On cynicism: a corollary

In light of my post yesterday, I thought I'd offer my much-overdue election post-mortem. In my mind, it is the lack of idealistic behavior that lost the election for the Democrats. And I mean every person in this country who affiliates him/herself with that party, not just the party players. From the national Democrats on down to those oh-so-worldly-wise voters, there was widespread insecurity, loss of the forest for the trees, and just general ideological bastardization. They were so focused on winning that they forgot to play the game.

I figure this election was like Michael Jackson's latest album. According to an interview I saw on TV some time ago, Jackson went to Quincy Jones and said something to this effect when asking him to produce the album: "Here's the album. We think people will like it; we think it will sell." Not surprisingly, Jones wanted nothing to do with it. He said music wasn't about engineering something that was guaranteed to sell. Doing that fundamentally violated the spirit of creating music in the first place.

That's just what the Democrats did in this election. They tried to engineer it. They didn't find a candidate, or perhaps more importantly, a message, that could inspire the public. They cobbled together a series of opinion polls and focus group test results and called it John Kerry. They violated the spirit of democracy.