OK, I’m missing something here.
My party, the Democrats, just lost three statehouses in the last 60 days, and are on track to possibly lose another in a bit over a week.
The smart Democratic blogs … Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias, Daily KOS … not a peep about this or what, if anything it means.
My reaction is twofold:
First, I think that the Democrats may have suddenly taken a page from hapless L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who has believed for years that if he can only buy one great player, he can have a contending team.
Maybe it is all about “Beat Bush.” The problem is that you get there by growing and winnowing candidates at the lower levels…mayors, Congressmembers, Senators, Governors – and my sense is that the national Party isn’t doing a good job there. Look one level down from the current crop of Democratic contenders – ignoring how strong or weak you may believe them to be – and where are the contenders for the next cycle? I’m not an expert, but I don’t see a lot of interestng candidates until I get down to the mayoral level, and that’s bad. Politics is a team sport, and you have to play more than one position.
For the Democrats (who admittedly won some statehouses last time around, while losing the Senate and House), I wonder if it’s entirely too concentrated at the top.
Second, I’m inclined to ask “What has to happen, exactly, in order for us to panic?” In the polls, each of the plausible Democratic candidates is running behind the numbers of plain old “don’t like Bush”. We lost the Senate and House. We lost California, because the party wouldn’t stand up to a corrupt and barely competent incumbent and challenge him, either in the election or in the recall. A strong Democrat – a Feinstein, Panetta, or even an Angiledes – would be Governor now. We lost Kentucky and Mississippi, and the Republicans in Louisiana have to be smelling blood this morning.
And no one on the left is willing to sit down and go “Huh. Wonder what we’re doing wrong.”
Can I make some suggestions?
When the Republican moves to the center, the Democrat moves to the left in order to be different.
Repeat after me: “What, Me Worry?”
As for candidates, common wisdom is that it’s Hilary in 2008, so nobody’s concerned if there’s a funnel dearth now. As a baseball fan I know that’s a bad idea, but it’s human nature.
There’s actually been a fair amount of discussion on Kos about this stuff, but mainly in the diaries. The debates about growing the party, especially in the South, have been vigorous, and they’re well worth reading.
I’m also going to take issue with Larry’s contention that Republicans have moved to the center. There language on diversity issues has certainly moved to the center, but their environmental, social, and tax positions, among others, have all moved sharply to the right since Bush41.
Losing the governorships in Kentucky and Mississippi just don’t mean a whole lot in the overall scheme of things (most Americans, for example, do not view the disrespect of the Confederate Flag to be a key issue in local politics, in spite of what dixiecrats like Zell Miller think), and Ahnold Ziffel had to jetison conservative politics in order to prevail in California (had he been running in Mississippi or Kentucky, he would have been well to the left of the two hapless Democrats). In any event, intimidating black voters may work in the Red States, but up north it does tend to generate a reaction.
Also, since when has Donald Sterling “bought” a great player? Isn’t that Jerry Buss’ philosophy? If you have evidence that Sterling has ever viewed having a winning team as a priority, I’d like to see it.
I’m a lifelong democrat, but I’m starting to go independent Democrat, being as I don’t like the turn to the far left.
As for candidates, common wisdom is that it’s Hilary in 2008, so nobody’s concerned if there’s a funnel dearth now.
And that may be the scariest thing of all. Any candidate with unfavorable numbers in the low 40s will have a hell of a time winning the election. The 40-something percent that hates her will vote. Republicans should have no trouble raising record amounts of campaign cash and turning out their base. Republican candidates can campaign as moderates with zero cost in support from conservatives.
If President Bush is successful in dealing with the Islamonazis, Republicans will contrast his successes against Bill’s refusal to take OBL, when Sudan offered him to us. If the economy holds up, Democrats won’t have that issue. Add in the “Clinton Fatigue” factor (Do we really want 4-8 more years of Bill’s whore-chasing in the White house?), and the independent voters won’t exactly flock to Hillary.
If Hillary responds to Republican attempts to tie her to Bill by saying “I’m not Bill”, Republicans can respond that she’s well to the Left of Bill, and that she’s nowhere near the moderate she’d like us to think she is. If the Republican nominee is anywhere near the center, it could be a Republican landslide.
Riyadh delenda est!
Steve –
So you’d rather be the party of the NAACP than the party of the NRA, to coin a phrase?
Ever spent any time in the 909 area code in the Inland Empire of SoCal?? How about the 618 in downstate Illinois? The 307, in Wyoming?
I have. Funny how many lifted trucks with Confederate battle flags one sees out there, just as three examples.
Now personally, I detest the Stars and Bars as a symbol of the most treasonous act in our nation’s history.
But I also detest the Iron Cross, which has become a symbol for wannabe ‘outlaw’ motorcyclists, and I recognize both as fundamentally ways that certain people thumb their nose at mainstream society – much like the ways that kid who got tribal tats felt they were thumbing their nose until suddenly their moms and dads started getting them as well.
So while I’m never shy about stating my personal feelings when expressed, I’m also tolerant of those who use those symbols in a relatively nonpolitical way.
