Dems Making Rumps of Themselves

Rich Lowry tells the sad tale:

The frustrations of minority status can drive a political party batty.

The temptation is to substitute belligerence for thought, insist on a self-destructive purity, lash out at the American public, and question the wisdom and viability of the country’s institutions. Indulging in these tendencies almost always makes a party’s position worse rather than better.

The Obama Democrats may be the first party to engage in this self-defeating behavior — borne of a frustrated desperation — while holding the presidency and both houses of Congress by substantial margins. Through an accident of timing (a national election coinciding with a financial crisis) and the exhaustion of the Bush-DeLay Republicans (who lost power almost by default), liberals took the commanding heights of the federal government while remaining a minority disposition in our national life. In short, they became a rump majority.

Through Pres. Barack Obama’s alchemy, these temporarily enlarged congressional numbers were supposed to be transformed into a permanent realignment. It hasn’t worked out, obviously. In the past 20 months, Democrats have had the power to do almost everything they want, except command the allegiance of the public. That has made them and their allies feel embattled, isolated, and perpetually aggrieved. They act like a forlorn minority at the same time they control every lever of elective power in Washington.

As Lowry explains it later in the piece the real problem for the Dems is they've lost the independents. They never really had a majority of the voters who wanted their policies, but for a time a majority was tired of Bush and the GOP in Congress and therefore the Dems took power.

It will likely be short-lived thanks to the Dems insistence on ignoring the will of the voters.