The Left won this election picking up seats in both houses and taking back the office of president, but did they lose anything in the process? Were they a bit short-sighted and too focused on the prize? Yes they were and here’s what they lost.
The Media Advantage
Well, they haven’t lost this advantage completely yet, but its erosion has surely been hastened by the biased reporting in this presidential election. The MSM continues to lose readers to other outlets and their performance this time around has pushed more away. It’s an embarrassing time to be a journalist. This advantage will continue to deteriorate as the exodus of readers toward the internet marches on.
Black Victimhood
To be sure, this was an important event for all Americans. There was great, real emotion because of Obama’s victory. And though America gets more blame for the institution of slavery, rather than the encomium it deserves for being the cause of its eradication the world over, she now stands as the least racist country in the world with a black president elect as proof. This is the most visible of countless examples yet that achievement is possible to every individual in America no matter the minority or majority group they hail from. This is a great event for America, but a bad one for the Left.
How many votes do Democrats get from telling blacks they need their help to survive in a racist country like America? The Left will begin to lose this argument because how racist can a country be that elects a black man to its highest office? Their argument of white racism oppressing minorities no longer holds water. I will give Jesse Jackson some credit and say he wasn’t crying all crocodile tears on the night of the election, but how much of his emotion was a show for the cameras, or due to a feeling of jealously, or because he’s lost his meal ticket, vs. actual happiness and pride. If the Left and people like Rev. Jackson continue to push this agenda, they will alienate whites that are sick of being blamed, and they’ll be seen as racial agitators fomenting the problem instead of healers that are part of the solution. The other option is to open their eyes to the evidence before them and admit that racism has long been waning in our nation, thereby losing the support of those that no longer feel discriminated against. It’s a lose-lose situation for the Democrats and a win for America.
Public Campaign Financing
Long since an ace in the hole for Democrats because of its power to even out campaign spending, public financing for presidential elections may never be used again. Private financing will no longer be seen as corrupt and the handicap of spending limits will never befall the Right. As the first candidate to forgo public financing since it started 1970′s, Barack Obama broke his promise to “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election,” and outspent McCain three-to-one in the general election. If we see numbers like this again, they may very well lean the other way, and if they do, Democrats will be powerless to defend a public financing system because a fellow Democrat destroyed it.
They won this election, but they killed the golden goose to do so.
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[...] force to shut those ideas down. And let’s not forget who, with a very short term outlook, broke his promise and turned his (and his party’s) back on publicly financed campaigns, thus opening the door [...]