And, to be blunt, the Democrats will lose as long as they continue to demonize the classes that feel that way. Max Sawicky had a great post on that which deserves it’s own blog post.
A.L.
The only thing that could save the Democratic Party now is if the entire leadership were caught on tape having sex with a minor. Barring that, I’m afraid it’ll just remain moribund and whiney, unable to understand why Republicans keep winning (except for the extremists who’ll blame it on the Right Wing Conspiracy (TM)).
What I’d like to see is for the centrists, like Lieberman, break away and form their own party, and maybe lure some middle-of-the-road Republicans into joining them. But that’s not going to happen.
A.L. is absolutely right on Sawicky’s quality post. Every liberal Democrat should read it. I don’t think one political party can appeal to everybody at the same time. But Sawicky does a good job explaining how Kerry and Gephardt are making it harder for Dean (should he be nominated). The only thing I would say is that I think Kerry and Gephardt know what they are doing is destructive, and they’re playing a game of chicken that they’ll pull away Dean’s support in time to recover for the general election.
I realize that few people here will agree with me, but I think the Democrats’ image is still suffering from the weakness shown in 2000 (why didn’t WE have guys intimidating the ballot counters?) and 2002 (quick, let’s put our heads down, vote on Iraq, and hope our prescription drug plan swings the vote). If the Democrats have to, say, laud the wisdom of Bush’s Iraq Quagmire to be elected in 2004, then let’s have the courage of our convictions and wait for the Iran/Syria Quagmire in 2008. We need to learn from the 1964 election that just because you lose doesn’t mean the country won’t eventually come around to many of your views.
[Cato, the Sudan gives up OBL story is an urban legend based on one unreliable source. It has legs only because it speaks to the people who hate Clinton way-over-the-top. (You can find the full story in Al Franken’s book.)]
Steve’s absolutely right – while Donald Sterling has sold more than his share of players, I can’t think of a single time when he’s bought one (from free agency, that is. The Clippers seem to be a training camp where high draft picks can improve their skills and audition for real teams).
Lanny nailed it. When I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, the democratic party stood for jobs, growth, and making sure no one was left behind. Principles that were worth standing for. When those principles left, so did I.
What does the democratic party stand for anyway today? Does it stand for America or does it stand for being a “world citizen” under a UN Flag?
If the Republicans had really moved to the center, Richard Riordan would have been the Republican candidate during the 2002 California gubernatorial election rather than Simon.
So you’d rather be the party of the NAACP than the party of the NRA, to coin a phrase?
That doesn’t seem like a hard choice. If there is one issue that makes me proud to be a Democrat, it was the party’s courageous decision in the early-60’s to back the Civil Rights Movement, against the wishes of their most solid regional base of support. Zell Miller may obfuscate that point, but there is no question that the political dominance of the Democrats in the South ended as a result of its backing of civil rights laws. The NAACP may take silly positions at times, but at least they don’t have blood on their hands.
One of the things that seems to be missing here is any acknowledgement that a political party sometimes has to support unpopular positions, even at the expense of losing elections, in order to serve the public. Mr. Lazarus is correct with the Goldwater analogy; I would go so far as to point out that if there is one thing American history teaches us, it’s that liberals don’t have to be elected as frequently as conservatives to effect greater political change. Movements in support of women’s rights and gay rights have advanced forward during the last thirty years, even to the point that once-radical positions (women in the Army? gay marriage?) are now considered mainstream, even though the GOP has been in control of the government for most of that period, and has fought each movement.
A.L., if the Democrats still haven’t won the Presidency by 2012, then it’ll be time to panic.
If the Republicans had really moved to the center, Richard Riordan would have been the Republican candidate during the 2002 California gubernatorial election rather than Simon.
You are confusing “representing the true body politic” with “ability to win”. The millisecond Ahh-nold got into the race, the Republicans knew there was no way to beat someone like that. Frankly, Simon burned some huge political bridges by staying in the race. If he would have Perot’d the race and given it to Bustamante, his next position would be on the sub-committee for injesting organic waste.
…it was the party’s courageous decision in the early-60’s to back the Civil Rights Movement.
So you are staying with a party because it did something right 30+ years ago?
Brian, you’re confusing the two gov. elections here…in the original ‘legitimate’ election, Riodan got knocked off by a $10mm spend during the GOP primary by Gray Davis, who wanted to run against ‘Daddy’s Money’ Simon.
Riordan was thinking about running in Part 2 of the recall, and in fact was about to announce, when Ahnold headfaked everyone and announced instead. They’re big pals and had agreed not to run against one another.
A.L.
Steve –
You’re right that a party has to support unpopular positions to have any moral center. But do you see any difference between fighting Jim Crow and supporting the right of African American kids to get into UCLA with a SAT of 900, as opposed to an Asian kid – who also certainly has a history of discrimination in their past here in CA – with a 1200?
I wrote about this a while ago here, in The Fantasy Ideology of the Democrats.
And on a final note, I’ll point out that without electoral power, you can only play the courts, and one reason why liberal policies did so well there was that Democrats were better at picking judges and playing the system.
