Earlier this week I posted about the North Dakota Democrats putting on so-called “Had Enough?” rallies, which were supposed to fire up North Dakotans to kick the incumbent Republicans in North Dakota out of office.  As I asked before, what is it, exactly, that North Dakotans are supposed to have had enough of?  Low unemployment?  A rapidly growing economy?  Surging tax receipts?  A half a billion dollar state budget surplus?

Anyway, yesterday I saw on the ND Democrats blog that they’d released a schedule for the events, so I decided to attend the rally taking place in Minot.  I thought it might be fun.  Turns out it wasn’t so much a rally as a small meeting.  Seriously, subtracting the candidates in attendance (including Dem Tax Commissioner candidate Brent Edison), the organizer, the reporter/cameraman and me there were like three, maybe four, people there.

Here’s a picture of the attendees and some of the candidates:

Obviously, North Dakotans aren’t exactly chomping at the bit the bit to join Democrats in their quest to turn Republicans out of office.  At least not North Dakotans living in Minot, anyway.  And who can blame them given North Dakota’s boom times.  Things are going really well in North Dakota right now.  I know Democrats don’t want us to believe that because it’s devastating to their campaign efforts, but still.  The truth is the truth.

Brent Edison was the guest of honor at the event I attended.

He made his usual spiel about property taxes and school funding, but he still didn’t explain to anyone how he’s going to accomplish the campaign promises he’s making given that the Tax Commissioner’s office doesn’t have the power to do any of the things he’s talking about.

After Edison talked a couple of the local legislative candidates spoke for a bit, then they went around the room asking everyone to talk about why they were a Democrat.  Thankfully it didn’t get around to me (I don’t think anyone there knew who I was and it would have been a little awkward should I had to of explained to them why I’m not a Democrat), but I was struck by some of the answers given by the other attendees, especially the candidates.  They talked vaguely of social justice and using the government to help people while simultaneously being fiscally responsible (as though that were possible).  What I noticed was that none of them really talked about what they would do, policy wise, to accomplish the lofty goals they were setting out for themselves.

Maybe they were just trying to keep their answers short, or maybe they sensed the presence of a stinky conservative in their midst and didn’t want to reveal their secrets, but to me it was indicative of everything that is wrong with modern Democrats.  They’re long on complaining and Republican-bashing, but really short on solutions of their own.  And it’s like that all around the nation.  Democrats are quick to point to everything that’s wrong.  Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong, but what they almost never do is tell us what they’d do to fix those wrongs.

There is a lot of anti-Republican sentiment out there this election season, but if Democrats win come November it won’t be because they fired up the electorate.  It will be because dissatisfied Republican voters stayed home.  Democrats will no doubt still crow about a victory for liberalism, but they’ll be wrong.  It will be a victory by default.