SINK 'EM – AT 10:17 A.M. ET:  One of the Democrats I liked during the campaign was Alex Sink, the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida.  A moderate, accomplished woman, who knew her issues and stated them with intellience and style. 

Sink lost by one point to a so-so Republican candidate.  And she's angry, angry at the White House for the way it dragged down her party, and she's right.  From The Politico:

In the wake of the party’s worst election drubbing since 1994, the deep frustration felt by many centrist Democrats toward the White House and the national party is now out in the open. And it’s being aired in the battleground state that’s the biggest prize in presidential politics.

Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink pointed an accusatory finger Friday at what she called a “tone-deaf” Obama White House to explain why she narrowly lost her campaign.

In an interview with POLITICO, Sink said the administration mishandled the response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, doesn’t appreciate the political damage done by healthcare reform and argued that her GOP opponent’s strategy of tying her to the president did grave damage to her candidacy in the state’s conservative Panhandle.

“They got a huge wake-up call two days ago, but unfortunately they took a lot of Democrats down with them,” said Sink of the White House.

She added: “They just need to be better listeners and be better at reaching out to people who are on the ground to hear about the realities of their policies as well as politics.”

COMMENT:  She's right, of course, but her comments will probably be ignored.  They'll be considered the sour grapes of someone who talks with a funny accent and doesn't have a Bloomingdale's charge card. 

Only 20% of Americans call themselves liberals, and yet liberalism is pretty much the only voice left in the Democrat Party.  That doesn't mean the party will always lose major elections, but it does mean that a good part of its past winning coalition no longer exists.

Liberals, though, never seem to care.  They are the fundamentalists of politics.  Purity, not winning coalition, is what satisfies them emotionally.

November 6, 2010