The GOP has wised to that, and it is no longer a one-sided game.
A.L.
Actually I believe Donald Sterling owns the Clippers purely for tax write-off purpose 🙂
A.L,
You might want to re-read this:
Dead and Damned — Democrats after 9/11
http://windsofchange.net/archives/003510.html
I used this from a Donna Brazile WSJ op-ed:
“Democrats have yet to fully comprehend the new reality of the post-Sept. 11 world. While most Americans viewed the war in Iraq through the prism of the Twin Towers attacks, many prominent Democrats still seem not to grasp the profound sense of insecurity that so many people feel in our country. This unease is especially pronounced among women, who have been a cornerstone of our party’s strength and without whom we cannot hope to win back the White House or Congress. The American people agree with us on many vital issues — but they believe that we Democrats are weak and indecisive when it comes to standing up to dictators and terrorists, and when it comes to the primary responsibility of government: defending the nation. No matter how compelling our positions on the economy, health care, Social Security, the environment and privacy, if voters continue to see us as feckless and effete they will not listen to our message next year and they will re-elect Mr. Bush.
As we prepare to mount our challenge in 2004, Democrats need to return to the muscular national security principles of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and the other Democrats who understood that only by confronting threats abroad could our party achieve its other great mission of expanding equality, opportunity and progress here at home.”
I said before and I will say this again, the Democrats will not win a single Bush “red state” from the 2000 presidential election in 2004 election cycle.
That alone guarentees any Democratic candidate will lose.
The only question is how close Bush gets from that to a McGovern/Mondale style blow out.
AL is right, Liberals used the courts to move their agenda, even, and especially, when they were not in office. Which in my view is wrong, as they abused the legal system to get support for positions that not supported by a majority of Americans, often times a super-majority. That is not what the courts are for.
A.L.,
One time blogger and now full time Bush campaign staffer Patrick Raffini said the following on the Dean campaign (Which sadly can only now be found here — http://windsofchange.net/archives/003660.html) about how it was going to affect the party:
“In a sense, two primary campaigns are being waged. One is for the hearts and minds of hardcore Democrats, one in which the party’s most prominent national leaders are being ignored, and where the Dean Fedayeen are sucking up 50% to 70% of the energy. The second is for all intents a shadow of the first; the scramble for name recognition, where Dean can’t break 5%. Emblematic of this contest is the fact that 66% of Americans can’t name a single Democrat running for the White House, and Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephardt are the most vaguely recognizable. In this primary, even Democrats who are likely to vote at the end of the day are picking their candidate out of thin air, and the number who have actually heard of the top 5 or 6 contenders – much less evaluated them side-by-side – numbers no more than a few million.
At some point, these two dynamics are going to have to be reconciled. Will Lieberman’s grassroots eventually catch up to his high name recognition, or will Dean leverage his near-monopoly over the grassroots Left as the number of interested Democratic primary voters grows by leaps and bounds? The advantage Dean has is that a growing Meetup constituency actually gives him a grassroots base in cities like Phoenix and Oklahoma City where early primary voting will actually take place – something no other candidate will have until very late in the game. The main question then becomes whether this Web-based mobilization will radicalize the shrinking Democratic primary base in the Red States and make it as liberal as it is in the Blue States, and hence fertile Dean territory?
Can Dean Berkeleyize the Heartland? In today’s Democratic Party, it’s certainly possible.”
It looks like the “Dean Primary” is over and he has successfully ‘Berkeleyized’ the Democratic party.
Whether the party can survive both that and the War is a different issue. Zell Miller’s most recent pronouncement (http://miller.senate.gov/press/2003/110503memo.html) on the games Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are playing leaves me doubtful.
Ok, here’s some possibly constructive advice from an ex-Democrat who is politically conservative, but what I’m going to say is going to be as non-ideological as I can make it:
1) Dump Terry McAweful. Ok, be nice about it, Porphy – thank him for all the good work he did in building up the party’s fundraising lists and the computerized donor/voter lists. That’s all good work. But it’s done now, and the Democratic Party needs someone who is skilled in areas Terry is not; finding good candidates who can win in the region of the country they run in, and putting a better public face on the party. Lets face it, Terry has skills in some areas, but one of the things expected of a Party Chairman is to be able to go into public venues and argue the case. Terry does that, but he blows at it – he alienates people rather than winning them over with charm. He’s an un-Clinton in that respect.
Don’t look for glibness, but look for someone who comes off as sincere, not like an oily bagman or mouthpiece.
2) The Democratic Party needs to recognize that they missed some opportunities in the Leadership races after last year’s election debacle. One may disagree with Zell Miller on a lot of things if one wants to, but on this it is an obvious truth: the national party currently has no-one who can go to large swaths of the country on behalf of one of their candidates and help that candidate win more votes than the visit drives away. Arguably, even Bill Clinton’s visit to California backfired (since, in the end, it reminded voters that certain people didn’t think groping females was all that unforgivable after all, so it made Gray Davis look like a hypocrite and an opportunist to have been smiling and gladhanding with Clinton one day and then calling certain behavior unforgivably criminal the next). But set California to one side: none of the candidates for Governor this year would welcome a visit from any of the national Democratic leaders, and (in Mississipi) ran as far away from the Democratic lable as he could. This needs to be rectified.
