It's the same problem most progressives seem to have. He doesn't believe in people. I don't mean to say he doesn't have faith in people, though I suspect that would be true. I mean in his world people don't actually exist. There are only these warm, squishy, two-legged things all over the place, but what they are and what they think are a puzzle to Beinart.
Beinart predicts that 2012 will be a disaster for Republicans, and he backs it up with a recitation of American political history, circa 1970.
The process works something like this. When parties lose power, activists ascribe the loss to the ideological impurity of their incumbent president. In so doing, they vent the frustrations they kept bottled up while their side was in power. Since defeat frees them from the messy business of governing, ideological purity suddenly becomes easier. And since defeat usually hits party moderates disproportionately hard, the opponents of purity usually hold less sway.
[...]
Historically, it is only after a party loses two or three times that its activists come to terms with the reality that retaking power will require not ideological purity, but ideological compromise of the most wrenching kind. After McGovern lost 49 states, the Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, who on economic policy was not merely to McGovern’s right, but to Humphrey’s. And after Mondale lost 49 states in 1984, they nominated Bill Clinton, who was even further to the right.
It may seem odd to talk of a blowout Republican defeat in 2012, when the GOP is headed for a blowout victory in 2010. But it is precisely the over-interpretation of the latter that could produce the former. When the dust from this massive recession settles, it will be clear that America is not moving right; it is moving left because America’s fastest-growing demographic groups reside on the center-left. Hold on, Republican moderates; you may be poised for a big comeback in 2016.
Political fortunes swing back and forth. Like the tides coming in and going out, congressional control swings from left to right without rhyme or reason. It just is. In Beinart's book there are no underlying ideas. He seems to imagine some mysterious hunger in people to be governed, and he wonders why at this particular moment they don't want to be governed by the "good people" – the progressives. No matter, thinks Mr. Beinart. The pendulum will swing back.
He shouldn't count on that. He's not paying attention to real people.
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