While I was googling the word “Joementum” to try to figure out if New Republic coined it, I stumbled across this classic piece of prognostication from Cokie Roberts in 2006 (excuse the Newsbusters link) about the perils of defeating Joe Lieberman in 2006 primary:
…..I think, a disaster for the Democratic Party, and it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens as a result of it.
[….]Yes, I do because I think, first of all, that pushing the party to the left, which is what’s likely to happen, is pushing the party to the position from which it traditionally loses, and In presidential elections but also it will send a signal to everybody in the Senate, watch out, the only smart thing to do here is play to your base, and then what that means is that your legislation becomes a mess, which it already is but even more of a mess, and you get.
[…..]Well, and it certainly – and Bill Clinton, it’s also no accident that Bill Clinton is the only Democrat who has been elected president for two terms since Franklin Roosevelt, because he was a Democrat in the middle from the south with a very strong acquaintanceship with scripture. All of that and I think you start, you know, talking about the liberal blogs and all that taking over the party and it will be a disaster.
Cokie Roberts uttered these words three years ago. I don’t need to tell you that since then, Democrats have picked up 15 seats in the Senate, 55 in the House, and captured the presidency with the largest percentage of the vote of any Democratic president since 1964. She literaly could not have been more wrong.
I’d feel a lot better if she’d describe health care reform as DOA.