There are good, solid, long-serving Democrats from the South and Mountain West, even not including Zell Miller. Some of these should be given a more prominent role – which means not just cosmetic, but voice and input – to allow the Party to do what Howard Dean meant with his tongue-tied statement last week: appeal to traditionally, formerly solid Democratic voters in the South and West and win them back rather than turning them off. But this means getting people in leadership levels who know more about these regions than Dean obviously does.
The problem is that Northeastern and West Coast “Progressive” Liberals are trying to reach out the only way they know how – in kind of the same way most Republicans outreach efforts to Black Americans are – without having a clue about the people they are trying to appeal to, and filling it in with caracatures and then wondering why it isn’t working (must just be slick Republican campaigning, can’t be any significant failure of understanding on their part, right?)
Two pieces of advice, as non-ideological as I can make them. Take ’em or leave ’em, at least they’re worth what you all paid for them.
Also, they need to get a clue that, yah, we’re at war, most Americans take security (that is, real, not faux-substitute “security”, that is, Dems attaching the “security” label to traditional Democratic issues or policies) seriously, and their current antics may be playing well with the base (as is obvious from most of the sites A.L. linked to), but is alienating the people in the undecided middle that they actually need if they want to, um, win.
They should be taking your advice, or something close to it, on these things.
My suggestion for DNC Chairman: Donna Brazile. She’s onto a lot of what needs to be done, actually.
Andrew Lazarus wrote: (why didn’t WE have guys intimidating the ballot counters?)
Umm, your guyswere the ballot counters. And I think people noticed that when they counted, they would find something like 700 missing Gore votes, and 12 missing Bush votes. Honestly, what are the odds of that in a fair counting process?
Plus, you guys had tons more lawyers (hint – not the most popular people in America!) than the Republicans.
But I think what is really coloring the opinion is here it is 3 years later, and you’re still bitching about Florida instead of saying what you would do to defeat the terrorists, or create the conditions for success in our economy.
You uys don’t even like ood news because it hurts reelection chances.
Fine. Have your Meetups ™ and make hip, ironic jokes, but if you don’t get why you are losing, then you won’t stop.
Really.
I have a sticky G key.
Thanks for asking.
Care to provide a cite for that, Blaster?
The confederacy was democracts. Am I right?
ALso, I believe that if you look at the vote counts, more Republicans voted for legislation like the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act of the 60s than did Democrats.
Steve Smith:
Southern Democrats did not back the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The “Southern Bloc” which led the filibuster in the Senate was almost entirely Democrats (1 republican). In the House, Southern Democrats voted against the bill 92-11. Between 1933 and 1964, 80% of Democrats in Congress opposed civil rights legislation vs. 96% Republican approvals in 26 major civil rights votes. Although John Kennedy can be credited with initiating the legislation and Hubert Humphrey with pursuing it, no one worked harder to get it passed than Republican Senator Everett Dirksen. At best, no party can take credit for the Civil Rights Act. It was truly a bipartisan effort. For more check out: http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html
Regarding “intimidating the vote counters” – this trope is based on an episode where Democratic officials conducting the vote count in one of the Florida counties attempted to conduct their business in private, which is a violation of recount proceedures. People properly objected to this, thus preventing a possible attempt to manufacture additional votes for Gore in secret. Thus the legend of “intimidated vote counters” was born.
Regarding bin Laden: no, this is multiple-sourced. Franken, as is typical, is disingenuous on this point. He is not a credible source, he is a partisan hack.
Regarding who was or wasn’t a Democrat in the old south: gads, guys, waving the bloody shirt on this is about as helpful as the Dems running on Florida. None of those guys are alive today and holding current Democrats to account for that serves no purpose. There are plenty of more recent, relevant criticisms one can make without tying them to Jeff Davis.
Tie them to Robert Byrd or Fritz Hollings if you want, but bringing up the Civil War seems, um, tenuous.
What would happen to the Democratic drive for the presidency in 2004 if Zell Miller declared himself a candidate?
Hey, Porphy, you tell me that the “Brooks Bortohers” riot interrupted a private meeting again. I need the laughs.
On OBL: give me the “multiple” sources, and let’s see if they all don’t trace back to one. Franken’s book (unlike, say, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Coulter) doesn’t have any error I could detect on sight.
TC:
I thought I had made it clear in my earlier post that the Southern Democrats were opposed to the civil rights legislation of the ’60’s, and that it was to the credit of JFK, LBJ, et al., to have pushed those bills even though they knew it would hurt their party. Secondly, although there were always enough GOP members of the Senate to break any Southern filibuster, it was rarely achieved until 1964. After that, of course, the Goldwater-Reagan-Nixon wing of the party pursued the strategy of targeting the white Southern votes turned off by Democratic support for civil rights, using code words (“welfare queens”) and wedge issues (ie., affirmative action) and the rest is (recent) history.
Praktike,
The electorate is moving right. There are now more Republicans in the voting pool than Democrats.
