Gerard Van der Leun, over at American Digest, has a post that suggests a plausible sneaky GOP ploy which would ensure a Reep victory big enough to assure that I have to buy Trent dinner in Texas someplace. I hope Karl Rove doesn’t read it…
Gerard Van der Leun, over at American Digest, has a post that suggests a plausible sneaky GOP ploy which would ensure a Reep victory big enough to assure that I have to buy Trent dinner in Texas someplace. I hope Karl Rove doesn’t read it…
Oh freakin’ yeah. I’ve got my fingers crossed – and have you noticed the recent public and news appearances from someone who was previously pretty firmly in the background?
Bring it on.
Sigh. I’d rather have Condi Rice than Dick Cheney, too. But I’d rather have a decent Democratic Party.
I can see that it could take a while.
Who knows. By the end of this coming election I just might not care. I feel an acute bout of Centrism coming on…
That’s not all that sneaky; it’s been bandied about before (in columns, musings on pundit shows, in blogs) and I’m sure Rove knows about it. Bush isn’t likely to do it; he seems to be big on reciprocal loyalty. Hell, he hasn’t even canned people he should have canned, thus is unlikely to drop Cheney – Cheney, whatever one might think of him, has done everything Bush wanted.
The only way this happens is if Cheney decides not to run, essentially on his own. He might pull out something like this for political reasons; – and after all a political campaign involves political calculations so he could say health or pull out the classic “spend more time with my family” gag. He doesn’t have to be VP to serve in some capacity, anyhow.
However, if the Bush/Rice ticket appears, expect the level of viciousness in the campaign to go up exponentially. I already expect it to be waged very viciously. Mysterious fliers will be planted in the usual neighborhoods and rounds of mock-outrage shall ensew. Innuendos on Condi’s personal life will be rife on certain urban radio stations (well, more rife than they already are). Certain folks already have Masters Degrees in “De-Blacking” people, and they will serve overtime in this one.
When it’s all over and the Politics of Personal Destruction Machine is done with her, Condi’s reputation will have been devoured and utterly destroyed. I’d say it’s unclear whether, by the end of this process, she’d be a “plus” or a “minus”. I’m doubting it’s something she wants to go through, and she’s a smart person and can look back at the sanguinary carnage from related past examples. I’m sure she’s aware that the treatment she’s already experienced at the hands of members of the Open-Minded, Tolerant, Enlightened scions of Diversity will pale in comparison with the what she’d have to look forward to if her name appeared on the ballot.
From every indication, she has *ZERO* interest in electoral politics. I don’t really blame her for sticking to policy.
Republicans who think that putting Condi Rice on the ticket would insure smooth sailing in ’04 have not reflected enough on these things, I think.
Moving on, Vanderleun does make a point in that post which is somewhat related to a question I raised in an e-mail to you: given the direction you’d like to see the Democrats go in, which would be more catastrophic to you: that the Democrats follow the path they’re on and lose?
Or that they follow that path and win? Something that I think is likely at this point, given the Machine is working in full gear already and with notable success already.
One thing I forgot: for those who think they wouldn’t go as far as I outlined – well, do you think they’re going to face what Vanderleun & A.L. characterize as having the potential to destroy them and fight with every tactic they have resorted to in the past, and more?
[…]the Democrats follow the path they’re on and lose?
Or that they follow that path and win?
I realized the other day that I didn’t want the Democrats to win, especially with the path they are persuing. I don’t trust them on national security matters. In fact, I think they need to be taught a lesson. I’m a liberal and I’m beginning to hate the other “liberals”.
I hear ya, Linden.
I still feel an attachment to the Democratic Party, but there’s a huge chance this election will sever it.
I will not, however, become a Republican. I’m not swapping one party for another. If I quit one, I will quit them all.
We need a ‘Scoop Jackson Society’ for pro-war liberals.
I won’t vote Democrat for president, but I will vote for Dems for COngress because I hate Bush’s domestic policies.
Dammit, Porphy, I was hoping to skate by on your question.
Would I rather have the Dems – as they exist today – win or lose?
Hemlock or cyanide … hmmm. I’ve been worrying at this question for six months, and still don’t know how I feel about this.
On one hand, Bush is showing himself to be moving (or blundering) along a path at least parallel to one I can support in foreign military policy.
On the other, his domestic policy is aimed at turning the US into a bananna republic, where the 1.5% live in their haciendas while the rest of us compete with folks in the Third World on wages (note that this is a core process in the current economy; it’s just that Bush thinks it a Good Thing). And when it comes to small government, he’s certainly a believer in shrinking it…unless it serves or subsidizes large corporate interests, or buys him an electoral consituency, in which case the more the merrier. Don’t get me started on civil liberties…
On one hand, the Democrats at least nominally are in favor of tax and fiscal policies that favor the middle-class, and they are nominally in favor of labor v. capital.
