The Democrats’ genius of the past 40 years

I‘m not as pessimistic as Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, but I do share some of his concerns about the harm that the Democrats are inflicting on each other with, of course, the always reliable help the Harpies in our traditional media.

Mr. Herbert reminds of the “gift” that Democrats have displayed at blowing their chances at winning the presidency:

Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.

Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.

That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.

The only detail that’s missing from Mr. Herbert’s retelling of the Democrats “gift” is the willing role that so-called journalists have played in handing the presidency to republicans over those 40 years.