What you need to do is look to the electorate: they want lower taxes for all because this is America and any man can become rich with the right idea. Taxing the rich means taxing people’s dreams. Taxing hope. Not a winner.
Since we are at the beginning of a long war they want a fighter. The Democrats are not fighters. They are mostly except for Lieberman girly men. Very good for raising kids. Useless in a dog fight. In a time of war the women want manly men. Men willing to fight and die to protect the home. George Bush on an aircraft carrier not Dukakis in a tank.
That leaves civil liberties. The Dems so called strong point. 70 to 80% of all Americans approve of medical marijuana. A winner. So where are the top Dems on this issue? Silent.
Taken together we have a party with a death wish.
I wrote about this here on a guest blog May 16th.
The key sticking point from which all the Ds problems flow is it’s adherence to redistributionist economics and the politics that flows from that. The Republicans could stop using government funds to buy donors and votes without seriously hurting their core program. For the Democrats that is their core program.
How do you get the comitted leftist to give up his belief that Robin Hood is the proper model for government? You don’t.
The Democrats are dead and will not come back. 1988 and 9/11 have put them in a very awkward position. They are trying to win by supporting discredited policies. Very comforting to the core D suporters. Not an election winning strategy.
The Democrats are back up after a six count. 2004 will be a 10 count knock out. A new party will emerge by 2008 or 2012. Hillary will not be it’s leader. Unless she can morph from a “centerist socialist” to libertarian. She has the Goldwater roots. The question is her adherence to those roots.
Brian,
The world system under the U.N. flag idea of the current Democrats is a direct outcome of support for the socialist policies of the Democrats you like.
Socialism was always about building a world system of Robin Hood governments.
Socialism is dead and so are the Democrats.
Sean,
What you want will happen (I predicted it May 16 here in a guest blog). It will not happen until after Nov 2004.
Steve Smith’s recent post reflects the exact same problem the Dems are having on National Security, but it’s with regard to an issue 30 years old already. This is not promising.
“After that, of course, the Goldwater-Reagan-Nixon wing of the party pursued the strategy of targeting the white Southern votes turned off by Democratic support for civil rights, using code words (“welfare queens”) and wedge issues (ie., affirmative action) and the rest is (recent) history.”
One might also consider that the same Republicans who supported the Civil Rights Act and pushed so hard for it, might see opposition to affirmative action as ideologically consistent, and the idea of making race primary again for any reason repugnant.
But of course, one would actually have to be thinking to acknowledge this possibility, rather than reflexively jerking one’s liberal knee.
Actually, the critiques of both welfare policy and affirmative action stem from a real, substantive, broad intellectual critique of liberalism launched by the conserative movement, and given both real shape and social-sciences heft by the neoconservative movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Don’t forget crime, either, which critique was a huge catalyst for a shift all across the country. Reagan was the eruption of that building pressure, and since his 1980 win the debate has been different.
The Democrats once owned the domestic debate, lock stock and barrel. That is no longer true… but rather than address the fundamental critique of the approaches that had produced disasters like New York City in the 1970s, the standard response is to cry “racism” instead of dealing with the critique. Thank you, Steve, for providing such a clear illustration of it as a mainstream phenomenon.
Bill Clinton is one of the few exceptions to this rule. Much of the Democratic base still villifies him for it or searches again for ulterior motives, rather than imagining that he might have a thought-out set of beliefs on domestic issues that acknowledged a changed political and also idea landscape.
Given this record on social issues, my hope that the Democrats will see the light on national security issues approaches zero. Even after 2004, and probably after 2008.
After FDR, it took Republicans almost 40 years to come out of the wilderness. The key catalyst was an insurgency of former Democrats (the neocons et. al.), which performed what was essentially a brain transplant on a party that was reduced to existing only as a force of political reaction and slower implementation of Democrat politices.
We may be looking at the beginning of a similar phenomenon. There’s still time to avert that future, but given the level of non-debate and non-learning going on I’m not hopeful.
Yeah, Popinjay-in-Chief’s “Mission Accomplished” flight suit costume looks better every day. Not. And his military record will look so good compared to, say, Wesley Clark’s. Not. The evidence is coming in that Bush’s belligerence left us more vulnerable than before.
Actually, M. Simon has a point: the Dems haven’t shown a lot of fight lately. I think that’s one of the reasons the Dean campaign took off, quite irrespective of its policy issues. The Dems do seem to have neglected that people want aggressive leadership. I mean, no matter what he says about being tough on Iraq, who can separate Lieberman from the 2000 ticket that went so quietly into that good night? And once I followed Armed Liberal’s links to the Dem candidates’ web sites, I have to agree that their discussion of national security is incomplete and must be improved. Heck, Hesiod did a better job in the comments section.
As far as the conservatives against redistributionist economics, I’ll take this seriously when the Republicans cut services to match revenues. Large deficits are also redistributive economics: they redistribute taxes taken from everyone to a much smaller number of bondholders. It’s just that M. Simon likes that redistributionist arrangement better.
We’ll see. All I think we need is for the Democrats to articulate a philosophy for national defense that’s better than Bush’s. Why is that so hard?
