Dems need to see voters may not agree with them on 'great candidates'

I have been thinking a lot lately about the recent election, and I have come to the conclusion that Democrats are basically delusional.

Ask yourself this:

Negativity carried the day.

How do you nominate a candidate for president who no matter how talented and capable she is, has pretty consistently been the most disliked person in politics? And have primaries where the only real alternative to her is a New England liberal who, before running for president, didn't even consider himself a Democrat?

And in an election in which two-thirds of voters were dissatisfied with the status quo, how do you nominate a candidate who has been a Washington insider for a quarter of a century?


Here's where the delusional part comes in. Democrats have a tendency to believe that when they put up the superior candidate, of course the voters will be intelligent enough to see how wonderful their candidate is.

Dukakis in a tank.

The problem is, they don't seem like real people. Whether it's Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, it isn't just that they don't seem like people an average guy would want to have a beer with. That's the way the media oversimplifies it, but what's real is that people think that if they sat down with any of those Democrats, the Democrats would look down on them and think badly of them.

Kerry as a sperm.

It doesn't help that their candidates don't look manly in manly situations. Dukakis looked like Jerry Lewis riding in a tank, and Kerry looked as goofy in a NASA "clean suit" as if he were playing a sperm in a Woody Allen movie.

And let's be fair. No matter how corny it seemed to Democrats to see Ronald Reagan riding a horse on his ranch or George W. Bush clearing brush at his ranch, at least half the country saw it as realistic and manly.

Republicans have had their own problems. Mitt Romney seemed every bit as robotic as Gore ever was, and when he told NASCAR fans that he had friends who were team owners, he sounded every bit as goofy as Montgomery Burns on "The Simpsons."

Law and order

Without a doubt, Romney was smart and successful, even if he did seem completely out of touch with reality. Jeez, he suggested that kids finishing school who couldn't find a job should borrow money from their parents and start their own businesses. Then there was his classic, "Corporations are people too, my friend."

It's certainly possible that Romney might have been a decent president, but it's difficult for me even to imagine him getting elected. The man is simply not a gifted politician. In fact, I can only think of three candidates in the last 50 years who had the charisma that really seems to inspire people -- Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

As for Democrats being delusional, all you have to do is listen to the conversations about 2020 and about who should head the Democratic National Committee. Yes, there are many talented women, African-Americans and Latinos in the party. But Bill Clinton -- a white guy -- appealed to voters across the board, and as much as I hate to say it, after three consecutive elections nominating either a black man or a woman, maybe the party of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and LBJ ought to at least consider that chunk of their party.

Because while it's certainly true that white males are becoming a smaller percentage of the electorate with every passing year, there are still enough of them around to wreak one helluva lot of havoc before they go away.

Democrats may not need to suck up to them, but it might be logical to find a candidate who doesn't seem to look at white males as something to scrape off their shoe.

That shouldn't be too much to ask.

Unless they want to keep losing elections.