With a week to go until Election Day, I think we're all fairly familiar with the stakes, issues, and tropes. Democratic momentum building vs. an entrenched Republican GOTV machine in gerrymandered districts; Macaca vs. Modern Romance Fiction, etc. To cover up my nagging feeling that the Democrats will find some way to blow this election at the eleventh hour, I present a one-week exploration of battles where pride and the vagaries of chance snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
1. Salamis
The battle of Salamis featured the massed fleet of the Empire of Persia against a fractured and weak coalition of Greek city-states. Occurring in September of the year 480 BC, approximately 1,000 Persian triremes were defeated by approximately a third that number of Greek ships between the Athenian port of Piraeus and the island of Salamis. On the open ocean and on paper, the sheer number of Persian ships should have overwhelmed the Greek fleet, whose morale was already suffering after the end of the battle of Thermopylae and the destruction of Athens.
However, in the event, the Greeks prevailed against the odds. Jammed into a narrow bay by their eagerness to pursue the retreating Greek fleet, the Persians were robbed of much of their advantage of numbers. As the resulting catastrophe unfolded, the Persian fleet began to disintegrate and flee, while the enraged Persian emperor Xerxes watched the unfolding disaster from a golden throne set atop a nearby hill.
Relationship to the 2006 elections:
Depends. You could see Karl Rove as a kind of Xerxes, observing the perfect storm of Athenian triremes sweep over the Republican 72-hour program and fundraising advantages. But Xerxes wasn't really a cheerleader, trying to keep a happy face on events; he really expected to win the battle of Salamis and executed many of the survivors. If you believe Karl Rove genuinely expects to retain control of the House because of the double secret White House polls he's seeing, and Democrats achieve victory in November, this would be the best fit. On the other hand, if Democrats blow it in November, blue leaders like Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean could be atop the golden throne, vainly striving to make their absolute numeric advantage in the polls felt in the narrow confines of gerrymandered house districts.
1 comment:
As per every election cycle, I firmly expect the Democrats to screw it up somehow. (Alternatively, and also plausibly, I expect the Republican evil genius machine to pull something out of thin air that rescues them.)
It's my supreme fear that, again, Democrats feel really confident in the month or so before the election--irrationally exuberant.
This year, though, I'll add my voice to the confident ones. I do this not without evidentiary support (just without too terribly much). Believing James Surowiecki and in the comparative superiority of the market (I'm no true believer), I rely on the Iowa Electronic Markets.
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