A realistic sign of the death of the donkey will be when they stop appearing on the ballot in red states

Here are the 2004 election results from Utah:

George W. Bush (Republican) 655957 (72%)

John F. Kerry (Democrat) 235991 (26%)

Ralph Nader (Unaffiliated) 11041 (1%)

Michael Anthony Peroutka (Constitution) 6775 (1%)

Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) 3327 (0%)

Charles Jay (Personal Choice) 923 (0%)

James Harris (Socialist) 382 (0%)

I have omitted 11 write-in candidates. I posit that there are many ways for the Democratic party to die short of disappearing from the ballot.

Unfortunately, as long as somebody appears on the ballot with a (D) after the name and people check the box then your death certificate won’t mean much. A realistic sign of the death of the donkey will be when they stop appearing on the ballot in red states and the cannot hold blue country.

More seriously, I just got to your responses to my somewhat despondent post of this morning, and I appreciate your replies (I have been very busy today, just now catching up).

Terrye, I read that Weekly Standard piece on Truman, too, just last night. It was fascinating! I hope you’re right that more is going on in the background than we’re aware of.

Jamie Irons

With all due respect, who says symbols aren’t “real.”

What’s the big deal about your so-called “reality,” anyway?

I once spent 72 days living off what I could carry on my back in the northern Canadian Rockies, and when I came back to “reality,” it seemed altogether unreal.

Now I make a damned good living entirely off abstractions and symbols.

And proud of it, too.

jamie Irons

I used to farm. I can actually grow and can food. I have raised my own meat. I have milked cows and made my own butter and cheese. I have sown my own clothes [once upon a time]. I have heated with wood and know what it is like to live without elctricity and barely notice the difference.

Maybe that is why I don’t think in symbols, but in results.

But neoneocon is right. There are very few people who know what it is to start from scratch and make or grow a thing. They just think a few liberal incantations and voila! it appears like magic.

Predicting elections this far in advance is always a crapshoot. Trying to figure out what the Dems strategy for victory is harder. As far as I can tell they have adopted a scorched earth policy, blocking and fighting any and every Bush proposal. Whatever it is, were against it. Then they will claim that the Republicans do not know how to lead and that they have created a divisive political atmosphere and that America needs a change in leadership. This tactic banks on the American people not noticing that the Dems are creating much of the rancor.

Could this work? You never know. Sometimes voters will kick parties out just because of fatigue. And the rabid attacks on Bush makes the base very happy. The potential pitfall in this plan is the chance that the base will put a radical up for President in ‘08. If you constantly rev up the crisis a more middle of the road candidate will sound too bland to solve the end of the world problems that the democratic rhetoric has created.

Kevin Peters

No announcement. The Teamster/RNC accomodation will remain on the back burner wrt publicity for a bit. It’s regulatory in nature and easy enough to discern through observation of license plates on I-5. The Teamsters have never been the fools of labor. As Sweeney is finding out.

Is that “have reached an accommodation” or “have announced”? Can you give us a link or two to follow?

David and I are available to sign the death certificate. The problem is that although we know that the Dems (like Fahd) are pining for the fjords, who is going to pull the plug?

When the Teamsters announce that they have reached an accomodation with the RNC (and they have) will that be enough?

It’s shocking, really, and IMHO another sign that there many, many on the left who are deeply delusional and in need of professional help.

neo-neocon has an excellent post on this based on the writings of Milan Kundera. The gist is that in the modern world most people are completely divorced from the actual reality of their lives: they don’t know where food comes from, they don’t know how to make steel (or even what steel is), they don’t know how to defend themselves, they can’t build or repair a simple motor, etc., etc. The result is that they live mostly in a symbolic world and symbols can be (and are) easily manipulated by nefarious actors.

The UN, in particular, is nothing but a symbol for these people. A symbol of goodness, of the end of war, of children pitching in to help the downtrodden, of everyone cooperating in a vast round of Kumbaya. By opposing the UN, you are, in their minds, opposing all the good things in the world.

Don Kofi knows how to manipulate these symbols very well.