WHY THE POLITICAL LEFT WILL LOSE...AGAIN

It's hardly a secret to readers of "The Mass Mouth" that I dislike the Left and its politics. Thus this commentary is going to sound anything but objective in its analysis. Nonetheless, I submit it:

The Left is going to lose this election. It will do so for all the usual reasons and for some unusua ones besides. Most importantly, it will lose because it believes that it's smarter than you. Last I looked, people do not like being told that they are dumb, especially when they're not. Yet because the Left is the politics of so many academics and media types, whose stock in trade is learning and knowledge -- difficult to acquire and long time acquiring, the Left has what it considers good reason for its high opinion of itself. Leftists also feel certain that they seek a better world and that their view of the better world is an urgent objective, and that they thus have a mission to impose it on everyone else. Unhappily, everyone else actually lives his or her own life and acquires his or her own view of what the world is like and should be; and in a democracy, these everyone elses are entitled to have their priorities counted.

The superiority point of view would, by itself, put the Left at a disadvantage in a democracy with universal suffrage. Yet the Left goes further. When challenged, it doesn't merely respond, it attacks the challenger's right to be heard, or to be believed. Worse still, because the Left always knows that it is correct, it always knows that it should win every election: and that if it does NOT win, it can only be because those who vote against it are stupid, craven, dishonest, hypocritical, even criminal -- or are all of these.

Naturally, those voters who choose to vote for candidates and programs not arising from the Left do not believe that they are acting stupidly, or in a craven manner, or dishonestly, etc. For some unaccountable reason, non-Left voters actually feel pretty O.K. about their choices. And more often than not, their candidates win.

As we're seeing in this election, the Left can NOT deal with the prospect that non-Leftists might win. Destroy, demean, denigrate -- the Left doesn't respond, it goes to war. Dirty war. But in politics, the other side does not get wiped out. It lives on. And, living, it goes its own way all the more determinedly on accountv of the outrages thrown at it.

The Left at this time is watching John McCain and Sarah Palin surge and surge some more, drawing huge crowds, energized and energizing, with a mesage of reform, freedom, and "country first" that enrages the Left. This was supposed to be THEIR time ! How DARE these folks, these "McBush" types, these "more of the same" guys, actually approach to victory ? After all, THEIR candidate is THE MAN OF DESTINY. He's the MORAL choice. He brings tears to the eyes of SO many! He is so ARTICULATE ! He is THE ANOINTED. America wants faith-based politics ? OK, says The Left, HERE HE IS. Moses parting the Red Sea...

But what if he isn't ? What if John McCain is the man of destiny ? Plain-spoken, earnest, stolid, man of honor John McCain ? What if a Maverick and a Reformer with an actual record of being so wins, in his own, very steady, undramatic way, this important election? What will the Left then do ?

Simple. It'll say that the election was stolen.

They WOULD say that, wouldn't they ?