A high school teacher once told me "Stop kicking yourself. Let someone else do it."
I was a perfectionist, and was prone to not only blame myself for anything that went wrong, but do so in self-destructive ways. I sometimes still do.
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All things considered, I think rigorous self-skepticism is useful and it's better to err by looking for ways we could have done better than to err by blaming others. So I still kick myself, but I've learned to stop being mean about it. I no longer insult myself for not knowing everything that someone else knew or foreseeing every consequence that someone else foresaw. None of us can know or foresee everything.
But I can foresee this: Democrats blaming Democrats for our nation's ills will not help Democrats in the 2010 midterms. And as there is no historical evidence suggesting our party or our nation will benefit if Tea Party Republicans win in November ...
... I propose a moratorium on self-kicking.
We know there have been shortcomings. Some were unavoidable - expectations that exceeded the possible - while others were mistakes. Of the mistakes, some were the kind any of us makes when scrambling to catch up with unanticipated challenges, and others could and arguably should have been anticipated. We could argue over which events fall into which of those classes, and that might be a useful argument to have ... in December.
In the meantime, we have midterm elections in nine weeks. In all but a few states, the Democratic Party candidates are already set. And Tea Party Republican candidates are already kicking them. We can join in kicking our party's candidates, highlighting every perceived mistake of governance or campaign style, and echo the other side's narrative of "Blame the Democrats for your ills." At this point, it's irrelevant that we blame our party for not being progressive enough, while they blame our party for being too progressive. At this point, blaming our party simply echoes the other side's blame game. If we kick ourselves while they kick us ... we'll have two years, at least, to ponder why our party got kicked out.
So for the next nine weeks, let's stop being the harmony to the Tea Party Republicans' melody. Let's change the tune. Let's kick them.
They've left plenty of openings. They think the First Amendment should be apply only to religions they like, and the Fourteenth should be rewritten to exclude citizens they don't like. They think making rich people richer is better for everyone. They think the five unemployed people lining up for every one job available are lazy. They think health care should be reserved for the wealthy, and government should have no role except to control women's wombs. They want to privatize Social Security. They want to teach religion in science classes and rewrite history ... or just close public schools altogether.
They've gone off the cliff into the gaping maw of right wing crazy ... and for the next nine weeks we should pause from the endless self-kicking and look at the alternative. The choices are our Very Imperfect and their Over The Cliff. That's the reality of a two-party system.
We can go back to kicking ourselves on November 3rd. Until then, the other side will be busy kicking our candidates ... and helping them kick our candidates is a good way for all of us to get kicked to the curb.
Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com)