by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, November 5, 2004 4:38 P.M. EST

The 'Mandate' Double Standard
Having lost the election decisively, some Democrats have now alighted on the idea that President Bush's victory was not resounding enough to constitute a "mandate." The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, for one, insists that "a 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate" (emphasis his). Never mind that Bush's 51% is a higher popular-vote percentage than any Democratic candidate for president has received in 40 years. Dionne is aghast at the idea that the president will pursue a "radical" agenda:

An administration given to hubris will have to be checked by institutions outside what is likely to be a compliant Congress. This is no time for the independent media to be intimidated by trumped-up charges of liberal bias. Moderate Republicans will have to find the courage to say publicly what many of them say privately about this administration's habit of overreach and the excesses of right-wing legislative leaders. . . .

The burden for achieving national unity is on a president who could manage a narrow victory only by savagely trashing his opponent.

The last time a president won re-election was in 1996, when Bill Clinton managed only 49.2% of the popular vote. What did E.J. Dionne have to say then? We found his Nov. 15, 1996 column on Factiva, though it doesn't seem to be publicly available anywhere on the Web:

If you're looking for a mandate for moderation, consider that not even one voter in 10 cast a ballot for both a Democratic president and a Republican House member. You can thus make a strong case that support for politicians in Washington sticking to principle is far greater than the popular base for compromise. . . .

The upshot is that for the next two years, both parties will be competing on a playing field that is narrower than either would like. But that will not stop them from seeking advantage. To wish politics away is to ask both politicians and voters who have very strong views to abandon their principles. That won't happen. And it shouldn't.

To be fair, in 1996 Dionne was willing to allow that congressional Republicans as well as the Democratic president should stick to their principles. But now that the GOP is the undisputed majority party, suddenly he finds adherence to principle illegitimate. That speaks volumes about the magnitude of the Democratic loss.

Life Imitates 'Saturday Night Live'

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"--Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis, "Saturday Night Live," Oct. 8, 1988

"I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot."--John Kerry, mid-April 2004, quoted in Newsweek, Nov. 15, 2004

Whither the Dems?
Now that the Democrats have lost, where do they go from here? Reader Rob Steele offers some advice:

Dear Democrats,

While you think about how to do better next time, please stay true to your core values and feelings. Don't restrain your anger; part of your problem in this election was that you didn't put it out there enough. If other Americans understood how truly mad you are it would make more of an impression.

You need to try harder to make them see that you're smarter and better than your opponents. Unleash your indignation and express your outrage and they will start to get your superiority to the religious fanatics, racists and homophobes who oppose you. You've got to make the point over and over that these people are intolerant stupid hicks while you are smart, good and wise.

Face it, you're just not getting your message across. You run mild, polite candidates who can't or won't let it all hang out. If everyone understood, really understood, your anger, intelligence and moral superiority, well, things would have turned out differently.

Some Dems are following Steele's counsel. Here's Jane Smiley, "the author of many novels and essays," writing in Slate:

I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. . . . Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. . . . Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are--they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. . . . The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. . . .

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you--if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. . . . The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do--they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable. . . .

Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage--red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle--to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond.

Yeah, that'll work. Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman echoes the thought:

Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base. . . .

Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats--who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents--need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base. . . . What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity.

Krugman also opines that "without the fading but still potent aura of 9/11," Bush would have lost the election. But wait! Isn't this the same former Enron adviser Paul Krugman who wrote, on Jan. 29, 2002: "I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society"? Dems, follow this guy's advice at your own risk.

Krugman's conclusion:

It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it.

Of course, this is precisely the problem: As we noted yesterday, America as the blue-state elites "know it" is quite at variance with America as it actually exists.

Ah well, it's good to know at least that Krugman is finally getting around to reading an economics textbook. That's long overdue. But does he really have to leave for two months? Already this week "the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam" has returned to the obscurity of the Senate, and "Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994" isn't long for this earth. How are we supposed to get through the rest of the year without "former Enron adviser Paul Krugman"?

