Rachel Maddow is a coward.

I like Barack Obama best when he's lecturing super liberal folks about how they don't have any business telling him his business. Watching this Rachel Maddow interview, she tries to get him to take up the gauntlet of defending the Democratic party and liberalism by trashing conservatism. He totally ignores the bait, as well he should. She's frustrated. Every time I see her on TV she's talking about how worried she is.

At some point, these Democrats and "progressives" are going to finally see what they've got: A winner. Someday they're going to wake up from the illusion of their electoral victimization and realize that for a group that's always bragging about their own intelligence they've lost not because they've been robbed, but because they've been dumb. And weak. And unpersuasive.

At some point, they're going to wake up to the fact that you don't win by acting like you're losing; or like you're winning. You win by first knowing that you can and then working hard to make it happen. When was the last time Democrats actually tried to win? 1992? I guess. But where would all of that work gotten them had Ross Perot not garnered 19% of the vote?

The last time Democrats earned 50% of the vote was 1976--when Carter beat a hapless Gerald Ford who, while he was technically the president, had never run for state-wide office, let alone been on a national ticket. Before then? 1964. I'm sure it was hard for LBJ to figure out a way to get over 50% a year after Kennedy was shot. I guess it's safe to say that Kennedy had to try hard to get elected; he was running against the vice president, after all, and it was a super close election.

I think I was trying to make a point about how Democrats only win by technicality (a plurality in a three-way race) or when it's inconceivable that they would lose (after Watergate or the Kennedy assassination). That's a half century of history.

Cry about 2000 all you want, but nobody would give a fuck about Florida if Al Gore had won his own home state. Ohio might have been meaningless had Kerry--who ended the 2004 election $3,000,000 in the black--decided to spend every dime that he had. I guess it's easier to blame somebody else.