Barnett ended his piece with this observation:
The Kossacks seem to believe that if they could just be heard by the entire country, the Democratic party's losing streak would come to an end.
And Custer probably thought that if he could just get the Indians to come out and fight him at Little Big Horn . . .
Gilliard begins his response like this:
First, if Custer had used his weapons properly and not walked into a trap, then he would have won Little Big Horn. . . .
You couldn't make this up!
But the really instructive core of Gilliard's post is that he seems to want the Daily Kos and the Democratic party to aspire to Ann Coulter, Free Republic, and Jonah Goldberg stature.
Nothing wrong with those three, of course, but if I was the political out-party, I'd want to aspire to something that had a little more to do with actual governance and electoral victory.
Either Steve Gilliard is only concerned with carving out a media niche from which he can make a decent buck (hey, nothing wrong with that!), or he's confusing the path to minor media celebrity with shrewd electoral politics. Either way, this doesn't auger well for a Kos-led Democratic party.
3 comments:
"a Kos-lead Democratic party."
I guess that nicely captures the image of Kos helping to sink the Democratic party, but suspect you intended a less weighty Kos-hyphenated adjective.
I've had my run-ins with Gilliard, and I don't quarrel with your political analysis, but he's right about Custer. General Crook faced a similar situation on the Rosebud avoided the trap and survived...
Dear Anonymous:
the only way Custer would have "won" at the Little Big HOrn, where his 600+ troops faced at least 2,000 Native Americans, and probably more, is if he didn't fight the battle at all.
And please don't bring up the whole Gatling gun thing. Custer refused them because he (rightly) believed they would slow him down. And, if he waited for the other columns to catch up, perhaps the U.S. Army would have won, if the Sioux and their allies were still there, but it would likely not have been known as Custer's battle.
"His defeat was due to his mistakes and underestimating the skill of the enemy"
Isn't this what Barnett's analogy means to prove? But Barnett's analogy holds true in another fashion: at the Little Big Horn, Custer and his superiors consistently underestimated the size of the enemy--their sheer numbers--and this too is what Kos and his like always do, they underestimate the number of Americans out there who just won't vote their way on a regular basis. So perhaps Gilliard's comment should read "size" instead of "skill"
Some helpful links:
http://www.history-magazine.com/bighorn.html
http://www.mohicanpress.com/battles/ba04001.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_the_little_big_horn.htm
AP
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