Damn, we're just going to have to come up with some new material. As if we aren't busy enough already.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
Salon's Farhad Manjoo weighs in with some words of cheer:

Like many liberals I'm betting on the Armageddon theory of politics. Bush and the GOP majorities in the House and Senate will make things so bad in the next four years that the country will never elect a Republican ever again. So here's hoping things get much, much worse!

Over on "Kicking Ass," the Democratic Party's official blog, one "joannar" offers a similarly optimistic assessment (quoting verbatim, ellipses in original):

look on the positive side folks, 2 more years of bush will cause the country to collapse, either because the rest of the world squeezes us, or osama gets us . . .

then we can start over . . .

watch the dollar collapse, then the stock market as foreigners pull out, then the housing market.

This Reuters dispatch, though, brings some bad--sorry, good--news:

New U.S. jobs soared at the sharpest rate in seven months in October, the government reported on Friday. . . . A surprisingly strong 337,000 jobs were added to payrolls last month--twice the 169,000-job growth that Wall Street economists had forecast and the strongest since March when 353,000 jobs were created, the Labor Department said.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tells the Associated Press she too is optimistic: "Quite frankly, I think the table is set for us in the next election. We have lost just about everything that we can lose." The lady has a point. After all, the same was true for Republicans back in 1936, and things worked out pretty well for them--in the long, long, long, long, long run.

You Don't Say
"Some Kerry Supporters Glum After Loss"--headline, CNN.com, Nov. 5

Fahrenheit 11/3
The Angry Left may finally be coming to understand how normal Americans felt after the Sept. 11 attacks. A poll on DemocraticUnderground.com asks "Which is more depressing, 9/11/01 or 11/3/04?" The results at this writing: 9/11, 29%; 11/3, 71%. In the comments thread, "Big Blue Marble" writes: "I have lived 61 years, lost my parents and my sister plus many many pets and this is the darkest day of my life."

If Only Kerry Had Thought of This!
"Want to get elected to the Springdale [Ark.] City Council? Announce your candidacy and then back out, saying you're too busy to campaign. It worked for Mike Overton, who won Tuesday's election after not spending a dime or giving a speech."--Associated Press, Nov. 4

Why the Nets Held Back
When it became clear early Wednesday morning that President Bush was going to carry Ohio, all the TV networks but two held off from making the call, even though the margin of victory was wider than those in several states they had already called. The New York Times explains why:

The critical moment came at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday, when, shortly after Florida had been painted red for Mr. Bush, Fox News declared that Ohio--and, very likely, the presidency--was in Republican hands.

Howard Wolfson, a strategist, burst into the "boiler room" in Washington where the brain trust was huddled and said, "we have 30 seconds" to stop the other networks from following suit.

The campaign's pollster, Mark Mellman, and the renowned organizer Michael Whouley quickly dialed ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC--and all but the last refrained from calling the race through the night.

Some have suggested that this means the networks were in the tank for Kerry, and that may be right--but we suppose we're inclined to give the nets the benefit of the doubt. After the 2000 Florida kerfuffle, they were understandably hesitant about making these calls, and perhaps they figured the Kerry campaign knew something they didn't.

Meanwhile, if you've been staying up waiting for the final results, you can finally hit the sack: President Bush has carried Iowa (link in PDF), a Gore state in 2000, making the final electoral vote total 286-252. Despite Bush's much larger popular margin, only two other states changed parties from 2000: New Hampshire to Kerry and New Mexico to Bush.

'God Bless His Soul'
At a press conference yesterday, the Washington Times' Bill Sammon informed President Bush--prematurely, it turned out--that Yasser Arafat had died. "My first reaction is, God bless his soul," the president said.

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's similar to what then-Gov. Bush said in 1998, when he denied a reprieve and ordered the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. As CNN reported at the time: "He ended his statement by saying, 'May God bless Karla Faye Tucker and may God bless her victims' families.' "

Tucker described herself as a born-again Christian, but liberals took up her cause anyway:

Tucker and an accomplice killed Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton in 1983. Tucker admitted accompanying Daniel Garrett to Dean's Houston apartment to see if they could top off three days of almost nonstop drug-taking by stealing Dean's motorcycle.