On the other, they are as enmeshed with their large donor base as the GOP – more enmeshed, actually, and their policies are aimed more at supporting the large institutions – teachers unions, etc. etc. than the middle class themselves.
I want to see the Democratic Party remade.
It’s not clear to me which way is the best path to that remaking. I know that’s weaselling, and I apologize. But I really don’t know.
A.L.
I want to see the Democratic Party remade.
Me too. But that’s why I also think they need to suffer an ignominious defeat in the next cycle. I see too many people in denial who need a serious reality check.
Give me a break. Since 9/11 people have been practically BATHING in reality. When Bush wins in 2004, maybe a few will actually pause and think, but the vast majority will just come up with some excuse to cling to their beliefs.
A.L.,
Eric Z has a point.
I fear that the money men in the Democratic Party driving the leftward tilt of the Democratic primaries are not reality based. They are working from a fantasy ideology as strong as that of Al-Qaeda.
They have a locked in Vietnam era world view that keeps seizing every opportunity to express their views to reduce their guilt for being pro-communist/anti-military/American-hating rather than simply being against a stupid war that was getting fellow citizens pointlessly killed.
The former position is filled with guilt and the latter is not.
Stupid anti-war politics as a form of public confession is going to taint the Democratic Party with the mark of treason.
This is from the Jerome Zeifman, the Democratic chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment proceedings, from Insight Magazine:
“With Democratic propaganda spreading widely, at least one prominent conservative, Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, now is advising the White House to be prepared for the introduction of impeachment resolutions. Based on my own experience with impeachment politics, I agree with his advice.
In my case, I believe that political parties that thrive on demagoguery destroy themselves. These days I fear that the Democratic Party that I have known for 60 years now may be close to extinction.
Clearly we differ on domestic policy, A.L., but we can quibble over that another time.
The thing of it is, the key to what you say is “want the Democratic party to be remade“.
Victorious parties don’t go in for much remaking. It’s the wilderness that causes reflection. Victorious parties go with what works; what works is what brought them victory in the first place. The foreign policy & security front is, I think we can agree, where the Dems have the biggest problems. we can then quibble over domestic policy and whose policies entrench things and exacerbate economic problems another time; oh, and another thing being forgotten is that Clinton was for open trade, too, until his knees buckled in the face of the Seattle Disorders in ’99; his record is actually better on that score while Bush has promoted policies to “protect” our workers from having to compete with foreign producers, things like the Steel Tarriff – and it is beyond economic dispute that such policies, while they save identifiable jobs, end up costing more people jobs and income than they protect; by huge orders of magnitude. It’s just that the costs are harder to point to and identify than the benefitiaries are. Och, and I wasn’t going to get into this. Back to the matter at hand:
The Dems underwent some introspection of this sort in the ’80s, leading to ’92, but clearly it didn’t take – they’ve, unfortunately, reverted to type; ’70s type, that is, not the long tradition of Democratic strength on foreign policy represented by Truman & JFK.
Victory in these terms will make the sort of forces you bemoan smugly assure of themselves, and as for domestic policy smoking craters are not good for the livelyhoods of the rich, middle, or poor.
As for civil liberties, lots are forgetting the extent to which *BOTH* parties have dirty hands on this – many of the things pointed to now had their origin in the Clinton years, Clinton era legislation pushed by the Clinton justice department, usually related to the war on crime, and that currently members of both parties promote legislation that undermine civil liberties. The abhored “Patriot Act” was largely cobbled together from legislative proposals that had been laying around for years – well into the Clinton era – and was passed with massive bipartisan support. There are only a few standouts on either side. The only difference is that the Ds are better at escaping responsibility/blame for their votes than the Rs are. (We’re not to consider them responsible for what they vote for, not in the same way we’re supposed to hold Republicans responsible).
But the key point remains that the Democrats will not undergo the remaking you seek if they win, and if one sincerely believes their security policy would leave us at graver risk than the alternative, then one has to ask if that’s a risk one wants to take.
It’s a matter of priorities and perspectives; one has to prioritize.
In any case, as I’ve written, their are alternatives to either continuing to support the current Dems, or abandoning them and voting R, or simply abandoning all parties. The problem is it’s probably too late in this cycle to take those paths because they take work and time; out activisting the activists and pulling Democratic candidates towards the direction you want. Vocally making yourselves something they have to pay attention to and cater to, not the current audience they are playing to.
That could have been done by ’04 if enough people started such pressure and more importantly maintained it much earlier than they have. If that had been done sooner, then guys like Gephardt and Lieberman wouldn’t have had to position themselves as they have, they would have had a different constituency to woo.
