The Democrats' 'Buck Up' Strategy

So the new Democrat talking point is: Buck up!

Somebody—perhaps Rahm Emanuel in his last masterstroke as Chief of Staff before he leaves to wreak havoc on Chicago—said to himself, “Self! The party is in deep, deep doo-doo, so we’ve got to do two things. 1. Go negative on the Republicans and try to rip them to shreds, and 2. Fire up the liberal base by giving them a pep talk.

So word went out across Left-Wing Land to get the base moving.

Vice President Joe Biden got the ball rolling yesterday by telling them to “stop whining.” However: calling the very people you need a bunch of whiners is not exactly a winning strategy. So Biden took another stab at it:

“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward,” Biden said.

President Obama apparently got the “buck up” memo too. In a Rolling Stone article published today, he said, “People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up…if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Again, attacking your base as “lethargic” and not “serious” probably isn’t the best Dale Carnegie way to motivate them.

But this is all they have. Their agenda has been disastrous for the country and hence, highly unpopular with the majority of Americans. The Left, to whom they are ostensibly appealing, thinks they haven’t gone far enough. They can’t win, so they’ve resorted to the old Carteresque “malaise” theme. Another winner.

I take particular and personal joy in reminding Obama, Biden, Rahm et al. that the last person to regularly use the phrase “buck up” to rally his troops was….

Richard Nixon.