It wasn’t strategy or statistics that made the Dems think that victory was certain. It was ideology.
Obama had spent two terms telling them that they were on the "right side of history". The more the Dems swung left, the closer to the right side of history they were. Their leftist views were naturally superior. They were based on science while their opponents were superstitious buffoons. They were enlightened while their enemies were bigots. They were smart and conservatives were dumb.
Delusions of superiority had convinced them that Republicans couldn’t win an honest election. When Bush won, it was because his brother and the Supreme Court had rigged the election. The Republican victories that swept much of the country were only due to voter suppression and redistricting.
The Democrats had allowed themselves to believe that they were so innately superior that they couldn’t lose an election except through fraud or dirty tricks. The humiliating defeats of McGovern, Carter, Mondale and Dukakis were all in the past. They had gone so far to the left that they couldn’t lose.
They had confused ideology with electability. The fallacy of fanatics is the conviction that their beliefs explain reality. And that following their beliefs must therefore lead to a successful outcome.
Leftists had convinced themselves that winning elections was an inevitable as the success of ObamaCare and the rejuvenation of the economy. Their media became a propaganda echo chamber filled with their own assurances of inevitable victory. But ObamaCare failed, the economy lingered and Trump won.
Instead of realizing that they had been lying to themselves, they seized on conspiracy theories.
Convinced of their natural superiority, members of the Master Party believed that their subjective contempt for Republicans in general and Trump specifically was an objective truth. It wasn’t that they despised conservatives. No, conservatives were inherently despicable. And Trump was so despicable and so absurd that he just had to lose. It was inconceivable that he couldn’t have lost. So he had lost.
Human beings don’t react well to having their egomaniacal fantasies come apart around them.
After losing World War I, many Germans seized on the Dolchstosslegende or the Stab-in-the-Back theory to explain what happened. The German military didn’t lose the war. It was undermined and stabbed in the back. Otherwise, despite the collapse of its allies and the entry of the United States, it would have won. The Nazis rode the Dolchstosslegende all the way into power. And to an even more devastating defeat in an even more devastating war all while trying to disprove the fact that America, the United Kingdom, France and Russia really could beat them in a war once there were no more Jews in Germany.
You can deny reality, but reality always wins.
Unsurprisingly, the Dolchstosslegende was most popular with German military leaders. Likewise the Democrat Dolchstosslegende arose from the ranks of Hillary’s campaign leaders. It’s those in charge of the losing team who have the most incentive to blame anyone and everyone else. The Nazis blamed a long list of people including the Jews. The Democrats blamed everyone from the FBI to the Russians.
Hillary has become another Hindenburg touting her own Dolchstosslegende. Her latest book, ’What Happpened’, will put the Dolchstosslegende into print. It will list everyone who lost the election for her. ’What Happened’ may be an awkward title, but calling it ’Mein Kampaign’ might have been a bit much.
The Hillary Dolchstosslegende tearing apart our country passes itself off as patriotism. The Nazis claimed that they were patriots too. But Dolchstosslegendes aren’t patriotic. They’re exercises in divisiveness by losers who don’t want to take responsibility for their stupidity, incompetence and hypocrisy.
Hillary went from pressing a reset button with one of Putin’s minions to a posthumous political campaign claiming that Putin had rigged the election. Never mind that even if Russian hackers did leak Podesta’s emails, less than 1% of Americans have any idea who Podesta is or cared about the contents of his chats. But Podesta’s emails embarrassed the future promoters of the Dolchstosslegende.
Continues.