At this stage in the cycle, though, it’s touch and go. It’s perhaps still worth a shot. But the dies are pretty well cast in many respects already, and one of the main reasons for having to start earlier is that it takes time to build up something that amounts to a movement.
There was a really good oportunity, IMO, in the wake of Sept. 11th for the Democratic party to remake itself in the exact way you want it to. I hate to be blunt, but you all missed that opportunity; which is a tragedy that IMO affects us all, but not one that surprises me (but, then, I’m a gloomy pessimist overall).
See also here.
What I’m really hoping is that someone will get goaded into standing up to the forces among the D’s that you are decrying. Someone’s gotta be a Tony Blair here and some folks are going to have to make potential Democratic “Tony Blair’s” see that he (or she) won’t be alone, that there is a strong Democratic constituency out there that will *actively* and *firmly* support that person in the ways that the negative forces are highly active and organized out of proportion of their numbers, among Democrats not just the population as a whole in pushing things the wrong direction.
that’s why I also think they need to suffer an ignominious defeat in the next cycle. I see too many people in denial who need a serious reality check.
I just have one question about this scenario: if a possible 2004 loss – for the sake of argument, let’s posit even a catastrophic loss – would serve as a reality check, then why didn’t the 2002 election serve as one? That election was maybe not as painful as, say, a 49-1 loss in a presidential election, but still… loss of both houses, in an off-year election where the party not in the WH would normally expect to have gains, should have come as at least a bit of a shock.
But I saw precious little self-examination among Demo party stalwarts in its wake. Would such a loss next year trigger such self-examination, or would it just continue the process of withdrawal, denial, rage, and the casting out of heretics, already in progress?
[The following can be considered a rag, but it is where I am, though not as an “utimate” fact, since there are none of these, and I await the enlightenment of further thought. Good luck to us all.]
There is no reason to be pessimistic. But pessimists have no reason. They are simply pessimists. The same goes for sadomasochists. The current crop of terrorists are sadomasochists, as they even admit. Israel and the Republicans [Bush & company] recognize this. Both also understand self-defense, as does Blair. Republicans have also recognized, at least in word, that Government is a false God, and that spending is a false path. Democrats will not even admit this.
Republicans have seized the concepts of freedom and liberty to their side, from the vacuum, as a result of their wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. They have also flirted with the notion that “good works” are not possible except from a personal basis. Republicans are even beating the bush of “compassion” to capture it. Most of all they have coapted free-thought as theirs, which is why “conservative” media have flourished.
Democratic “theory” is all off base because the Democratic Party has become the party of control for control’s sake. Thus it sees all issues as tactics only, and has no ideas. Any purveryor of different thought, “incorrect” thought, is simply villified. Blacks become not “real” blacks. Women are likewise under the thumb of the male hegemonists, slavers, and batterers, and are not capable of free-thought. White males are “angry”, if they disagree. The racist, sexist, and now anti-semitic tactic and nature of the Democratic Party [anti-Israel] is seen as valid because it is a tactic, although democrats seem to actually believe the rhetoric, concluding that “you are evil because you do not make the correct noises”, the identical argument of right wing Christians. The democratic self has become: “You have something I want, because I don’t have it. I will take it.” Marxist “thought” has infiltrated and come to rule, or be, the Democratic Party. That is, Marx had no thought, only a mechanism of control where “the minority, the exploiters” [Marx]would be “smashed to atoms” [Lenin], whoever they happened to be – those with a different thought. This includes everyone, and is thus sadomasochistic itself.
Republicans have recognized this feature of Marxism in the Democratic Party, citing Communism as the necessary, and necessarily failing, outcome. Socialism is behind as a very close second, even according to Marx.
Thus Republicans have recognized, in at least some way, the human aspiration, and current nature, for freedom, liberty, good works, compassion, and free-thought. They have recognized sadomasochists when they saw them, and the right of self-defense, and the reality that some things are, and must be, worth dying for. Democrats, or at least the Party, will not admit this. The Party wallows around in thinking up tactics which are designed only for control, and seems to think this is really what humans are – control mechanisms. Democrats are now lost in the wilderness, and have been for a long time, even if they “win” elections. [Now the Democratic Party has even sacrificed environmentalism to its contol needs in its attempt to demagogue the rediculous Kyoto Treaty, which itself is simply another political control mechanism, demonstrating the current attempt to make all science political science – all necessarily subjective, which it is not.]
I sympathize with liberals who are still stuck to the Democratic Party. I jumped ship in 1988, but still had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate [and for no major party candidate since 1980] until 2000, when I voted against Gore because I could not take the chaos of the Democratic Party which I saw as threatening to anyone who believed that free-thought exists. Democrats who have free-thought as their nature have a dilemma, unsolveable without abandoning the Party, in my opinion.