The Results Party? What results?

Democratic National Committee Chairman, former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is sort of the looking glass version of RNC chair Michael Steele.

Kaine is thoughtful, tactful, focused, and…boring.

BORING!

Steele can’t open his mouth without making news.  Kaine apparently won’t open his mouth until he’s sure what he’s about to say won’t make news.

Even when what he’s about to say should make news.

Like announcing the Democrats’ plan for winning in November.

From Politico:

Outlining his midterm message for the first time, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine is billing his side as “The Results Party,” and vows that the elections will not be framed as a referendum on President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress, but instead as a choice between the two parties’ records and plans.

Good.  In theory.  That’s the way it needs to be.  The Can-do and Have-done Democrats vs the Won’t Do It Unless It Benefits Rich White Guys Republicans.  The Party of Yes We Can, Yes We Have, Yes We Will vs the Party of Oh My God There’s A Black Commie in the White House, This Calls For More Unfettered Corporate Greed!

It would be nice if Kaine’s list of Democratic results was phrased that way.

Instead it’s written as if in answer to questions on a professional licensing exam.

As a boast it is conspicuously mealy-mouthed.  There’s not a bold or unequivocal statement in it. 

Yeah, I know, that reflects the Democrats’ apparent strategy of avoiding the bold and unequivocal when it comes to doing things that get results.

But it also reflects a Democratic habit of speaking and writing as if the purpose of both was not to excite, inspire, entertain, or move an audience in any way, but simply to instruct and inform without starting a fight.

It’s hard to come up with good fightin’ words when you refuse to talk as if you’re in a fight.

It’s comic in the movies when the bully says, “Hey four-eyes” and the nerd replies quite calmly, “I fail to grasp why you think I should be insulted by the fact that a physiologic accident that I am not responsible for, e.g. an astigmatism, requires the use of corrective lenses in frames, which, as it happens, my mother thinks are quite stylish.”

In real life talk like that will put the softest-hearted teacher on the bully’s side.

Actually, talking like that will get you beaten up by the glee club.

And, pardon me, the Results Party?

As an aggregation of sounds---there I go now---the Results Party is mush.

Worse than that, though, it’s jarring to the ear and to the brain because it violates the idiom.  And there I go again.  Put it this way.  Nobody talks like that!

“Results” isn’t an adjective.  And while some nouns can be used as adjectives and even as verbs, results isn’t one of them.  It’s not just that it sounds stupid when you try it.  “He’s a results guy!”  It’s that the connotations cause the language centers of the brain to resist the usage.  Sorry.  It’s that the word means a lot of things to people you don’t want them thinking of when you’re trying to get them to pay attention.

“Results” is a word people usually hear when they don’t want to hear it.  At work:

“The boss demands results!”

“Don’t give me excuses.  I want results!”

“We’re a results-oriented team here, Johnson, and if you can’t produce results, you can’t be part of the team!”

And in the doctor’s office:

“We have the results of your tests, Mrs Jones…”

Even if the next part of the sentence is good news, the first part has caused Mrs Jones blood pressure to spike.

Even at its most innocuous the word is boring.

“What were the results of the experiment, Professor?”

But the bigger problem is that it prompts the question, “What results?”

Kaine’s list of Democratic results, while full of good things, is not exactly the stuff that will cause the hearts of the faithful to beat faster and rally the base to come out and vote.

Technocrats and policy wonks, particularly those of moderate views and modest expectations, will applaud.  Politely and temperately.  But Progressives will notice that the results they wanted and want are conspicuously missing, continuing what has been a theme of the last 16 months, pretending the ideological portion of the base doesn’t exist, another way the two Parties are mirror images.

And working people are going to look in vain for any results that directly benefit them.

“The Results Party?  What results?  My company’s still floundering and I expect a pink slip every day.  My neighbor’s out of a job.  My house is under water.  The credit card bills are still piling up.  We’re not taking a vacation this year.  The car’s making a noise that I know means a repair’s coming up I can’t afford.  And they’re talking about closing my kids’ school and all the rest rooms at the state parks.  The health care bill is a good thing, I guess, and I’m glad I won’t lose my insurance if I get sick or lose my job except that I don’t want to get sick or lose my job and if I do the doctors are going to be the last people coming after me for money, and anyway, you think the insurance companies aren’t already looking for legal ways to break the law?  And saving the banks might have saved the economy in that some businesses that need loans to stay afloat can get them, but the banks aren’t going to lend me any money, are they?   And that tax cut you got me?  Thanks, a lot.  Didn’t even cover the jumps in the price of gas and my monthly minimum payments and my insurance premiums and my grocery bills.  Didn’t offset the amount I lost in reduced hours and no more overtime and did I mention I haven’t gotten a real raise in ten years?”

With results like this the Results Party is going to find that the results of the election will be that they will no longer be in the position to get any more results.  And you might say deservedly, if the result was that they were replaced by Progressives who will get results.

But it’s not going to comfort me if the result of this coming election is that I get to say I told you so over and over again for the next twelve years while the Republicans gleefully get the results they want.

The rest of Kaine’s statement reads like something less than a battle cry too.  In fact, it reads like a pre-emptive excuse for having lost, as if Kaine is already preparing to lead the minority party.

“Yes, we’re going to get our asses handed to us in November, but at least we’ll be able to claim a moral victory.”

Kaine is no Michael Steele.  But he’s no Howard Dean either.

Dean had his 50 state strategy.

Kaine appears to have a strategy for losing 50 seats graciously.

Comments

[Rana]

Gah, Democrats! I think, sometimes, that they're all a bunch of failed wonks and advisors - they have that mindset, but they're not good at either. Makes for shitty leadership, and not a lot of passion.

Plus then there's the fact that they act like the caricature of liberals that conservatives always attack - cooperative to a fault, tolerant of everything and anything (except of their more outspoken members), unwilling to get their hands dirty, out of touch, etc.

I wonder if some of it stems from the neutering of the labor unions in this country, and the postwar strategy of hippie-bashing to gain credibility with the establishment - basically, the Democrats have estranged themselves from the parts of the left that knew how to bring passion and dirty fighting to the scrum, and now view both with suspicion and disdain.

Boring, yes. And dangerous - because if you're not willing to fight for your principles, you might as well not have any.