I was blabbing on the phone last week with Maura Moynihan, the two of us complaining about all the worrywart liberals we know who are in a constant state of anxious funk. She imitated the typical worrywart--"I just know Karl Rove is going to pull something in October and Bush is gonna win and I'm afraid even to get my hopes up because we're gonna lose we always manage to lose"--and I joined in until we sounded like Bob and Betty Whiner dragging luggage through the airport.
This raises a question, not a rhetorical question but a real one: When did liberals become such political hypochondriacs? When did they start spazzing at every passing setback and chewing on a security blanket like Gene Wilder in The Producers? You'd think liberalism had never had never notched any victories, that futility was its sole legacy.
If the Freedom Marchers had been as easily a-sceered as today's liberals, they would have looked at the poll numbers favoring segregation and cancelled their bus trip to Mississippi. Labor organizers would never have voted to go on strike for fear of someone taking it the wrong way and complaining to the maitre'd.
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But in the meantime, liberals better toughen up and grow some bark because if Bush is reelected, they're going to be the chief target in a second term as America's impotence abroad become more and more apparent.
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