The Game, the Season, and the Legacy...

Re(1): 'This Weekend', The Belmont Club, TC Wretchard

To me the American Left looks like a quickly aging professional basketball team that has flashes of greatness past. They appear dependent on other opponents to exhaust the Center-Right coalition. Based on the projected outcome of the 'River Wars' (away from the MSM), the upcoming MSM suprise in the Iraq Constitutional vote, and the Left/MSM confusion on the hurricanes I would not bet against a steadfast Amercia.

To use a sports analogy, the only way to lose in Iraq is for the Left to win games in America.

When the Left won, they controlled the court for a season – if not eras. They leaped into the air to guide ally-oop passes into the bucket. The game was easy. Their defense was more than dogged and determined – it was devastating. Opposing teams lost before they stepped onto the court. The left would lose nine games in a season of eighty-two. People forget the losses.

The first part of their game to fade was the defense provided by the mass media. That happened at or about 9/11 as news junkies migrated to the net. The Left got increasingly lazy, fat, and slow. Their MSM defense could not move with the times. And they are finding that they cannot recruit without blowing their salary cap or endangering their teams ‘chemistry’ – bloated with oldsters well past their prime and dependent on game strategy thirty years old.

Then the transition game vanished. The opposition, motivated by witnessing lazy slugs meandering into a zone defense, and leaning swarming tactics from competition against other adversaries, starts to press both the offense and the defense. Soon enough, the Left stops running the court. Every once in a while they get the gander to run – resulting in ESPN highlight films, but they still lose in the larger context of the game.

Then the offense collapses. They stop playing a team game and start lobbing individual shots over the opposition – sometimes at great range and often outside of an organizational concept. Even luck seems to abandon them. There is internal confusion, jealousy, and anger. Many shots are lobbed into the air, miss badly, and then transitioned by the opposition into an easy score. Every once in a while a spectacular player makes a spectacular play – but they lose in the larger context of the game.

The more minutes, games, seasons played the more the Left loses.

And with this President, at this time, we play the game not in terms of minutes and seasons – but years. Tell me again how this President will quit minutes into a game, and when he has his opponents adjusting to his moves. He may not have the ball, he knows he will not always have the ball, but he is confident. He can still win this one game, but if not, he will adjust and overcome to come out on top for the season.

In the end, with three and one-half years left in this run, can the Left survive elections - and can the ‘insurgency’ survive hard and soft American power?