I’ve been asking exactly the same damn thing for two freaking years…
“All I think we need is for the Democrats to articulate a philosophy for national defense that’s better than Bush’s. Why is that so hard?”
A.L.
Well, to me the answer is self-evident, but I would not expect you to agree with it–namely, that any better ideas than Bush’s on foreign policy would amount to minor tweaking around the edges. Does this question not eliminate, once and for all, the meme that Bush’s intelligence is sub-par? After all, if the entire Democratic Party cannot come up with a better idea than his, what lessons can be drawn with regard to their relative intelligence?
Ah, Andrew Lazarus, lowering the level of the debate to the sewer again. His quip about Florida “riot” is indicative that I’m correct on substance and all he can do is engage in lame Franken-like antics as a retort.
There are, of course, several sources for the OBL item, including ex-Clinton Administration officials. Problem for Lazarus is that he is blinded by fawning admiration for his one source.
And of course a person like Andrew Lazarus couldn’t see the numerous distortions, deceptions, and half-truths in the Franken book, because Andrew is a blind ideologue. All that proves is that he needs to get out more.
As for getting goaded by jackanapes into doing their research for them, I long ago not to get into that, because, as Yogi Berra said, “there are some folks, if they don’t know, you can’t tell ’em”. Getting involved in quibbling over stuff like that with someone who won’t learn anything no matter what you tell them is a pointless waste of time. Which is why people like Lazarus enjoy engaging in such digressions: it distracts people from the matter at hand. Such diversions are simply attempts to change the subject.
Franken’s half-truths and selective deploying of information, slipping inconvenient facts down the memory hole and leaving them unmentioned in order to create a skewed and distorted portrait of reality, have been identified in numerous other venues and are not really germain to this thread.
But (to return to the topic of this thread, actually) for people like Lazarus such diversions and change-of-subject serves a purpose in a thread like this: it helps them avoid introspection. It helps them avoid the sort of soul-searching that A.L.’s post is aimed at producing. So Andrew goes back to the tactic of pointing fingers at others, which is a way of avoiding uncomfortable problems. It’s one of the things that are, whether people like him like it or not, preventing them from solving their difficulties.
As long as they engage in this kind of behavior, they’ll have many more opportunities in the future to grouse about how they waz screwed; ’cause, you know, they – like the Raiders – never lose because they have problems themselves, a bad team; they only lose ’cause they waz jobbed. It’s always either an accident (can’t happen again so don’t need to learn nothin from it) or some particular person screwed up (Grey Davis is gone, he was the sole problem, things will be smooth sailing now) or the other side played dirty (those wascally wepublicans wouldn’t let us massage the ballots in private to produce the outcome that we know woulda been the right one! Oh, and just ignore those military ballots our side had tossed out in some Dem counties while arguing that we wanted to “count all the votes”) or the refs screwed ’em over (wepublican Supreme Court skwewed us. Nevermind the Florida Suprime Court, whose antics its own Chief Justice wrote was going to force the USSC to step in and put an end to the shenannegans).
Year in, year out, each time find excuses and point fingers and change the subject. That way you never have to face your problems.
Also, to say that the Democrats haven’t shown much fight when it comes to domestic politics is. . .funny.
Their problem is they pick a fight over every little thing – but always in ways that are self-defeating and destructive. Yah, they could in theory come up with a better foreign policy than Bush, but it remains in the realm of theory because they are pulled in the wrong direction by their base.
A partial list of what Democrats have shown fight on this year:
1) Judicial Nominees.
2) The Forestry Bill
3) Funding for troops in Iraq & reconstruction.
4) If shooting back when Uday & Qusay shot at our troops was ok or a war crime (Rangel esp).
5) If our foreign policy should be decided in Washington DC or various foreign capitals around the world.
6) Bush landing on a carrier: ok, or a war crime?
7) Niger/Yellowcake, Bush mentioning Niger in the State of the Union this January as the reason why they voted “Yes” on the Authorization of Force last year (and this as the sole reason Bush offered for war).
8) Wilson/Plame.
9) Prescription Drug bill.
10) Save Ferris! Er, Grey! from this partisan recall which is Another Florida.
11) Bush repeatedly saying “immanent” or not.
12) Give the inspectors more time to find WMD in Iraq.
13) Why haven’t we found WMD in Iraq? Bush lied! He made it all up!
14) More troops to Iraq (but cut defense!)
15) More troops to Afghanistan (but cut defense!)
16) More troops to Liberia (but cut defense! More money for vital social programs!)
17) Tax cuts are the tool of the devil
18) Hoovernomics: lets raise taxes in a recession to cut the deficit.
19) Bush is Hoover! Everyone is starving! Worst economy since Hoover!
20) The media is all right-wing republicans because Fox News and Rush Limbaugh exist (nevermind CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, NYT, LAT, WaPo, Boston Globe, &tc).
21) Whether the American people are willing to take casualties or not
22) Doing whatever they can to insure people can’t by whipping up hysteria: Bodybags! Vietnam Quagmire! No progress!
