Waterloo Was The Right Analogy. - Democratic Underground

TrollBuster9090

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Tue Mar-23-10 06:26 PM
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Waterloo Was The Right Analogy.

Run time: 09:47
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oLflPilcMc

Posted on YouTube: September 25, 2008
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Posted on DU: March 23, 2010
By DU Member: TrollBuster9090
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Waterloo was the right analogy.

Jim DeMint was right. This was Waterloo. But he was wrong about who was to be Napoleon and who was to be the Duke of Wellington.

For anybody who knows their history, the Republican party was a closer allegory to Napoleon than Obama. Napoleon took Europe by storm, beginning in 1797 (1993) with a new series of battle tactics based on cavalry and artillery, while the old European generals were still relying on the infantry. (The equivalent of the Rovian/Atwater tactics of wedge issues, dog whistle politics, fearmongering and demagoquery, while Democrats were still putting out six point plans only policy wonks found comfort in.)

These tactics continued to work until about 1812 when the opposition armies started to imitate them (see Paul Waldman’s 2006 book “Being Right is Not Enough” for a concise list of the Republican tactics that yielded their election victories from 1993 through 2004, and a plan to translate them into Democratic tactics, including wedge issues, dogwhistle politics, demagoguery, and a “reverse southern strategy.” If you follow what the Democrats have been doing, it looks like most of the senior tacticians have followed Waldman’s strategy to the letter.)

Napoleon hit his high water mark between 1806-1809 with these tactics (as the GOP did in 2002-2004). Following Napoleon’s high point he was presumptuous enough to try to force Czar Alexander I to let him marry his sister (basically the equivalent of Bush trying to privatize Social Security), and that was the last straw. Napoleon, like the Republicans, had mistaken a high water mark for a new trend. The Czar thwarted Napoleon’s efforts, beginning the war of 1812. By now most of Europe was sick of Napoleon’s constant wars and egotism, and his enemies had developed effective counter tactics. Napoleon lost in Spain (the 2006 mid-term election), and then got thumped big time on the retreat from Moscow in 1814 (the 2008 election), and was sent into exile.

But Napoleon’s ego stopped him from getting the message that even the French were sick of him, and saw a moment when the newly installed French Royalist govt was faltering and unpopular as an invitation to return. Wrong. Dissatisfaction with the ruling party is not necessarily an invitation for the party that was just kicked out to return.

Wellington (Obama) had a much less experienced army than Napoleon, who had brought his Old Guard. But Wellington chose ground he knew he could defend, the high ground at Waterloo, as did Obama, with a very centrist health insurance reform plan, which was (ironically) mostly inspired from centrist Republican ideas. Napoleon sent the screaming, flashing, loonie French cavalry (the Teapartiers, the PAC money and lobby groups, negative TV ads, and the shills writing OpEd pieces for think tanks) charging at the British infantry many times to make them lose their nerve. If they HAD lost their nerve, he’d have won. But the British managed to hold their lines in the face of charging cavalry long enough for the Prussians to arrive, and the rest is history. We do not remember Waterloo as the battle that Wellington ALMOST LOST several times. We remember it as the decisive and final defeat of Napoleon. What made a potential massive loss for Wellington into a massive loss for Napoleon? NOT LOSING HIS NERVE. A valuable lesson we’ve just learned again. We’ll forget that Obama nearly lost this battle several times, but I hope the Democrats in Congress don’t forget that winning it was ultimately a matter of not losing your nerve.