Infidel Cowboy: Hate Fatigue

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Hate Fatigue

update: Obviously the haters aren't completely fatigued yet.

original post: I have been having this argument with some lefties for the past four years - the rabid Bush hating going on in their circles is going to cost the Democrats any chance at winning back the White House. Patrick Hynes has an article in The American Spectator which is a pretty good summation/expansion of my argument. Excerpt:

I attribute these trends to a "Hate Fatigue" that hangs over the Democrat Party. I first encountered it in New Hampshire during the primary campaign. On a night when Howard Dean still rode high in the polls, I strolled into a bar and was shocked to see the place filled with young people clad in Dean for President grab, drinking imported beer, bee-bopping to alt rock, and cruising for hook-ups. That night I decided Dean would lose because his campaign mistook a visceral hatred for George W. Bush, expressed with fervency at meet-ups and chat rooms, with actual electioneering. Dean fell to earth almost as swiftly as he ascended to prominence.

Kerry, who benefited from the Deaniacs' childish hatred in the primary, has now fallen victim to a corollary phenomenon in this General Election. If some voters are still undecided after learning that George W. Bush is actually Adolf Hitler, knew about 911 before it happened, and alternately has Osama bin Laden in secret custody and has no interest in apprehending him at all, what more information could John Kerry possibly give them to push them over the edge? Jacques Chirac's home phone number?

The main thing I would add is that we are also seeing a backlash against the politics of hatred and personal attacks. People realize that comparing Bush to Hitler when there is real evil in the post 9/11 world is irresponsible demagoguery and those engaging or even refusing to disavow it cannot be trusted with the serious matters facing our country.

By infidel cowboy · 10.05.04 08:05PM ·

Comments

Now THIS one I really don't get.

Can you tell me how "[being] clad in Dean for President grab, drinking imported beer, bee-bopping to alt rock, and cruising for hook-ups" equals "learning that George W. Bush is actually Adolf Hitler, knew about 911 before it happened, and alternately has Osama bin Laden in secret custody and has no interest in apprehending him at all"?

I'm not being snide. I just don't see how the equation implicit in this Hynes quote adds up. (Maybe the "whole thing," in the Reynolds sense, would explain it, but I assume you're extracting Hynes to the best of your considerable ability.)

Posted by: roy edroso at October 2, 2004 10:14 PM

Come on, now. I have no problem with any of those activities, but the people the author is talking about were engaging in Bush hating - equating Bush with Hitler, saying Bush new about 9/11, etc. I.E. they were purveyors of rabid Bush hatred. They were powerful for awhile and were the force behind Howard Dean. The grownups in the Democratic party realized the guy was batshit, and countered him with a stiff of a canidate. Now, the Dems are stuck with that stiff because of the actions of the rabid Bush haters. I don't know why I have to explain this, but if the Dems had selected a guy like Liebermann - honest, sober, concerned about national security, with the moral authority to speak on it, and who had a real plan instead of just criticism of Bush, they would have won in a landslide. Instead, being blinded by the haters, they supported Dean for awhile and then went with the opposite of him which was the weakest candidate in the field.

Posted by: infidel cowboy at October 3, 2004 01:18 AM

You explain these things a lot better than the people you quote do.

Posted by: roy edroso at October 3, 2004 12:25 PM

Thanks - the scary part is I was drunk-commenting at the time. I agree the author being quoted could have tried to make his case a little clearer. I wrote about some better comments by Andrew Sullivan, who I believe is going to vote for Kerry - I think he had the best comment I have seen on the Kerry vs. Bush election:

The Senator's recent dreadful performance and pathetic equivocations on the war only further convince me that Bush truly is the luckiest man alive.

Posted by: infidel cowboy at October 3, 2004 05:28 PM