23) That UN, which has done such a wonderful job in the Balkans that we still have troops in Bosnia et al, and did such a bang-up job with governments in Cambodia – is better at this stuff than we are and should be given control in Iraq.
24) That we haven’t solved all the problems of Afghanistan yet (ignore the fact that the UN, which they say in fight #23 is better than us at these things, has the reins in Afghanistan when it comes to these things).
25) Defer to allies! Give them what they want to get them to send troops that they say they don’t have (they say they don’t have more troops to send to Afghanistan – logically, if the Democrats knew anything about logic – it would follow that they don’t have them for Iraq, either) to Iraq.
26) Rumsfeld should resign and be replaced by Dominique DeVillepin. Or maybe Ramsey Clark.
27) Bush is alienating our allies, but the Democratic candidates call our allies in Iraq (British, French, Aussies, &tc) “fraudulent”.
That’s just the 27 I could think of in ten minutes. Yah, no fight at all in the Democrats these days. . .
[Cato, the Sudan gives up OBL story is an urban legend based on one unreliable source. It has legs only because it speaks to the people who hate Clinton way-over-the-top. (You can find the full story in Al Franken’s book.)]
Al Franken has gone from being a bad jokewriter, to being a bad joke. If I were stuck in a doctor’s waiting room, and the only choices were Franken’s book or a Swahili edition of the National Geographic, I’d take the National Geographic (they usually have neat pictures).
The story has legs, because it is in keeping with Clinton’s character — gutless.
Riyadh delenda est!
Clinton speaks on the Bin Ladin offer:
http://www.rightwingnews.com/category.php?ent=224
You can listen to an .mp3 at the URL.
He makes his reasons for not bringing Bin Laden to the US clear. He doesn’t say that there wasn’t an offer. He says:
“At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.”
One would think that if no offer was made, Clinton would have made that clear.
The story has legs, because it is in keeping with Clinton’s character ? gutless. Where were your heroes when he intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo and bombed bin Laden?
AL, the Democratic party can’t form a decent, if not superior, national security policy because of the Dean supporters. Note, Dean himself isn’t a hard-core liberal. Just like McGovern. But his supporters are far more radical than he. And THEY control the party. Dean is being used by them, and they don’t realize that he is going to have to chose between pissing them off or pissing off the moderates who will determine the election. The majority of Dean supporters do NOT support the idea of the war on terror, or rather the war on radical Islam. At best they consider it a “police matter”, concerned simply with bringing the terrorists to justice. At worst they think that America deserved it, and or brought it down upon itself, and thus can’t try and do anything about it. They are hard core voters, they will always vote in the primaries, always help in elections, and always, always control the focus of the party. They are why your party can’t help itself. Too many idiotarians. Such a pity. FDR, Truman, JFK. All gone down the drain.
I am scared about what those Dean voters may force him to do if elected. I don’t share every one of Bush’s positions. I think that Dean himself may have some good positions. But his supporters, the hard core ones that is, make it so that I can’t support him. When the DU and Indymedia types support someone, you have to worry.
In short AL, the only way you can hope to get your party to support a decent national security policy is to somehow get moderates to vote in the primaries for candidates that will push such a policy. And that simply doesn’t happen anymore.
Lazarus screeded:
“Where were your heroes when he intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo and bombed bin Laden?”
1) Clinton didn’t bomb bin Laden. He bombed some tents. bin Laden was not bombed by Clinton. Osama was throughly unbombed by Clinton, which is, by the way, evidence that such a policy was insufficient in achieving meaningful results.
2) Those NeoCons that are the boogiemen of the Left these days were almost invariably in favor of intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo and dealing strongly with terrorism. In point of fact, they were ahead of Clinton on these things, urging that they be done and that they be done more seriously than Clinton often showed. I remember, because, unlike Lazarus I guess, I paid attention at the time to what a variety of people were arguing for.
But, again, I note that you’re changing the subject, because of an unwilligness to grapple with uncomfortable problems.
(1) One would assume, then, Porphy, that in judging GWB’s policy, as Osama and Saddam are both uncaptured, this is “evidence that such a policy was insufficient in achieving meaningful results”.
(2) I didn’t realize that your heroes were the neocons. The mainstream Repubs (as you remember and decided to elide) were mostly against intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. Indeed, I seem to remember that GWB said very negative things about engaging our army in “nation-building”, until this very thing was thrust upon him. (I have a good memory, too.)
(1) Only if the only meaningful results you can see are Saddam and Osama in jail. As opposed to things like an end to official torture and rape, the opening of childrens’ prisons, the end of Islamic executions in soccer stadiums, the beginnings of civil society, women getting an education, slow restoration of the southern Iraqi marshlands, and the removal of key sources of basing and support for jihadi terrorists.
But then, I guess those are normal things to ignore when one sees everything as a police matter, rather than the war it happens to be.
Even mainstream Republicans didn’t try to vote against the funding for those missions, however.
As far as who my heroes may or may not be, Lazarus is engaging in cheap rhetorical tricks (not for the first time); I speak for myself. I was just pointing out the facts that he prefers to ignore.
