Stop being weak and be strong

I've said for months and years now that all the American electorate cares about is strength. If you're strong, it doesn't matter what your policy positions are; we like you. And of course the opposite is true. It doesn't matter if you have the greatest ideas in the world, or even if the voters agree with you. If they think you're weak, they hate you. See: Bush and Kerry. Policy pales into meaninglessness against this emotional calculus.

The Feingold censure resolution is another prime example of this truth. As usual, Glenn Greenwald says it eloquently and forcefully:

And, at bottom, what this whole episode illustrates, yet again, is that if Democrats want to be perceived as strong, and if they want to lose the albatross of being pereceived as weak, what they have to do is extremely simple and clear -- stop being weak and be strong. Who appears stronger and more resolute right now -- Russ Feingold, or the Democrats scurrying around in the dark, afraid of their own shadows and petrified of standing up to a weakened President who got caught breaking the law?