe. The 2008 election may be clarifying in this regard.

That said, I’m sure anyone else who wants to troll through the backpages of this site will find any number of other predictions from the author upon which history would now cast a cold eye. Feel free to dig them out, but please just click on the Google ads while you’re at it.

And I’d be happy to compare my rate of accuracy to the likes of Paul Krugman or Richard Cohen or some other high-profile mainstream media liberal commentator over the same time span. (I’d be even happier to collect their salaries, but that’s another subject.)

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