Les Jones

Political Survival Kit > Virginia Postrel's Rule for Predicting Elections

Postrel's Rule: The party that hates America always loses.

Here's what I wrote after the 1998 midterm elections:

I told you so. The party that hates America will lose. The party that imagines no positive future, offers no "vision thing," will lose. The party that thinks it is better than the American people, that makes large segments of the voting public believe they are its enemy, that convinces people it wants the government to boss them around and destroy the things they love, will lose.

On November 3, that party was Republican. The GOP went down to humiliating defeat, losing close race after close race, plus many that weren't supposed to be close. The party lost its solid grip on the South and collapsed in California. It managed to lose seats in the House, an extraordinary result that even Democratic pundits failed to predict.

And it deserved to lose. Republicans sold out their economic base, invested all their hopes in scandals involving a president not on the ballot, and ran as the party of scolds, pork, and gloom. No wonder their voters stayed home.

Fast forward to the 2004 election:

Back during this summer's Democratic convention I blogged that "now it's the hard-core Democrats who think the country is going to hell--but at least they blame the administration, not the general public." Post-election, alas, they blame their fellow Americans. And when voters feel hated, they respond by voting in droves for the other guy. (Just ask Pete Wilson.)