Once inside the apartment, Garrett, then 37, started beating Dean with a hammer. When the battered man began to gurgle, Tucker, who was then 23, grabbed a 3-foot-long pickax and repeatedly plunged it into him.

Thornton was hiding under sheets in a corner until Tucker and Garrett discovered her. Tucker turned the pickax on Thornton to eliminate her as a witness.

In a tape recording played in court, she bragged to friends that she got sexual thrills out of the attack.

Tucker won a Nobel Peace Prize--oh wait, sorry. Unaccountably, she never did.

Howard Nods
In an item yesterday, we quoted Howard Dean as saying: "More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history." That's actually true, but not of the current George Bush. In 1992, 44.9 million people voted for Bill Clinton and 19.7 million for Ross Perot, meaning that 64.6 million people voted against George H.W. Bush, nearly 10 million more than voted against his son on Tuesday.

Or Maybe It Didn't
"Voter Turnout Either Sizzled or Fizzled"--headline, Washington Post, Nov. 4

This Just In--I
"No Surprises in Races Where Candidates Ran Unopposed"--headline, Baxter (Ark.) Bulletin, Nov. 4

Dirty Politics
"New Jersey to Name Official State Soil"--headline, WINS-AM Web site (New York), Nov. 5

What Would We Do Without Universities?
"University Says Smoking May or May Not Cause Cancer"--headline, JoongAng Daily (South Korea), Nov. 6

This Just In--II
"Walk in Nice Weather Improves Mood"--headline, ABCNews.com, Nov. 4

The World's Smallest Violin
"First we lose 'the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam,' and now this. For this column at least, it's been a rough week."--Best of the Web Today, Nov. 4

Fahrenheit 900 Pounds
"A recent government study reveals that airlines increasingly have to worry more about the weight of their passengers," the Associated Press reports from Atlanta:

America's growing waistlines are hurting the bottom lines of airline companies as the extra pounds on passengers are causing a drag on planes. Heavier fliers have created heftier fuel costs, according to the government study. . . .

The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide was released into the air, according to the study.

At last, science proves that global warming is Michael Moore's fault!

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Stephan Oestreicher, Nathan Wirtschafter, Bob Batts, Michael Kingsley, John Hartness, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, Jerome Marcus, Michael Hopkovitz, Mark Van Der Molen, Aaron Dickey, Steve Fagel, Naftali Friedman, David Derby, S. Boyd, Evan Graham, Andrew Robinson, Dave Rennie, Byron Sanders, Andrei Muresianu, Jamie Extract, Thornton Sanders, Mark Pickering, David Chamberlin, Ethel Fenig, Wayne Rutman, Samuel Walker, Rebecca Billings, Bob Sharp, Jeff Meling, Dean Davis, Edward Tannen, Lesley Hensell, Kevin Englet, Frank Wickstrom, William Pries, Daniel Winston, Michael Zukerman, Rich O'Connor, Steve Lammlein, Darin Bartram, Donald Hubschman, Doug Miller, Steve Jackson, Alan Ridgeway, Stan Rulapaugh, Edward Maddox, Steve Tolle, Dave Burgess, Marc Vesecky, Steve Prestegard, David Shapero, Ryan Taylor, David Hughett, Mike Smith, Ivo Vegter, Michael Segal, Jim Lucier, Don Walker, Danny Tesvich, Dennis Snyder, Neil Sigler, Monty Krieger, Joshua Weiner, Alex Smart, Thomas Neven, Christopher Arfaa, John Andrews, Ian Glasgow, Joe Hancock, Russ Daniel, Barak Moore, Doug Levene, Paul Dyck, Steve Eggleston, Justin Taylor, Allen Long, Mike Weneta, Robert Thompson, Jamie Wellik, Russell Swerg, Allan Muchmore, Alan Rosenhauer, Rod Pennington, Earle Jewell, Erik Andresen, William Adler, Vidya Sagar and John Baumgartner. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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• Terry Eastland: When it came to moral values, John Kerry was his own worst enemy.