Yesterday, I asked this question at Common Sense Political Thought:
I’ll admit that I’m lazy and don’t want to take a lot of time to research this, so I’ll just ask it of our resident Dems and liberals: can you cite me any examples of liberal blogs saying that George Bush was a good man and that we needed to give him a chance before crucifying him? I’m looking for links for 2000 and 2004.
I’ve seen multiple examples of conservatives making this argument (Patterico has gone to a lot of effort to cite examples of Barack Obama’s decency, only to be castigated by other conservatives), but I truly don’t remember liberal bloggers of any stripe making this argument in either 2000 and 2004. Any examples?
The question was not a trick; I was genuinely interested to see if liberals knew of any examples of leftwing bloggers who had been willing to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt in either 2000 or 2004. I figured it was better to ask the question and discover there were no examples than to write a post and have a barrage of "You moron! X said Y!" comments.
Well, guess what? My unscientific survey of popular liberal blogs hasn't turned up any examples. Instead, there are:
-- comparisons with the Taliban
-- calls for secession
-- the ever-present name-calling,such as "homo haters"
-- More name-calling; this time liars and bigots
-- Even more name-calling! This time, those who voted for George Bush become Timothy McVeigh
-- Most bluntly, the American voters are dumb as posts.
I wonder how these liberal bloggers feel about American voters now. Do they still think they are dumb as posts? Homophobes? Liars? Bigots? Candidates for admission to the Taliban?
I suspect that, even though voter turnout was essentially the same as 2004 (sorry, Pho, but you were wrong, yet again), liberals would claim that the voters were more enlightened, smarter...or something.
But meantime, as Orrin Judd notes,
and, no, it isn't fair that it is only Republicans who are expected to be--and will be--magnanimous in defeat. But, the fact of the matter is that the American political system and to some degree the society generally has been infected since Florida 2000 and if the election of a Democrat can just drain some of the pus out it's all to the good.
Well said.
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