Just as he continues to prefer to want to change the subject. As if any of this was germain to A.L.’s post. But Lazarus is one of those who cannot face the type of questions raised by A.L.s post, which is the point I’ve been making.
Porphy, back from the memory hole:
Much more at the original link. A resolution to require the Administration to withdraw troops from Kosovo was defeated in April 2000 very narrowly. Most of its support was Republicans, with a smattering of Democrats. On this issue, most Repubs sounded like Kucinich.
What subject were we talking about, anyway?
Joe, I guess we are in a war, but against what? Invading Iraq didn’t disrupt anti-American terrorists any more than invading Bolivia would. If it’s an arbitrary, open-ended war against Arabic-speaking dictators, we may be buying ourselves a lot of trouble.
After that, of course, the Goldwater-Reagan-Nixon wing of the party pursued the strategy of targeting the white Southern votes turned off by Democratic support for civil rights, using code words (“welfare queens”) and wedge issues (ie., affirmative action) and the rest is (recent) history.
If Democrats can’t see that reasonable people can support legal equality for blacks, but also oppose welfare policies which created generations of dependency, oppose racial quotas in elite institutions, and support aggresssive crime prevention, the Democrats will always have a hard row to hoe.
The American people like to think that they’re fundamentally fair, and in many respects they are. All four of those issues are fairness issues, and the Republicans are on the right side of all four, while the national Democrats are only right on one. (Though Clinton was good on at least two, and many Democrats talk good on the crime issue.)
Lazarus screeded:
“Where were your heroes when he intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo and bombed bin Laden?”
Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole supported President Bill Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia to stop the killing and criticised his low balling on the extent and cost of the post-conflict peacekeeping.
Governor George Bush of Texas publically supported President Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo.
Trent, you are absolutely right. But the large majority of the GOP in the House and Senate broke with Bush, Dole, and Clinton on this issue. (And you know it.)
The neocons who backed the Kosovo intervention strongly and solidly didn’t have quite the same foreign policy heft back then, partly because foreign policy as a whole was so devalued at the time and the Soviet threat that had provided so much of their foreign policy impetus (as opposed to their domestic policy critiques, which people forget but which played a very large role in neocon thinking and still do) had evaporated.
We’ve been working on that in the interim, and thinking about these issues, and sharpening the arguments. So have some in the neoliberal camp, as the Kosovo experience shocked and then changed their Vietnam legacy worldviews. Meanwhile, the neocons were looking toward the next threat because most of the folks of my political persuasion thought Francis “End of History” Fukayama was full of s–t. From the neocons, therefore: voices raised about terrorism, homeland security, future WMD. From the neoliberals: issues like nation-state disintegration, ethnic warfare, and the spread of lawless global actors like organized crime with the resources and organization to be players on a global stage.
I’ve watched that happen over the past 10 years, when no-one was really paying much attention. And eventually the world turned, and in turning met all those arguments in a way that none of us had forseen.
Looks like the GOP largely gets it now, though the evangelicals’ growing commitment to intervention outside the national interest (esp. in Africa) may lead to tensions down the road. But the Buchananites are gone, and the Right’s mainstream understands the need to act when possible. They will question, and weigh needs vs. capabilities, but the underlying impulse now is to act – and always, to see it through once begun.
I can’t say the same for the neoliberal project’s efforts within the Democratic Party’s Berkeleyizing base. Hence, the iceberg cometh.
So Mr. Lazarus… exactly what are you about this problem on YOUR side of the aisle? Anything?
Let’s just suppose 20,000 Palm Beach matrons clean their reading glasses and punch Gore instead of Buchanan.
Pres. Gore would be lucky to get the GOP behind an attack on Osama in Afghanistan, much less some dangerous diversionary adventure in Iraq.
The GOP change in attitude isn’t only about “getting 9/11″—if that were so, maybe we’d hear a more formal apology for GWB’s snide slurs against nation-building—it’s about Republicans making the President from the opposite party look bad, and the President from their party look good. You might consider, BTW, how Bill Clinton said that while he was skeptical of Gulf War I, he would have voted for it had he been in Congress. A Democratic patriot.
I thought our entry into the Iraq War has been a stupid distraction from the fight against non-state terrorists. If we wanted to create an Arab democracy in the Middle East as an example, it would have been simpler to pour the $87 Bn into peacefully converting Jordan, whose king probably wouldn’t even mind. However, now that we are there, we can’t run out. On the current lack of foreign support (oh, yeah, that great coalition), we can’t even follow the withdrawal timetable Bush/Rummy are cooking up in the hope of cutting casualties before 11/04. But the funny thing is, only the crank Dems (e.g. Kucinich) are calling for immediate withdrawal. The others seem to understand the nuances of the position; indeed, since they aren’t constrained to pretend we haven’t already made significant, difficult-to-reverse errors, probably better. [Clark on Iraq].
Frankly, Joe, anyone who wrote (as you did) “Chalabi and Miller thought they had information about Iraq’s WMD. It appears to have been wrong. Simple as that.” [emphasis added] should remember about the pot and the kettle before suggesting other people are naive.