One Of the Big Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

When liberals win big, as in 2006 and 2008, you never hear people say that it's a triumph for liberalism.

When conservatives win big, as they did this year, you CONSTANTLY hear people say that it's a triumph for conservatism.

If it were just the media, then that'd be annoying but understandable. They take their cues from Fox, and Fox is a propaganda arm of the conservative movement. What's bizarre is that liberals never claim victory either. They are, as we see over and over again with that "progressive" bullshit, totally afraid to claim victory for their ideology. Hell, they're unwilling to even DISCUSS their ideology. They'll talk about the economy, they'll talk about warfare, they'll talk endlessly about political missteps and tactics and strategies and all that horse-race crap that only the media actually cares about. But you never hear them say "this shows that the American public is actually pretty liberal; it's just had the word demonized by agitprop from the well-heeled-and-amoral."

Meanwhile, every two-bit conservative from Canada to Mexico is crowing about how the 2010 results are a victory for conservatism. People like Mike Pence babble on and on about how the results are "a victory for conservative values". They're shouting their ideology from the rooftops.

The results aren't any sort of victory for conservatism, of course. How could they be? It's been a grand total of two years since Obama swept the nation. People's beliefs don't change that fast. No, they're a reaction to an unbelievably shitty job market, combined with the regression from the Democratic wave of 2008 and a metric tonne of Citizens United-spawned attacks ads. Americans are no more "conservative" in values than they were two years ago, and every time you actually poll them about their REAL beliefs, they end up coming across as fairly liberal. Hell, most want to repeal Obama's health care legislation because they want to add a public option. That ain't "conservative".

And what'd be nice if a liberal was actually out there saying that. If one of these talking heads said "most Americans are liberal, but don't realize it, because they've been told all their lives that liberals eat babies for breakfast". I know it's not popular and, perhaps, not politically savvy to tell the American people that they're being bamboozled by agents and apologists of that 1% of the population that's walking away with a full quarter of America's income. Such talk always seems to raise the spectre of the Cold War Commies in the American mind. Class inequality was the cause of The Enemy.

Nonetheless, it's true. And wouldn't it be nice if liberals calmly, forthrightly, and unapologetically spoke the truth for once?