The Happiest Man in America, Part II

As a follow-up to this post, Abigail Brayden disagrees slightly with my assessment of how the election results benefitted Michael Moore.

I understand Drew's point Michael Moore may not be a "loser" in the sense that he has gained the opportunity to continue to make money off of Bush-hatred. But he is a loser in the sense that he is on the losing team. I don't think people will care as much about what he is saying now that the election is over, and I certainly hope I don't have to hear from him as much. Money doesn't always make a winner a winner.

She's right, of course, that money doesn't make someone "a winner." But I don't think we've heard the last of him.

I think it's a sort of chicken-and-egg question. Which came first? Michael Moore whipping up hatred, or the hatred itself? It's possible that his influence will be lessened, but that will depend on whether people are able to get past their hatred of this administration. If the fires of hatred which Moore and others whipped up into a blazing hot conflagration only diminish to a low smolder, then those embers are still there for Moore to fan back into flames. And don't think he won't try.

Clearly there needs to be a group intervention here. A loyal opposition is good for balance. Democrats forgot about the "loyal" part and spent the last two years blindly opposing everything that Republicans supported to the point that they turned many of their own party against them. We've got to lead the Democrats away from the lunatic fringe and back into America. But with Howard Dean seriously considering replacing Terry McAuliffe at the DNC, I just don't think it's going to happen.

As long as the Democrats continue to play snuggle-bunnies with Michael Moore, their supporters won't reject Moore's messages of hatred for this administration.

The best thing the Democrats could do is to admit that cozying up to Moore was a bad idea. They need to publicly denounce him and all the other hate-filled lefties who carried water for John Kerry this year. If John Kerry had had his "Sister Souljah" moment and drawn a line--say, at that obscene fund-raiser in which he called the anarchic Hollyweird types "the heart and soul of America"--the election might have been closer. But his statement was an appeasement. He would let them have the Red State Sudetenland if they would continue to support him.

Back to Moore. Abigail may be right, that Moore's been revealed to be nothing more than a pesky gadfly, not worth paying attention to, but I wouldn't count him out yet. I suspect he's going to quickly realize how lucky he is to have a Bush administration to kick around for four more years.

Abigail compares the situation to Ann Coulter's:

If John Kerry had won, Coulter would have been able to ride a wave of Kerry hate, but her chances of being a loser wouldn't be as good as Moore's chances of loser-ness in our current situation.

Absolutely right, but I think that's because Coulter's target has always been the left, regardless of who their poster-boy is. And the left will always be with us.