Question Asked and Answered

Shot: “Southern Democrats wonder after GOP wave: How do we rebuild?”

Chaser: “Actual [Washington] Post Headline: ‘Smugness Was Lousy Election Strategy for Democrats.'”

In response to the latter headline, Jim Geraghty writes:

Yeah, knowing what we know now, the next time a campaign strategist says, “Hey, let’s be smug this year!” the candidate should reject that proposal.

The real problem for Democrats is that “smug” isn’t really their strategy; it’s how they emotionally react to their conclusion that their viewpoint is better, more moral, smarter, wiser, fairer, more sensitive, more compassionate, and so on than the opposition. It’s not a campaign issue; it’s a character issue.

As Ricochet’s Troy Senik has noted, “Populism’s Hard When You Don’t Like the People.”

And nowhere is that more apparent than the coastal elite left’s view of the south and flyover country.

QED: The New York Times’ Gorillas in the Mist-style response to Joni Ernst and NBC-Comcast spokesman Jimmy Fallon’s even more disgusting take on Mia Love.

Of course, lying to voters, as many “Blue Dog Democrats” did in 2006 on their way to becoming Nancy Pelosi’s Obamacare-passing Crash Test Dummies (and electoral cannon-fodder quickly afterwards) doesn’t help matters, either.

Update: Perhaps the JuiceVoxers can win back the American people. Or perhaps not: