The Democrats Have Met The Enemy [UPDATED]
Here's a version of my latest L.A. Weekly column on the election aftermath:
Whatever slim hope that Democrats might have of extracting something positive from this week's resounding defeat depends entirely on how much authentic introspection they are willing to inflict on themselves. To the degree that they look outward —instead of inward"”to identify the causes of the 2004 debacle, the more certain they are doomed.
The more that we hear in the coming days and weeks about counting and recounting in Ohio, about supposed voter intimidation and suppression, about fixed machines, crooked and partisan secretaries of state, about unfair advertising, or Karl Rove's dirty tricks, then the more that anyone with something other than tapioca for brains should abandon any hope of rejuvenating or rebuilding this hollowed-out excuse for a party.
The Democrats lost this election fair and square and have absolutely no one to blame for it than themselves. They don't even have pathetic Ralph Nader to scapegoat like they did four years ago. Sorry if I rush to hang the crepe. But the four million vote margin racked up by Bush"”the first absolute majority since 1988 in a presidential election"”is an undeniable and clear victory that robs any other solution — as unlikely as that might be"”of any moral legitimacy. At least it should --after Florida's Hurricane Chad-- in whose aftermath the Democrats screeched that Bush was an illegitimate president because he had lost the popular vote and was appointed, in effect, by the Supremes. Surely the Democrats would want to eschew any similar stigma, wouldn't they?
Locating the roots of this defeat, you are free to dig as deeply or as superficially as you care. We could start this particular narrative, I suppose, in 1993 when a newly-elected Bill Clinton gambled all of his political capital to bully and ultimately divide his own party, forcing passage of the pet project of Bush 41 — the job-shredding NAFTA. Or perhaps, you'd prefer to begin this story three years later when the same Democratic President signed the Republican abolition of federal welfare thereby putting on the table the simple question of why we should even bother to continue having a Democratic Party. Or maybe in '98 when Democrats re-assured America that all presidents lie and why pick oin you-know-who.
Yet, to unravel this latest tragedy, there's no need really to rehearse the ancient history of the Clinton Nineties, now enshrined in official Democratic mythology as, perhaps, the peak moment of Western Civilization. Going back to the fall of 2002 will suffice. I refer to the moment when Senator John Kerry joined with Trent Lott and Tom DeLay among many, many others in voting the same Florida-tainted George W. Bush full authorization to move toward a patently and brazenly unnecessary war with Iraq.
Not that Kerry really meant it, of course. He had opposed what was a significantly more justifiable war with Saddam a decade earlier. But, then again, Kerry wasn't contemplating a presidential run back in '91.
Or we could zero in on that frosty evening back in January when about 30,000 rosy-cheeked and gray-haired Iowa farmers and their neighbors decided that, among Democrats, only John Kerry was "electable" and millions of Democrats coast-to-coast immediately rubber-stamped that now rather discredited notion.
Maybe it's unfair, however, to isolate any single catalytc moment. A cool-headed assessment of the entire Democratic response to the Bush presidency would herald the doom deal out on Tuesday night almost independently of who ultimately was the candidate. From the onset of his administration, the Democrats have combined a freakish accommodation to Bush with a shrill, sometimes paranoiac exaggeration of his evil. One moment they are part of his War Cabinet. The next they are demonizing him as an individual and warning we are on the doorstep of fascism. And then we blame the voters for being confused. .
But once so many Democrats had worked themselves into a frenzy with the mantra of stolen elections and Supreme Court electoral coups, the die was cast. If Bush was, in fact, the most dangerous, evil and demented President ever as Democrats tirelessly reminded themselves (and apparently only themselves), then Anybody But Bush would do just fine and "¦ well"¦ the rest is now history.
Mr. Anybody turned out to be quite the loser that voters suspected he was before his miracle resurrection in the snows of Iowa. No one can, with a straight face, repeat just what was the precise message of his just-passed and wretched campaign. Is there a reader out there who would like to write in reminding us of one memorable line to be extracted and preserved from amidst the logorrhea that overflowed his campaign?
Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out..
Think for a moment, if you can bear, just how fraudulent the Party has become as a champion for everyday, working Americans. John Edwards, it should be said, did a fine job of evoking the rude inequalities of the Two Americas. And it's a pity that someone like Edwards couldn't emerge as the Democrats' national rabble-rouser. For a brief historical moment, the unlikely Howard Dean flashed in that role and then was even more quickly extinguished. But when you ask yourself who are the great Democratic mass icons of our times, the two or three individuals who put a face and some heart on the core populist values, damned if we don't come up with literal clowns like Al Franken and Michael Moore. They may or ( may not) be just dandy entertainers. But doesn't this say something rather startling about the state of the Democrats?
Once the whining over Ohio dies out, what will laughably be called the war for the "soul" of the once-again-defeated Democratic Party will commence — a struggle so drearily predictable that the whole exercise can be easily scripted in advance. On the one side the corporate shills of the Democratic Leadership Council who will argue that Tuesday's results demand a repositioning of the Party to the right. On the other, the "progressives" who will refloat their own formula that success resides in simply moving the Democrats leftward (as evidenced by what? The 2% primary draw of Dennis Kucinich). Both notions are simplistic and insufficient. The Democrats have not won the sort of absolute national majority pocketed by Bush in more than a quarter of a century. The party doesn't need to be reformed or repositioned. It needs to be rethought and reborn.
The re-election of George W. Bush is a tragedy for which we all pay dearly"”some much more than others. And the only succor I cling to is the notion that the President's punishment for being re-elected is that he will now have to manage the myriad catastophes he has conjured. Good luck to him -- and to us
In the meantime, I shed no tears for the humiliation of this Democratic Party-- only for those who suffer for having invested their hopes in it. But that the Democrats richly deserve to go down-- no question. My deepest regret is only that the Republicans don't go down right alongside it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:18 am
Wow. A pox on both your houses posting…
I agree with you about the problem facing every major Democrat, who for the last four years shouted the Gore Won mantra based on a popular vote plurality. Well those same people now have to deal with a Bush majority popular vote and their rhetoric now comes back to haunt them and anything but a reasonable concession speech by Kerry today, not tomorrow or later.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:46 am
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November 3rd, 2004 at 5:47 am
Mark,
I appreciate your perspective — I really do — critiquing the corporate shills of the DLC and the fanciful notion that there’s a “left” political space out there that the Democratic Party should try to occupy.
I’m just not sure where that leaves us. Nowhere, for the moment, perhaps. And perhaps you’re right–only a radical rethinking of everything will move us forward.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:58 am
I think Marc is right that we really have to dig deep, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near seeing where the bottom is.
Somewhere in here there is the question of ethics vs. morality. We’re unable to project ourselves into the minds of people who think that gay marriage or stem cell research or abortion or evuolution and sex education could possibly be bigger moral issues than an unjustified war.
Bush and his people follow the model that if it’s right for me and my faith, it’s right for the world. We look at the world and see what we think is right and wrong, just and unjust. We look at the big picture first and then we focus on our role within it.
Teenage pregnancy, for example. No, I don’t want my daughter to be pregnant in high school and I’d rather she didn’t experiment with sex too young. But that’s not the way I look at the school’s policy. That’s statistical: how do we reduce something we all agree is bad? Etc.
Maybe Americans weren’t any more ready for Dean than Kerry. But maybe now we have no choice. We’ve got to figure out how to communicate the idea that war itself is a moral issue. Now it’s all George’s war and we’ve got to find a way to stop it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:38 am
Kudos to Marc Cooper for his analysis of why Kerry lost. Although I disagree with him strongly on Cuba and other questions, I found his writings on the Kerry campaign refreshingly candid.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:39 am
I’ve been telling friends that this election is, for me, a referendum on the soul of America as a whole. We all know Bush’s real, tangible negatives, so I won’t list them here, but the man still held close to 50% of popular support throughout the election.
We can talk about all kinds of failures of the press, the Democrats, and even the left… but it could be that at least half of America really is dumber than a bagful of hammers. And when you factor in people with unrealistic expectations of Kerry– say, expecting that he’d have pulled the U.S. out of Iraq– that number’s probably a lowball estimate.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:39 am
>Now it’s all George’s war and we’ve got to find a way to stop it.
If you wait a few months, I believe that will take care of itself, beginning any moment in Fallujah.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:43 am
Marc writes: “Is there a reader out there who would like to write in reminding us of one memorable line to be extracted and preserved from amidst the logorrhea that overflowed his campaign?”
I would like to. But … for the life of me, I can’t. Unless Howard Dean’s hockey-dad “YeeeeeEEEAHHHH!” counts as a “line.” Maybe it’ll come to me later.
(BTW, you have his name as “Howard Dead”, above, which I thought was funny until it occurred to me it might be a typo. Just FYI here. Change it to “Howard Duck” if you like, I don’t care.)
I now read that the Bushies are castigating the Kerry campaign for not conceding already. Even given the microscopic probability of a Kerry win (or even an electoral college tie) at this point, you’d think the Bush campaign would be decorously patient and respectful of process, as you’d expect from good conservatives. I was hoping all this ugliness would be over by now. No such luck, I guess.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:52 am
“That’s statistical: how do we reduce something we all agree is bad? Etc.”
For starters hammer home the theme time and time again that Repubs don’t do a terribly good job dealing with perceived social problems that conservatives are so nervous about (i.e. abortion). I was watching Larry King the other night and watched a liberal Jesuit debating two southern christian ministers on a number of questions. When abortion came up, he pointed out that under Clinton abortion rates declined, under Bush they increased…and explained the tie between broader policies and that connection, in a neat soundbite sentence or two. The ministers, not surprisingly, changed the topic.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:15 am
Marc, as I often do, I agree with everything you have said here. The last time I voted for president was 1968, Peace and Freedom; this time I voted for Kerry, because I felt we had to get rid of Bush and in solidarity with all of my desperate progressive friends. In 1968, we had a somewhat similar choice of two candidates (Nixon and Humphrey, for those of you who don’t recall), and the result was a huge antiwar movement that made the war in Vietnam the central issue and had few or no alliances with the Democrats. That is just one thing that we need to do now, and I don’t mean a few big marches that we can congratulate ourselves about afterwards. I mean an antiwar movement that shows we will do anything to stop what is happening in Iraq, that shows that we really care and are willing to make sacrifices. As for reforming, rethinking, etc, the Democratic Party, I say no: We need to think very, very differently about third parties, instead of applauding when they are kept off the ballot. For God’s sake, and for the sake of the future of our country and the world, let progressives not start thinking about the Democratic candidate in 2008. In other words, time to think about both the short term and the long term, and forget about stopgap measures. Are two lost elections, two mediocre Democratic candidates, not enough to make us see the light?
In saying all this I am talking to Progressives. The only ones to benefit from trying to reform the Democratic Party will be those on the right.
Michael Balter
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:29 am
Marc, what a marvelous piece you have written. I’m reminded of what the democrats could have been had Scoop Jackson prevailed.
Someone above wrote about America being a dumb bagful of hammers. Methinks that it’s attitudes like this that that produced this election.
Living in Texas for the last 39 years, and in South Texas for a goodly hunk of that time I have voted for far more Democrats than I have Republicans, and I’ve never regretted a single one of those votes (well, maybe one or two).
The Democratic Party needs to remember the Coalition that made it in the first place, stop taking voters for granted and work for honest policy change and not reactionary obfuscation just because it can. When that happens, the Republicans will be forced to do the same and then, just maybe, we can see some real systemic changes in this country.
But first, we have to stop the demonizing and recriminations and do some real thinking.
Again, Bravo, Bravo, Bravisimo!!!!
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:32 am
Well said.
I used to say you can’t beat something with nothing. This election also shows you can’t beat nothing with nothing.
Bush had nothing. So he ran hard (like a challenger) against Kerry,
using Terror as his open weapon and gay marriage as his not-so-secret
weapon. The Big Lie held–by 52-44 the final exit poll (the only one
anybody should pay attention to) showed voters saw Iraq as part of the
war on terror. And in 12 states, anti-gay marriage ballot questions
(carefully cultivated by Rove) did the job of motivated the religious
right base.
Against that, Kerry presented nothing. His vote for the war AND his
failure to admit that that was a mistake made his Iraq critique ring
hollow. He also failed to deliver a coherent message on the economy,
Bush’s biggest weakness and his strongest issue. In Ohio, 62% said the
economy was not good, but they split 48-48 on who they would trust to
deal with it. The anti-gay measure there passed 2-1, by the way.
See our friend Doug Ireland’s blog at
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2004/11/why_kerry_lost.html for
more along these lines.
The bottom line: claiming that we’re descending into fascism is really
quite facile, but explains nothing, and it’s an insult both to the
victims of real fascism and a way to reproduce the pattern of
behaviors that got our side into this hole. It’s time to admit that
the Democratic party is in a real crisis, one that won’t be solved by
a restoration of the Clinton family. Some folks understand that and
have been trying in various ways to seed new initiatives and new
thinking. It’s critical that that continue.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:07 am
“I’m reminded of what the democrats could have been had Scoop Jackson prevailed.”
uhm, GM, he did prevail. whatever makes you think otherwise?
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:12 am
claiming that we’re descending into fascism is really quite facile, but explains nothing, and it’s an insult both to the victims of real fascism
–I hear you and Marc both repeating this mantra endlessly. The question is are you exaggarating the extent to which people believe that, left or liberal? My sense is you’re exaggarating big time. People on the liberal left spectrum might be bummed about the election result, I am not hearing a whole lot of cries about fascism at the moment.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:36 am
Marc, I always find your columns equal parts frustrating and inspiring. Once again you pinpoint some key fissures–pro-NAFTA Clinton, for example–and point out a need to re-construct the Democratic Party. But then sarcastically brushing aside the notion that we need a progressive move to the “left”? If you’re implying we need to rethink the political spectrum, well, duh, but really, what does that mean concretely? Our current Democratic Party is a mess of knee-jerk shifts to the right on most economic issues, and a too frequent self-silencing on social issues unpopular to rabid right-wingers. So if we break it down and build it back up, you can’t tell me that a better result would NOT be one shifted more to the “left”. Maybe we’re wearing out our political spectrum labels, but let’s be honest: the Democratic Party moved rightward throughout the 90′s, and now they’re paying the political price. Re-building the Democratic Party (or a viable alternative) may not necessitate a “simple” move “left” (whatever that is), but it sure as hell can’t move any further to the right. Clinton’s experiment failed. Fearlessly getting back to the traditional Democratic base–middle and lower income workers, especially–I see as absolutely essential for providing a popular and effective challenge to the Republican Party. Once again, however, the Democrats were not up to the challenge.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:37 am
No cries of fascism, thank God: i think that’s mainly because liberals are smart enough to know how melodramatic that sounds.
But if I see one more person yabber about moving to Canada, I’m going to fuckin’ scream.
I know, it’s never said seriously. But why Canada? Not to malign Canada or Canadians, but why not go hog-wild, and move to Europe, and live among more than a thousand years’ worth of Western Civ while your children learn to speak three or more languages?)
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:41 am
“No cries of fascism, thank God: i think that’s mainly because liberals are smart enough to know how melodramatic that sounds.”
I don’t think they ever were as big or as influential as people like Micah or Marc claim. I think it’s the kind of thing they hear from a person who has a Johnny Damon hairstyle at a Manhattan party and then generalize to the left in general and draw the inevitable conclusion, “if the left didn’t think that fascism was round the corner…”
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:42 am
The fellow who seems promising as the embodiment of a new Democratic party vision is Barack Obama. He’s idealistic, but not doctrinaire. He seems accepting of everyone. For instance, he realizes that most Americans are, unless threatened, pretty much centrists. He’s friendly and inclusive — he may even have a Republican friend or two. While disagreeing with it, he sees the other side’s point of view. When he speaks, you know you’re listening to an adult. He has faith that his argument is valid enough to be made without raging or falling back on ad hominem attacks. He appears to be ambitious without being grasping. He’s optimistic, not cynical. (Cynicism gets you nowhere; it’s like sitting in a dirty diaper.) He says ‘yes’, not ‘no’ to challenges. He is even-tempered and has personal integrity. And he even seems to believe it’s incumbent on him to spread the good luck he’s enjoyed to others. Imperfect as it is, he actually likes America and thinks we can make it better! He also relies on some of the timeless spiritual elements we’ve inherited from Judaism and Christianity, among them the idea that we are our brother’s keeper. In other words, Obama appeals to our universal, higher self – something even someone who voted for Bush can appreciate
. Most of all, he wants to work with other politicians – not against them, because we’re all in this together. In recent years, the Democrats have been sunk by ego, factionalism, anger, cynicism and internecine struggles. Moving farther to the left is a recipe for disaster. What the Democratic party needs to encourage is more cooperation and statesmanship. When one party is humiliated, we all lose. A determination to work through conflicts with ideological opponents is the only sure path. FYI, I voted for Gore in 2000 and Clinton before that and was truly alarmed by the low quality of candidates the Democrats offered. Frankly, I would have voted for Lieberman or Edwards – when he was taking the high road (how refreshing that was). I would even have voted for Edwards-Kerry. But Kerry? The man has no character and character is ultimately the best indicator of good leadership. Obama has character; I would have voted for him if he’d been available. If Democrats hope to make a positive contribution in the future, they’ll have to throw away their discredited old-left bromides and formulas and start encouraging an innovative and heart-felt vision that includes a broader range of the citizenry.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:42 am
“. Maybe we’re wearing out our political spectrum labels, but let’s be honest: the Democratic Party moved rightward throughout the 90′s, and now they’re paying the political price. Re-building the Democratic Party (or a viable alternative) may not necessitate a “simple” move “left” (whatever that is), but it sure as hell can’t move any further to the right.”
Bingo.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:50 am
While I agree with much of the above, some of this doesn’t follow.
I don’t think that one can assume that had Kerry admitted his support for the war was mistaken and become anti-war, that somehow this was going to clarify the desired distinction between the Wars on Terror and Iraq in most of the populace. Basically, he took the republican position and lost with it. Being completely honest (as he should have been) and appreciated for such by holding an anti-war opinion, would have garnered him even fewer votes.
On the issue of gay-rights had he run with a more forceful and again more honest position, this would not have stopped the twelve states in their successful anti-gay ballots.
What I am missing in the above posts, with the exception of “Hope’s” is that however badly misrepresented and misdirected our policies are, and however poor and bought-out our messengers are, it is our ideals which are being attacked and/or ignored. I can well share my red state compatriot’s concerns for the economy, fear of terror, and the dread of a body bag containing one’s child, but I do not understand this total reliance on faith, this wholesale fear, and this continuing attack on basic human rights.
Marc, in neither going “further right” nor being “trivialized,” (not that I want to do either) what does your “rethinking” and “rebirthing” mean in real terms?
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:03 am
“the Democratic Party doesn’t need to be reformed and repositioned, it needs to be rethought and reborn”
There was a lot of insight in Marc’s piece, but I’m afraid that any political strategy that can be deduced from his critique is just as easily scripted as anything that will now ensue within the Democratic Party. I’ma also afraid that the prospect for success based soley on this critique as a guide is just as dreary.
What’s curious is that the key political issues Marc cites as emblematic of the Democrat’s failures – NAFTA, welfare and the war – are classic examples in which the alternative would have been “simply moving the party leftward” – which – no doubt correctly – is dismissed as a strategy by citing Kucinich. The one “moral” issue cites – the defense of Clinton against impeachment – was a singular example of the Democrats actually reflecting the will of the American people that “enough was enough” and we should move on. (And not coincidentally it occasioned the birth of one of the most successful populist innovations on the leftward side in many years – MoveOn.Org.)
There are two problems that all of the rethinking and earnest appeals and independent electoral effort in the world won’t change. One is that we don’t have a parliamentary system which would allow for the process Marc wishes for (though hasn’t really described) to have even a whiff of political pragmatism. Second – and most important – the social, economic and cultural terrain of America will face whoever and whatever you put on the political map.
I’m reeling a bit – just a bit – from last night, but mostly because I had read the Zogby exit polls and allowed my emotions to swing too early. But from what I’ve gleaned – and again this is poll-driven data from the media – the biggest single issue for a plurality of voters was morality. Forget the war, forget the economy. A very large swath of people voted for “morality”. We know what that means. Abortion and gay rights.
I think Marc underestimates both Bush and Kerry in what he’s written above, but I’ll dare say that if the Democrats he reviles for lacking a soul weren’t – despite all their myriad and manifest weaknesses and perfidy – in fact the party that maintains reasonable consistency in embracing gay rights and women’s choice, the Republicans would be no more than a plurality party and would rarely, if ever, win national elections.
Joe Lieberman could do his Henry Jackson dance to recapture the neo-cons. Kucinich could boogie with Jessie Jackson to recapture the economic populist spirit. John Edwards can smile, smile, smile. But the problem of courting a well-organized, extraordinarily committed segment of the electorate that votes on a single issue, their core religious beliefs, will remain. And it’s an extremely daunting problem.
My wish list for the Democrats would be very close to Marc’s. But to propose “re-imagining” the Democratic party – or any party – one must take into account what has come to be called the Religious Right as the inevitable, ever-present joker in any national Republicans’ winning hand. Positing a progressive poltical project aimed toward securing an electoral majority at the national level – be it via “reform” or “rebirth” – isn’t terribly difficult until you factor in millions and millions of voters who will vote against their own palpable economic interests and assent to the country’s military power being squandered in order to make a “values” statement against abortion and against gays.
What happened last night isn’t really all that surprising. Bush has strengths as a candidate that are consistently underestimated. Incumbency is a huge advantage. As is a largely toothless press. And war presidents – even in unpopular wars – are not likely to be ousted. (Remember Nixon, who ran against one of the few opponents in my memory who likely passes Marc’s smell test and who fared far worse than Kerry.)
The only good news I can find in all of this is that four more years of Bush may, as has been observed elsewhere by finer minds than mine, turn out to be bad news for his own party. Experience is an even greater teacher than incisive – even prescient – folks such as ourselves. And the country definitely has some lessons in store from Bush Unbridled.
It’s not a day for optimism. But a rather impressive man – the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci – who suffered and died in Mussolini’s prisons (which was a bit worse than driving around with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on November 3rd, 2004) suggested the most appropriate psychological formula for anyone who takes politics seriously – pessimism of intellect, optimism of the will. Josh was joking about hope among leftist types a few threads back. I’ll leave the one-liners to Jesse Jackson, but frankly, in appropriate context (left-wing reductionism or liberal hysteria don’t qualify) and joined to other virtues, hope is very powerful indeed. Whatever else we do, let’s not abandon it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:11 am
A nice post. I hope the Dems do look inward, debate on merit instead of debate on personality will strengthen both parties.
As for the one line of Kerry’s: “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it”. And not just for the surface flip-flop. But rather for being Senatorial (compromising) instead of Presidential (decision making).
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:19 am
“As for the one line of Kerry’s: “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it”. And not just for the surface flip-flop. But rather for being Senatorial (compromising) instead of Presidential (decision making).”
What was wierd to me wasn’t that. Frankly I’d have no problem with his voting against the measure as an anti-war stance and leaving it at that. But, what is amazing to me is that he allowed his vote to be so distorted and never rebutted the claims that he voted ‘against’ the provision of $ to the Iraq ’cause’. All Kerry had to do was call out Bush on his claim that he was going to veto any version that was not the same as the one Bush supported–making quite clear that Bush had done the same, voted for one version and against another. What was odd to me, not that odd, but strategically speaking odd, was that Kerry simply let that line about voting against the 87 billion to stand.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:38 am
Marc:
Yes indeed: ‘We lost fair and square.’ And Where oh where ARE leaders of strong principle from the left? I personally think Pelosi is one who has got to go — she’s no effective counterweight for DeLay, Hastert and the house repubs unless she can make some major changes and I just don’t see that happening. McAuliffe’s time is past too.
Your analysis/writings prove a long-held truism: we progressives/leftists/liberals have long excelled at critiquing/parsing/deconstructing and warring within while spreading the blame all around, both INWARD and outward (which you allude to).
Your columns, these blogs and most other missives from the left show repeatedly that we’re far better at deconstruction, critique/criticism and logical analysis than recovering from loss (or avoiding it in the first place).
One MAJOR area we’ve (collectively) never really mastered and sustained — unlike the right/repubs/neo-cons — is figuring out a coherent, long-term strategy for what is next and then HOW to actually accomplish it — how to become adept at and committed to working together as a united front to actually ‘solve the problem’. And to not quit that work, lose that focus once some headway is made on the election front.
That said, I certainly believe it would be a mistake for the left to abandon or betray or continue to dismiss core dem/leftist values of respect for differences and concerns for the most vulnerable simply in order to win.
I totally agree with Hope: “Bush and his people follow the model that if it’s right for me and my faith, it’s right for the world. We look at the world and see what we think is right and wrong, just and unjust. We look at the big picture first and then we focus on our role within it.”
Yes: we tend to prefer and value process as much as outcome, while the right effectively uses the means to achieve an end.
Then again, there’s simply always so much emphasis and practicing of our first amendment rights — a blessing and a curse. Would we really want it any other way? Do we need to learn more conformity and silencing for the ‘greater good’? What is the appropriate balance? And in what context and setting?
Perhaps there is and always will be so much dissent in and among the left because unlike the right, the left is actually much better at inhabiting and living (the constitutional principles) that individuals DO have the right to lives of liberty and personal freedom (as long as they don’t encroach upon others’ rights, theoretically at least).
That contradiction is something the right very much resents and fears — they want personal liberties for themselves and the people like them as long as they live the ‘right way’ that they think life should be lived, but not for all those other ‘bad, immoral and lazy’ people, i.e. blacks, latinos, poor people and especially GAYS, i.e. — all the immoral people who are ‘too individualistic’ and don’t follow the right rules and belief systems. Fear is a big motivator for all human beings, whether it is rational or not. The left has its version(s), the right theirs.
The good thing about this outcome as many have pointed out is we/left/dems/progressives have a chance to really do some serious, in-depth introspective reflection (IF we dare) — what actions will result — that’s the ultimate question.
Sometimes stepping back from the’ battle’, deciding not to participate for a while can be a good thing individually — do we have the luxury collectively?
As an elderly (southern) relative stated: well, at least he’s gonna have to clean up his own mess.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:41 am
Absolutely agree on Cooper’s comment on Edwards. Gore’s nomination speeech was similarly rousing (his sincerity is not an issue) and right to the point. He got a majority of the popular vote.
People have lost their capacity to look at their own miserable reality, transferring their frustrations –and suffering– onto “moral” issues, from gay marriage to stem cells. But that capacity can be restored using the good old populist techniques — this side of Howard Dean’s contrived ardor.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:42 am
Oops! Correction: Gore’s nomination acceptance speech…
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:52 am
Ballot initiatives to raise
state minimum wages won in Florida and Nevada.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:55 am
I looked at the Ireland post and found it woefully inadequate. I think Ireland is rearranging deck chairs. Marc’s right that it’s time to look deeper and longer. I will be really disappointed if Dems don’t see this as a sign that the Clinton tightrope won’t work for those lacking Elvis mojo. I heartily agree with Mark Gabriel and share his dismay and bewilderment in how left values are so out of fashion. How any decent person can’t be disheartened by these anti-gay initiatives is beyond me.
Small note: I don’t think it follows that from moment the Supremes anointed Bush, all Dems knew he was the worst thing since peanut butter and clams. I’m of the opinion he earned a lot of that resentment through, as he would say, hard work.
p.s. great post Chameleon Cal
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:07 am
The worst of your party act embarassed to be Americans. Fix that and the rest will follow.
I’m hoping that the Democratic Party can be fixed. I’d like two good choices in an election. This year the decision was too easy.
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:11 am
Thanks Marc. I drank the lesser-of-two-evils kool-aid for 11 months. Thanks for reminding me why that was stupid. Cheers!
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:54 am
Should the Democrats pin their hopes for the future on the style and substance of Barak Obama? Based on what I saw and heard during his convention speech I must say that this conservative would welcome that level of political debate.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:13 am
Here’s some advice from a bag of hammers…
Democrats are going to have to move to the right of the commenters I see above. There is a reason that Clinton moved right: it worked. As much as I despise Bill Clinton, theree is no denying his political skills. He is a master at finding the winning position.
Obama is an interesting guy. It will be interesting to see how he votes. There is no doubt that he has an excellent presence, a sharp mind and a winning manner. I have read at least on analysis that says he is a true socialist. If so, he cannot be a successful national candidate for the Democrats. If not, he has great potential.
Whoever compared Bush voters to bags of hammers has an attitude appropriate for losing elections – it is arrogant, insulting, wrong, and hence not likely to lead to understanding. You can find plenty of Bush voters, e.g. Roger Simon, Glenn Reynolds that clearly are not idiots. If you do not respect your political opponents, you are going to get beaten – as you just did in a dramatic way – losing by a significant percentage the popular vote, losing senate seats including Daschle, and losing house seats.
Furthermore, inspite of the silly comment up-thread, you lost when the press was strongly biased for your candidate, and even admitted it (as if it wasn’t obvious). I suspect their strong bias is not going to change, but it is hard to tell what the internet will do to them, as large numbers of fact checkers are unleashed.
You also need to understand why Americans support the war in Iraq and Bush’s value set. If you find yourself using the word stupid as you ponder it, you aren’t going to get it. I am not stupid – far from it – and I suspect most on this blog are pretty smart.
Those of us on the right would prefer a sane opposition. This year, the Democratic party showed considerable insanity. Of all the candidates running, it picked Kerry, a deeply flawed individual who is also a man of few accomplishments. Even with what Newsweek’s correspondent said was a 15 point boost given by the leftist media, Kerry lost the popular vote. I hope we hear no “stolen election” nonsense this time. You will need to find something more positive to motivate your base.
I cannot be more happy that the turncoat was defeated – this is the first election where I have actively participated in activism, and it was due to Kerry’s behavior in the anti-war movement. I might add that I have no problem with most anti-war people, but Kerry was different.
Bush hatred led to violence and vandalism. It is going too far.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:28 am
Marc….Cal….Hope….Mavis….Recovering…. your thoughtful, intelligent posts are much appreciated.
It’s hard to be all that introspective just yet. I’m far too fearful about such issues as:
…checks and balances…
…the mandate that Bush will now believe he has for radical conservatism and, as Sidney Blumenthal put it on Salon, “the enactment of the imperatives of ‘the right God….’”
…the fact that the US Senate has just had added to its number one new Senator who believes that capital punishment for abortion, another who is in favor of firing all gay teachers…
…the look on my 18-year-old son’s face this morning….
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:45 am
So far, I’m hearing Representative Matsui saying how the President has to unite the country, then goes on to cut down every one of the President’s policies.
It’s not looking good so far,
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:45 am
mantra for the coming months, from the “elderly southern relative”:
AT LEAST HE’S GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAN UP HIS OWN MESS.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:53 am
John Moore, with “I have no problem with most anti-war people”, truly gives the disingenuous a bad name.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:55 am
Why didn’t Matsui simply lie down on the floor and ask Tom DeLay to do a jig on his back ? Will Democrats ever learn ?
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:04 pm
John Davies: I hear ya, take a look at the Op-Ed page of USA Today, columns by Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich juxtaposed in which each calls for unity and then goes on to (softly) attack the other side while itemizing their different laundry lists.
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:13 pm
Oh yeah another thing we dems/left/progressives are famous for: destroying our losers, ‘eating our young’ (for making mistakes as well as losing), fracturing and abandoning ‘all ye who enter here’ instead of finding another, possibly more suitable role.
I’m as guilty as the rest (or at least somewhat) — since I don’t really hold much sway or power other than as an individual worker-bee.
I don’t know if that means we’d rather be right and lose or rather win than be right (as in just).
I understand and echo many of the emotions fueled by the disappointment and discouragement of loss (at least it wasn’t stolen by the supreme court this time — it was a loss).
There are some fearsome and hateful figures in the right/repub landscape, Karl Rove the evil genius notwithstanding. Tom DeLay really comes to mind when I think of scary people. Dick Cheney. John Ashcroft. There are legitimate reasons for the stated concerns and yes, FEAR of what’s to become of civil/human/gay-lesbian rights as a result of the anti-gay hysteria/anti-gay amendments, forthcoming legislation, the supreme court/judicial appointments — these cannot simply be brushed aside as hysterical.
I for one was heartened by John Edwards promise to keep working on behalf of ordinary folks. We’ll see.
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:13 pm
I think a first step Americans can take is to stop demonizing each other. Not everyone who voted for Bush is a brain-dead religious zealot and not everyone who voted for Kerry is a hedonistic lefty wacko. (Although both groups undoubtedly exist; let’s keep them in perspective.) If we let the hysteria die down and vow to make clearer distinctions in the future, we may realize that we share more ideas that we commonly realize.
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:20 pm
PS: I think it’s much easier not to feel scared when you’re in a progressive state like CA or NY — when you’re not part of the mainstream, you’re living in a red state where you don’t have the luxury of union representation or decent pay, where people expect if not require church-going and Jesus is Lord behaviors — it’s a much dicier proposition.
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:22 pm
I was right.
France won.
Sincerely,
God
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:55 pm
All of this talk about the Democrats going back to the Roosevelt coalition and cozying up to the working class is great. The problem is that to do that, you better be willing to respect people’s religous values, be less absolutist on abortion, and support gun rights and stop being the party of condescending, aging leftist college professors. Not everyone has to change, but for Christ sake can’t you just let people in the party who hold these views. Governor Casey of Pennsylvania was a true Roosevelt, working class Democrat if there ever was one and he wasn’t even allowed to speak at the 92 Convention because he was pro-life. To me that was as much a water shed event starting the Democrats’ decline as anything. If Democrats would be more tolerent and let people like Governor Casey be a real part of the party, they would win back a lot of the working class voters and come back to power. To do that, however, would require throwing the gays, academia, and the Holywood left overboard. Is it really practical to do this?
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:56 pm
the Democrats don’t need to shift right as a whole to reform themselves. they just need to embrace guns. me, I’m buying an assault rifle and learning how to use it. then let somebody call me a liberal faggot terrorist-sympathizer; I dare them.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:02 pm
Here’s a short list of who Bush had to beat to win: The angry, paranoid left, epitomized by the Michael Moore-Howard Dean-Moveon.org wing which now dominates the Democratic party and is bankrolled by George Soros and the limousine liberals on both coasts. The major news media — NY Times, the networks (Rather, Brokow, Jennings, Brown-Blitzer, the egregious blowhard Chris Mathews), NPR, MTV and the “youth vote,” Jon Stewart, Al Franken and all the other smarty-pants comedians. Hollywood, including Barbra, Sean Penn, Warren Beatty, Susan Sarandon, Rosie, Cher, Ben, and a cast of thousands. Feminists. The gays and their agenda. The professoriat. The secular humanists. The greedy trial lawyers. Bill and Hillary. Jesse, Rev. Al, Julian Bond and the other race hustlers. The UN. Old Europe — Chirac, Schroeder and the Belgium EU bureaucracy. Our own Foggy Bottom. New York, Boston and San Francisco and lesser elitist compounds of privilege such as Berkeley and Madison. What am I leaving out?
Jerry Carroll
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:05 pm
4 more years of Bush books!
Hopefully this will sober the Left up. Remind them of how much regular joes hate the Anti-war movement and Mr. Moore.
It will not. We will have 4 more years of Pacifca conspiracies. Page after page in The Nation reacting to Bush. Cover after cover on left/liberals mags.
But no vision will come out of any of it and Jeb will win in 2008.
I have said it 1000 times on this blog. The left needs new minds, new ideas, and no more New Left influence. Purge it once and for all.
The kooks that post on this blog will continue to believe the delusions. It is sad.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:05 pm
While I agree with some of what you say, the fact that Rove via Bush simply appealed to the public’s deep seated fears to get elected doesn’t leave the Democrats very good options to fight it. The public took the bait. The Democrats might scare people more than the Republicans next time, or try to appeal to issues most of them profess to care about and lose again, as Kerry and Gore before him tried to do, or they need to find someone for the public to hate more than Islamics, gay people, and pagans, preferably someone the Republicans don’t already hate, which is kind of a tall order at this point.
No, the real failure in the election lies with the American populace who votes against their own self-interests, their own professed position on the issues, and even their own well being, in order to follow the manipulative rhetoric of hate and fear.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:15 pm
Can’t say Bush deserved to win, but Kerry sure deserved to lose.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:24 pm
RE: “going back to the Roosevelt coalition…” Living here in flyover country, this sounds about right. Like it or not, Republicans are able to accept a pro-choice, pro-gay California gov or NYC mayor. The simple reality is that 80% of the counties in this country have a moral compass that does not line up with with DNC platform. The Edwards “I’ll fight for you” approach is unlikely to work in the future if it didn’t work in 2004 with the economy as it is. Either the party is misunderstood by the people, or the people are misunderstood by the party. Given that Bush recieved more votes than any presidential candidate in US history, the latter is a real possibility.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:26 pm
Ah, recrimination time; that hardy perennial where the various wings of the Democratic Party gather in a circle and begin firing into the middle. And, as always, blame the losing candidate. This ritual has always been a blessing to progressives in the past, so why stop now.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:36 pm
Very good article and some good comments throughout.
There seems to be an ongoing delusion that if the left could’ve just framed their message in a different way – or used a more insipiring messenger – the election could’ve gone differently.
What’s been humorous about this election, is how far the left has been pushed in abadoning classic liberal values. During the 70′s and 80′s, the left was stauchly opposed to ‘puppet regimes’ that the US was helping prop up in South America and the Mid-East.
Because of the nature of a dual-party system, when the Right seized upon a new way of thinking (correctly in my mind), that using stability as the excuse for propping up despotic regimes was not a good long-term strategy. Amusingly, the left relented with the belief that they needed to take the ‘opposite’ position.
Now the left is proudly — and without any irony — stating that we should’ve allowed Sadaam to stay in power and dealt with him on a more diplomatic level. Stability uber alles.
The humor is such that most on the left have no real idea what their own party is about, only that they are against whatever the republicans are for. When that is your central ideology, “We are not Republicans”, expect to get beat in every election.
The right has managed to ‘embrace and extend’ many of the core beliefs that have been traditional liberal values (civil-rights, immigration, global democratic initiatives). To wit, the standard Demorcrat response has been to cut and run to the other side of the issue.
This is a party that is bereft of beliefs and is poll-driven to such an extent that there are no ‘core values’ to rally the troops around.
Welcome to the vacumm you have created. Listen to the echoes.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:37 pm
Let me get this right…58 million people (the first majority vote for President since 1988) reject the Dem position, sweep Democrats from the House, Senate, Presidency; and now hold the governorships of the four largest states in the Union, demolish the Senate minority leader, and you blame the ignorant people? No – that’s a basic failure to take responsibility for your actions. Wake up! The reason that the Dems were rejected in record-setting numbers was that they had a poor candidate, a worse platform (was there one other than ABB?), and were the arrogant dividers that you claimed that the Bush Administration was. The Ba’athists in Iraq have been hanging on by their fingernails praying for a Kerry victory. Even Osama quoted Michael Moore! Unless the Dems come up with a coherent position on what they actually believe in not just default to the class warfare garbage of
“fight, obstruct, stop,” and generally segregate yourselves, you will continue to suffer the fate of Dashle and Kerry. How will the Dems actually reach out and build a bigger coalition that actually looks to the future, not into the politics and ideas of the past? Answer that, and the Dems might have a future. Forget the conspiracy theories, the whining, all the rest. The Dems did this one all by themselves.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:45 pm
Kerry’s one memorable line: “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
He was right about that.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:47 pm
Jon, “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
Are you being sacrastic? Or are you serious?
Great line, next time just don’t “Vote for it, before you Vote against it.”
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:56 pm
On foreign policy, the Dems have to have a more active vision than: oppose whatever Bush does, and consult the UN and Europe ten times before acting. They also have to muzzle the Michael Moore wing of the party. As Marc said, when you best spokesperson is literally a clown, no one is going to take you seriously.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:56 pm
Like usual, blank throws out a silly insult. Blank, I don’t know if you were alive for the Vietnam anti-war movement, but I was. And I went to a couple of demonstrations as a Vietnam Veteran. I also knew some anti-war leaders.
Most of them were sincere people, misguided in my opinion, but good people nonetheless. Kerry was not and he was substantially more damaging to the country and to Vietnam Veterans. So when I say I have no problem with many anti-war leders, I don’t. I went to a peace march in San Francisco of 300,000 people. It was organized by useful fools, people who honoestly believed that ending the war was best. It was hijacked by the radical left, including the VVAW.
A cause can have good and bad people both working for the same end. If someone is genuine but in my opinion mistaken, why should I condemn them?
It looks like some here are blaming the voters. That won’t get you anywhere. Neither will assuming that Bush (or Rove) tricked them. Bush underwent a hell of a lot more scrutiny by a media biased against him than did Kerry by a media biased for him. Somehow the voters saw through some of that nonsense.
Jerry said it best when he described the bizarre collection of people who push the Democratic party around. They are your problem. Break free of evil idiots like Michael Moore and your many rich but stupid contributors from Hollywood, and ask yourself just what sort of party you are, when infamous currency speculator Soros is bankrolling your efforts. Ignore the professors, they don’t have a clue. Politics is the art of the possible, not the theoretical.
Today, the Democratic party is far to the left of Americas center. To some extent it gets away with that due to disinformation from the main stream media, college kids who have been dazzled by elegant leftist political theories which don’t actually work, and because many democrats absorbed some of the sillier leftist tropes so deeply they don’t even realize they are accepting it. Finally, throw out 99% of the conspiracy theories.
The press constructed a conspiracy theory about the Swift Boat Veterans. It tooks tenuous threads and interpreted them as strong connections. It then used that theory to paint 60 eyewitnesses as liars or dupes. It is that sort of theorizing that leads to wrong conclusions (I know first hand that this theory is wrong).
Under Clinton, people on the right formed conspiracy theories. Vince Foster was murdered; So was Ron Brown; Clinton was tied to CIA cocaine smuggling through Mena, Ark. Etc. These ideas had wide following, even though the evidence didn’t support them.
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:57 pm
Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener.
Then the buns would really relish me.
I would make the mustard glad,
And the other wieners sad,
And Oscar Mayer would stand up and shout with glee.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:00 pm
Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush?
Umm, apparently not.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:03 pm
Sure do appreciate the honesty of David Corn’s most recent post (as of this time): (Live (Sort Of) From Boston, It’s the Day After…)
“Right now I have one thought on my mind: get to the airport, get to my car, drive home, and see the wife and my wonderful daughters. I am lucky to have such consolation. It’s not my ass in an unreinforced Humvee in Iraq. I’m not worried about losing childcare or school lunch subsidies for my family. I have a decent (if not great) health care plan. I’m not watching my job go overseas. (It’s hard to outsource punditing.) I was able to marry the person I love. I will never need an abortion. You get the picture.”
Anyone here who IS worried about/dealing with any of those things? If not, don’t be so quick to blast those of us who are.
=====
from the UK/Guardian:
“The US electorate gets a universally bad press around the world. When it does make what we define as the right decision it is deemed more accident than wisdom. Americans are seen as unsophisticated, wilfully ignorant, obsessed with such issues as abortion, guns and gay marriage, and wedded to a device which seems calculated to impede the wishes of the majority – the electoral college. Mixed in with this are the demands of the American commonwealth, its global reach and the power to consume a far greater share of the earth’s resources than is fair.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1342113,00.html
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:06 pm
If you’re looking to reform/rethink/re-whatever the Democratic Party, I suggest starting with the last Democrat to demonstrably win nationwide. Bill Clinton remains actively involved in the party, and has shown a capacity for shaping it to meet popular demand. Is there a way to get him more involved in such an effort again? (Other than as the spouse of a candidate, I mean.)
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:06 pm
Basic rule of warfare, helpful in politics: never underestimate your opponent.
Am I right that every leftist commenter on here is opposed to the Iraq invasion? If so, I would suggest you consider that perhaps lots of good people disagree, and not because they are idiots, and analyze whatever odd theory you have as to why the war was fought.
Until you understand why Bush went into Iraq, again, you have a problem understanding American politics.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:08 pm
1000 troops die in an “unjust” war and its enough to get the left angry to the point of being unhinged.
40,000,000 babies are flushed away since Roe Vs. Wade and you shrug your shoulders. Who cares? – they’re not human – and, anyway all evangelical christians are lunatics aren’t they?
If I even mention that I am against abortion at my place of work (a large American multinational) I get screeched at by women no-one in their right mind would even consider dating – let alone impregnating.
What I am saying is that the left just got the inevitable backlash for decades of disregard for those whom Jesus said were most in need of protection.
Bush brought out 25m bible readers because he seeks to protect those whom nobody else will.
And those 25m people will keep Democrat hands off the levers of power for the next 25 years.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:28 pm
Hi folks- I am a former democrat who voted for Bush this time and I would like to chime in here.
I was a lifelong Democrat. I voted for Clinton and Gore, and voted for Gore in 2000. The family I grew up in were die-hard Democrats. We all had similar beliefs and pride. We held the idea of sharing our goods with our neighbors; of taking care of people less fortunate than us. Moving America forward was always the mantra. Being progressive.
I forgave Clinton for lying to us about the Monica scandal. I figured-hey- this had nothing to do with our nation’s safety, so let it go. What I didn’t realize was how complacent Clinton had been with our enemies.
I was shocked after the 2000 election-and ashamed of the antics of my party leadership. Although I wanted my guy (Gore) to win, I was well aware that he was moving this issue, not we the people.
In the months after 9-11, I began hearing some pretty nasty things from the Democrats in Congress. The partisan verbage really got to me.
I began to hear things that led me to believe that my party was not really taking the attacks seriously.
The likes of Michael Moore and company do not represent me. Martin Sheen and The Dixie Chicks and company all spoke up against any action against Iraq-simply to get “in” with the very liberal side of my party. They were trying to make money by bashing our national security, in my mind. Thats not the party I had come to love and be a proud member of. No not at all. The screaming hysterics, the lies, the movie-all of it just turned me off. Hollywood is not the heart and soul of the America I love. Hollywood is awesome at making us movies, not making national policy.
My feeling is that the party has been hijacked by an almost radical left wing… The party has no cohesive statement, and it certainly does not represent the average working American. Many who speak for the party are filthy rich and elite, and have no idea what my life is really like. I veiw them as phoney, and Kerry is the very epitome of this elite. Hence, I could not vote for him at all. He was/is too stiff, too uncomfortable when he is in our presence. And frankly, his ideas about this “global test” really cinched it for me.
NO president should give a hoot what other nations think. Yes- we need to work with our neighbors and we need to consider their issues. We need to be helpful and we need to offer aid. But we do not need permission or approval to defend ourselves.
I guess this is where the divide is for me. The Democrat party could not show me that it would secure my country. Rather, it threatened (and for me, it was a threat) to subvert our security to the UN or France or wherever.
All the lies and rumors being spread-that draft will come back; Bush will turn us into Facists; abortion will be outlawed; all our jobs will be outsourced- ect ect- just turned me right off.
And Howard Dean-he is one of biggest rumor mongors of them all. He does not represent the party I once called my own.
Maybe the current Democrat party thinking- should look at joining another party. You folks don’t have the same values that many of us former Democrats have. This is not an insult, rather-something to think about. I don’t know what to say. The current party is, for me, full of con arists who lead you. Full of hate and revenge. Not a kind and caring people like they used to be. No, todays Democrat party has been hijacked.
Raven
(ready to be bashed, called a facist, threatened, ect-I have gotten used to this reaction by my former party-mates)
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:38 pm
Bibles, abortion, gay marriage….
None of these is why you lost. NONE. The dynamic prevails! There is a cyclical dynamism to politics in this country, orbiting the middle, but swinging right and left, dependent on the prevailing zeitgeist.
But, the reason that I, like many other Republicans is sad today is that the Dems didn’t field a candidate who believed in his positions, was firm in his positions, was willing to try to convince others of his rightness without insults, avoided ad hominem attacks, and didn’t act like a superior asshole, who uses terms like progressives to describe the very regressive belief that government should do it all!
I await the blasts of flame, but my party is better when your party is better at communicating, cajoling, convincing and governing without the air of condecension, superiority and completely lack of touch with the pulse of the people that was John Kerry.
I’m not a bible-thumper, but believe, that perhaps, abortion may be wrong. I don’t agree that it should be outlawed, but think instead of what government can do to make abortion unnecessary, or at least rare.
I believe that government, in America, exists at the current time, across both sides of the aisles, to perpetuate itself and it’s hold on power at the detriment to my rights.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:42 pm
as a Republican in the political spectrum, obviously I am pleased with the election. more important is our country though. a house divided will never stand and we are a house divided. we have different cultures and thought processes that lead us to continually butt heads against one another and keep the status quo the status quo. I am an evangelical Christian, you know, the root cause of all evil on earth to most Democrats. As a group we have a different view of the world than most Democrats and obviously we believe we are right in that belief and we act on it. I am not holding my breath for all Democrats to suddenly “see the light” and embrace what they do not see. I would hope that Democrats and Republicans both would seek to emphasize what we agree on. Not all Republicans are greedy selfish violent morons. In fact, I can’t think of any that I know. But obviously on both extremes there is enough lunacy. if we as a nation would seek together a strong nation militarily, social justice (and by that I mean equal opportunity for all, NOT guaranteed results. a person must be reponsible for their decisions) for those who cannot defend or take care of themselves, and a willingness to do what is right regardless of whether of how popular it is in the world, we can be a nation of those who disagee, not one of those who hate each other. and I know others will immediately disagree with some of the things I have said, but let’s make starting points, not dwell on endings.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:04 pm
Raven…Well said!
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:07 pm
I think that the roots of the Democrat defeat yesterday were laid down in waning days of the Gore v Bush debacle in 2001. The powers-that-be in the Party, themselves upset and angry about their loss, decided for tactical reasons to fan the flames of anger and frustration in the defeated Demmocrat troops and tried to deligitimize the Bush Presidency: “Selected, not Elected!” “pResident Dunce!” “Bush is a Cokehead/deserter/moron/etc.!” all of these raw, angry emotions were fanned by the DNC under Terry McAuliffe and sometimes actually instigated. The goal was to “whip up the troops” and more importantly keep those dimes and nickels flowing into party coffers.
Whipping up an angry mob might have keep the money flowing but it didn’t give direction or focus to the party beyond lynching President Bush. A party bereft of all ideas except, “GET BUSH!” is no political party at all. The anger lead to a brief flirtation with Dean but cooler heads prevailed and selected Kerry instead because he was deemed “electable” according to some arcane theory no one has ever been able to explain. But Kerry himself was bereft of ideas or values beyond winning the general election so you were left with nothing but your hatred to drive you on.
Elections aren’t won on hatred. Elections are won on ideas, on connecting to the common man, on getting the vote out, on doing the grungey work involved in selling your ideas to a largely disinterested public. You never came up with a better reason for electing Kerry other than he “isn’t Bush!” as if that alone would be enough. That he was a deeply flawed candidate from a minor NE state with few electoral votes to contribute to the cause didn’t register on your hate-addled brains.
If you had come to your senses and nominated someone like Gephardt I might be the one attending pity-parties tonight. Or perhaps not; if Dick had run his campaign on the “I’m not George Bush!” slogan GWB might have picked up the extra votes somewhere to make up for the loss of Missouri. It all comes down to having and executing a clear, positive, forward-looking message during the campaign and the Bush haters simply didn’t have one.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:08 pm
“40,000,000 babies are flushed away…”
“I get screeched at by women no one would even consider dating, much less impregnating…”
“…when I say I have no problem with many anti-war leders, I don’t. I went to a peace march in San Francisco of 300,000 people. It was organized by useful fools…”
“(Martin Sheen and the Dixie Chicks) were trying to make money by bashing our national security.”
“…acts like a superior asshole who uses terms like progressive to desscribe the regressive belief that government should do it all.”
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR FRIENDS ON THE RIGHT, ONE AND ALL, FOR YOUR INCISIVE ANALYSIS, THE EVIDENCE THAT YOU ARE “IN TOUCH” WITH WHAT IS GREAT ABOUT AMERICA AND YOUR CLEAR WILLINGNESS TO REFRAIN FROM AD HOMINEM, HYSTERICAL, CONSPIRATORIAL OR LUNATIC ARGUMENTS IN THE INTEREST OF BRINGING THE COUNTRY TOGETHER. I AWAIT YOUR FURTHER SUGGESTIONS, SO THAT I MAY HUMBLY SELF-DESTRUCT IN THE INTEREST OF POLTICAL HEGEMONY FOR THE NEW, IMPROVED FAITH-BASED PARADIGM OF FOX-TRUTH, ASHCROFT-JUSTICE AND THE NEW, IMPROVED IMPERIAL AMERICA’S WAY.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:14 pm
“My feeling is that the party has been hijacked by an almost radical left wing.”
I absolutely need to know what you’re on and get some myself!
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:15 pm
Yeah, Gephardt would have really done the trick. And anyone who thinks that Kerry was nominated because he was the prime exponent of “Bush-bashing” is, in a word, an ignoramus not worth taking seriously. (Okay, that was 5 words.)
The comments above from pro-Bush folks would be disappointing if they weren’t so typical and predictable.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:28 pm
A genuine thank you to the lone, kind voice of Dan J for reaching across the fence.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:29 pm
Well, it’s clear that COMMENT isn’t going to learn anything from all of this.
That’s find. If the dems don’t learn, they’ll continue to be obstructionist with their dwindling last strongholds in the house and senate, and it will be a Republican century.
COMMENT – your right wing buddies were trying to explain something to you about why you lost.
My reason is that once people start to come closer to reality, sometimes they leave the left. And the bunch here is pretty doctrinaire left – way too far left to ever win a national election in the US. But there are lots of Democrats who are not so far left, otherwise the party would be getting the same vote share as the Libertarians.
Have fun crying in your beer.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:33 pm
Orion:
I mostly agree, and would like to add the following:
Take a look at all the red states. This country is a sea of red, mostly. What Bush did was to connect with the public’s set of values. 11 propositions limiting marriage to mean between a man and a woman, all passed. Not just half of them….all of them. That isn’t a DNC value by a long shot. Perceived personal integrity also did in Kerry — He had, by his own admission, committed acts of treason and sedition, and given aid and comfort to our enemies in Viet Nam….not something even closely approved by the majority’s value set. I really don’t think there is any one item, or event, that one could point at and say “that is what cost Kerry the election”, but I think it was his moral values, and the values of the DNC, as reflected and adopted by the MSM, and the fact that they didn’t even come close to those who live in the red states. Bush was perceived as having those values, and Kerry was not.
….just my $0.02 worth.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:35 pm
TomC makes a point, and it would be really nice to hear Democrats respond.
Many Christians find the practice of abortion to be murder. Hence, they rule out Democrats immediately. They/I also see the numbers accumulating each year and regard it as slaughter in our midst. If we believe this, how can’t you be considered a party of sadistic ghouls?
The answer I perceive is that Christians are strange and something to be ridiculed (the ones who aren’t black). The last target-rich group in our insufferably anal retentive society.
If Democrats have no interest in this group, what national prospects do they have? However, making room in the party for those with moral objections could severely undercut Republicans.
That’s the goal, right?
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:38 pm
You’re absolutely right, John. There is nothing to be learned listening to nutcases such as yourself who, literally, hate the rest of us who see through your propaganda, your half-baked history and your tortured, consistently foolish “analysis”. Go back to lecturing people who aren’t capable of seeing you for the political basketcase that you are.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:40 pm
“$0.02 worth” ? An example of rampant inflation, if there ever was one.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:45 pm
“Many Christians find the practice of abortion to be murder. Hence, they rule out Democrats immediately.”
That’s funny since the number of abortions declined dramatically under Clinton and has escalated under Bush. But blind, self-righteous ideology always trumps pragmatism for fanatical, faith-based, true-believers.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:52 pm
So many lectures…
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:56 pm
Since you decided not to post a name, I’ll simply call you empty.
Well empty, anyone can engage in ill tempered non sequiturs.
Bush and Clinton did not outlaw abortion because they are prohibited from doing anything apart from marginal changes: court appointments, federal funding, partial birth ban, etc.
A total non answer empty, completely meaningless.
Oh, and that diddy about perceptions? “Fanatical, true believers, blind”
Maybe I shouldn’t feel so sorry for you.
Weep alone
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:03 pm
And be sure not to respond to the facts presented for your edification…
Because facts contradictory to “faith” are best ignored.
I’ve not been weeping, but some of you guys actually have me laughing.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:05 pm
I don’t know if a compliment from one of the bagful of hammers is acceptable, but a brilliant column, sir.
Just for a sort of synecdoche, I call your attention to the lamentable affair of the dead goose. Right. A billionaire mangles a bit of syntax (“Can I get me a huntin’ license around here?”), pots a Canada goose (if in fact it really was he who shot it), won’t carry it, and lets it be known that this is all the evidence we need to acknowledge him a true friend of sportsmen and gun owners, and above all, a good ol’ regular guy.
I’m not citing this to add to the endless list of Kerry’s demerits, but because it looks to me, a hammer, as so emblematic of the party. Don’t you think the real, redneck, union guys that were once the democrat base get a little tired of the cosmic condescension dumped on them by the professoriat, the billionaire backers, the trial lawyer silkies, the lecturing libbies, the slovenly Moores, that are so gracious as to permit them to be their rank-and-file? For god’s sake, would you vote for people whose pretenses to be ‘like’ you were so patently contemptuous of your intelligence and life experience?
I admit I’m a republican; joined to vote against Ronald Reagan in every election and primary he was ever in, and did it, too. I hang around with a bunch of your apostates. Hunt elk with them. They grew up populist Democrats. Huey Long types, really. The party slipped out from beneath them. One of them once said to me, “Do you have any idea what we have to believe these days to be good Democrats? Abortion. Gay marriage. Anti-any-war. Gun confiscation. Ruinous taxes for us divorced guys. Illegal immigration. Nafta. Required public schools that turn out whiny snots I can’t even hire. Affirmative action. Everybody a victim but us white guys. But most of all, you have to tug your forelock when our betters speak.”
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:06 pm
“So many lectures”
These folks are known as Sore Winners.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:11 pm
“(if in fact it was really he who shot it)”
Goose Bait Vulgarians for Truth Unite.
Thank God there are no conspiracy-mongers or ad-hominations on the Right, or their chances of electoral victory would be as lousy as the devlish Michael Moore-George Soros-dominated Democratic Party.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:11 pm
Mark wrote: it is our ideals which are being attacked and/or ignored. I can well share my red state compatriot’s concerns for the economy, fear of terror, and the dread of a body bag containing one’s child, but I do not understand this total reliance on faith, this wholesale fear, and this continuing attack on basic human rights.
Okay, I’m a moderate/conservative Democrat who ended up voting for Bush this time – a significant departure for someone who has been a registered party member for 30 years. Mark’s honest comment here is a good illustration of why I did so.
Mark, I just do not see that most Republicans whom I know *totally rely* on their faith in some mindless way. Some are not religious at all. Others are – as is Hillary Clinton – and feel that their deep beliefs should guide their actions. How is that different from those on the left who have convictions they act on?
I don’t feel *wholesale fear* after 9/11. However, as someone who did some business in the Middle East and who has followed both international relations and the tectonic shifts (economic, geopolitical, cultural, technical) that will dominate the world for 20 years or more, I believe we face very significant challenges that will last a generation or more. I want a candidate whom I believe has correctly understood that challenge and is willing to face up to it.
I too care about *basic human rights*. I care so much about them that I’m unwilling to use that phrase lightly. Of late (and for me that means the last 10+ years) it seems my party throws that label around in ways that trivialize the core things we must protect if we are to remain human and whole.
If a renewed Democratic party (or some substitute) is to arise successfully from this year’s ashes, its members *must* learn to see those with other beliefs clearly and without distortion. I appreciate that Mark did not use the “stupid redneck middle American ignorant etc etc” labels that have been flung at heartland voters for way too long. No party can really achieve and hold electoral power if it bases its attempted appeal on hateful labels and dehumanizing ridicule of those who don’t vote for it. Can the “BusHitler / Chimp” stupidity. Set aside assumptions about the Other and go learn who s/he really is. Then you will be able to see where you really share common goals and where you legitimately offer a distinct choice.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:24 pm
Empty,
I can see my efforts to find out more about “flexibility” are yielding fruit, rotten but there to see.
It took me less than one minute to find this with Google: nrlc.org (second article).
Of course Empty, for you to acknowledge a belief system would leave you just as vulnerable to charges of mental feebleness. But that’s of course what you have, a belief system that my point of view is absurd and co-opted by some mystical nonsense.
Well, that’s YOUR belief system, and I find the idea that I am the most important being in existence to be bunk. I find that notion to be the result of extraordinary narcissism. You would call it normal, I would call it deranged, but tolerable. Christianity is like that. Your system – spread nationwide – would not produce such an attitude. Read GULAG if you’re still confused.
There’s simply no excuse for posing as an intellectual, when my easily found citation refutes your much beloved belief system.
It goes in a pipe Empty, enjoy.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:29 pm
Marc writes: “Is there a reader out there who would like to write in reminding us of one memorable line to be extracted and preserved from amidst the logorrhea that overflowed his campaign?”
OK – here is the line that personified John Kerry’s campaign “I have a plan..”
Unfortunately, his plan was ultimately to tear down the President without putting forth a coherent, believable plan of his own.
If you don’t like that line, try “I would have done it better..”
With Kerry’s record (or lack thereof) in the Senate, why should anyone have believed that he was now suddenly a visionary with an answer for all the ills in America.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:29 pm
I really wonder about these Bushies who talk about the Democratic Party as though it isn’t alive, active and often doing quite well in “heartland” states. Get a clue before you lecture Democrats. The party that is attempting to divide America against itself is clearly Rove’s Republicans. If that wasn’t obvious to you in the Bush campaign, it’s because you are part of that particular problem. The last thing I want to hear is a lot of sanctimonious crap about how you have values and we don’t. Your “values” have put this country in some of the deepest doo-doo we’ve seen in years. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Liberals are going to be fighting even harder to save the country, even if it means saving some of your sorry asses in the process. And after we’ve won a few rounds and the country gets back on track – which will happen because the current course is untenable – you needn’t bother to say thank you. Silent skulking will be sufficient.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:30 pm
Hmmmm. Didn’t realize TomC was the earlier ranter about ugly pro-choice women, and baby flushers.
(I appreciate your later hands-across-the-sea gesture anyway, although now I’m wondering if I misread it.)
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:31 pm
Jim – you are correct. Any notion that you are the most important being in existence is bunk.
I’ve got no idea what those links are about. Nothing there…technical error, I presume.
Gotta go…
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:36 pm
Jim – figured out your links. Funny how the article by the anti-choicers actually confirms the facts I stated.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:37 pm
I’ll take that as a concession. I’m getting used to those.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:40 pm
Also, Jim, anyone who cites GULAG as a refutation of secular liberalism is delusional, if not downright twisted. Everything you write merely confirms my opinions as stated.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:42 pm
You can take it as anything you like…frankly, that’s the way your world works. “Jim believes what Jim believes and you are a fool for not agreeing with him.”
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:46 pm
rosedog, for the love of Buddha, can you ever abandon this mawkish “good guy” attitude and tone and let one rip out from the depth of your gastric apparatus?
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:49 pm
The exit polls and the MSM finally got it right when they said it all boiled down to one thing. It’s “VALUES” dummy. The ACLU suing right and left over religious issues and push the gay mariage agenda fired up the right more than anyone realized. Lost seats in the House and Senate are also a testiment to this fact. If the left can’t encompass any set of “moral values”, then they are desine to wind up like the dinosaurs – extinct. Let’s not forget that the gay marriage issue will come up again in Congress and people will be taking names and will voicing their disapproval at the ballot box at the next election.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:51 pm
I write as one who is disappointed at the state to which the Democratic party has fallen. It was never perfect, but it always seemed to have a vision – and it always had a sufficient number of leaders. And, even if you disagreed with it, it was always a part of keeping the discussion honest. It’s not dead, but it’s a ghost of its former self. For all our sakes, it needs a re-evaluation.
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:58 pm
I know amid all the jumping up and down it can be hard to think, but I’ve a question for those who are so proud of Republican values: Are any of you the least bit dismayed by this anti-gay posture? Does the elimination of gay marriage AND civil unions bother anyone?
Just wondering if we’re the same species.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:00 pm
Where is Ken????
He had mad predictions about how Generation Y was going to come out in droves. Well, 1 and 10 did.
If we gave them free I Pods and Nike shoes they would have voted!
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:04 pm
Kerry, the Democrats, and Postmodernism in Politics
This is the title of a post I made back in September about exactly this issue. To me, the Democratic Party is flawed because it is a built on a fractured base of disparate people who are only united in opposition to the Right. That is not a solid enough reason for it’s future survival as a viable party.
The Dems need to take a hard look at what they believe in the positive, not in the negative.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:06 pm
Does the elimination of gay marriage AND civil unions bother anyone?
I am a conservative republican. I am against gay marriage, but for civil unions or similar legalisms that provide appropriate legal protections for a committed couple.
I was unaware that civil unions were under attack. If they were in these referenda, it is a shame.
I understand those who are against civil unions. I simply disagree with them.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:10 pm
I should have commented… I do not see those initiatives as anti-gay. I see them as anti-gay-agenda, as not conferring the state-enforced status on gay couples that is available to heterosexual couples.
I am also against gay adoption (except in special cases) and lesbian child bearing.
These issues are intimately related.
For the political theorists, the gay marriage issue and its timing was not a Bush campaign action, it was a coincidence caused by the Mass. Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. However, the controversy was probably advantageous to Bush.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:30 pm
Marc: Truly awesome post. I applaud your willingness to learn from the election results rather than cry foul.
I am not a republican, although I agree with them on foreign policy and vote accordingly. Believe me, I *want* a real solid opposition party. If we had one, politics would be improved all around, but today’s Democrats ain’t it.
Therefore I have some suggestions about how to re-think the Democrats…
http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2004/11/dragging-democrats-back-from-precipice.html
unfortunately that requires you to fire your party leadership. I am not optimistic about the prospect of it actually happening.
Coming next… how to re-think the Republicans… now that we’ve won, we can start the in-fighting
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:31 pm
Regarding the Gay Marriage issue, the facts speak for themselves. Which is to say a resounding majority of Americans are against it.
You should not hysterically try to interpret this as an ‘assault on the queer nation’. More directly, it is about preserving the proper definition of the word ‘Marriage’.
In all honesty, I don’t really care what homosexuals do with regard to their relationships. I am neither angered by it or approve of it.
However, the deliberate attempt to modify the definition of the word “Marriage” is offensive.
Marriage has its roots from the animal courtship system. Primarily, Marriage is a social contract formed between two humans for the purpose of child rearing and mutual support. Obviously, not every marriage results in children, however at its base that is the biological crux of the situation.
Homosexuals, cannot be married. A primary focus of marriage is for the continuation of the species, the homosexual lifestyle doesn’t fit that category by definition.
Even though that it may have takens millions of years of genetic coupling for a homosexual to arrive in this place and time, the family tree ultimately will end here. The success of a homosexuals forebearers in propogating their lineage is all for naught. The tree of life will end here.
This is the reason many homosexuals instinctively desire to be “Married”. It offers them some — however facile — illusion that their lifestyle is not a biological abberation that will ultimately lead to a generational dead-end.
So, no, you can’t be married. Form a L.L.C., Civil Union, whatever. Just don’t try to continue to claim a stake in the word Marriage.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:40 pm
“So, no, you can’t be married. Form a L.L.C., Civil Union, whatever. Just don’t try to continue to claim a stake in the word Marriage.”
Wow! An anonymous bigot – how courageous! In any event its too late my friend. The cats out of the bag. It may be 100 years before gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, but make no mistake – it will be. A majority of Americans under the age of 30 support it, and this support cuts across party and ideological lines (in much the same way opposition to it among the not-so-young cuts across party and ideological lines.) Hell, even the school newspaper of evangelical Baylor University came out in support of gay marriage recently. The days of white, Christian, heterosexual male dominance are still numbered – a Bush supreme court or not. Your cretinism will go the way of the inquisition, slavery, and leisure suits.
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:57 pm
Brian Siano: “it could be that at least half of America really is dumber than a bagful of hammers”
Arghhh… only ones dumber than a bagful of hammers are those who refuse to learn even when they are bopped on the head.
Rich: “it sure as hell can’t move any further to the right”
Au contraire Rich, there is nobody further to the left, and that is the nature of American politics today.
ahem: “I would have voted for Lieberman”
Absolutely, from this Bush voter at least: Lieberman over Bush in a millisecond.
John Davies: “I’d like two good choices in an election.”
Me too.
rosedog: “I’m far too fearful about such issues as…checks and balances.”
Don’t worry rosedog, now that we conservatives have won, we will bitch and moan and exert pressure in all kinds of different directions. The Repubs are a motley collection to say the least, Goldwaterites next Buchananites next to followers of Pat Robertson. Plenty of internal checks and balances… I expect the Republican coalition to near-fracture as parts of it pull in various directions.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:00 pm
Rather than listening to Zell Miller, the Democrats demonized him as a traitor. He warned them about forgetting middle America in his book “A National Party No More.” As long as the Democrats want to appeal to special interests and left-wing interests, it will continue to lose the South, rural areas, and the moderates.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:06 pm
“40,000,000 babies are flushed away..”
Mr. Moore, I regret to inform you abortion decreased under Clinton, increased under Bush. ALso, I regret to inform you, the abortion rates in Sweden are far lower than the rates in Guatemala.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:08 pm
Woody, Zell demonized US as traitors.
How about a reality check every now and then ?
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:09 pm
“I cannot be more happy that the turncoat was defeated – this is the first election where I have actively participated in activism, and it was due to Kerry’s behavior in the anti-war movement.”
The antiwar movement’s alliance with the soldiers was actually very strong. In fact, the only way it could grow the way it did so rapidly was by conducting itself in a manner that the soldiers coming back from Vietnam could accept and want to become a part of.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814751474/qid=1099534174/sr=2-2/ref=pd_ka_b_2_2/002-1611471-9261638
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:10 pm
Also the “special interests” meme is just TOO funny coming out of the mouth of a Republican.
Give us a break…
The pro-GOP posts here today have been truly remarkable for their cluelessness.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:12 pm
“He warned them about forgetting middle America in his book “A National Party No More.” As long as the Democrats want to appeal to special interests and left-wing interests, it will continue to lose the South, rural areas, and the moderates.”
Dream on my friend. First of all, the notion that Kerry lost moderates is silly. He won moderates 55-45. Second, Democrats have been gradually losing the still-racist south since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Zell Miller is just a tired old racist Dixiecrat goon all teary eyed that slavery ain’t still legal. That the Democrats have been losing the less racist white blue collar midwest gradually since 1968 (the 1990s were an exception) is a testament to the fact that the Democrats had nothing different to offer them than the GOP on economic issues, so they vote their cultural values. That’s about to change. After Bush rewrites the tax code in favor of the uber rich in the next four years, and stacks the courts with conservatives judges, the GOP will have nothing more to give the Reagan Democrats. Watch them go in a landslide for the populist Democratic nominee in 08. Abortion will go back to the states, and gay marriage will remain a state’s rights issue, which means that populist Dems will start to sweep the midwest again, and a new Democratic majority will be born.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:14 pm
John Moore comes out “against lesbian child-rearing”.
How CONSERVATIVE of you…what’s your alternative. Having the state take children from their mothers ?
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:17 pm
Several fine, noteworthy comments in this thread:
1. “Someone above wrote about America being a dumb bagful of hammers. Methinks that it’s attitudes like this that that produced this election.”
2. “Cynicism gets you nowhere; it’s like sitting in a dirty diaper.”
3. “The worst of your party act embarassed to be Americans. Fix that and the rest will follow.”
4. “Those of us on the right would prefer a sane opposition. This year, the Democratic party showed considerable insanity.”
5. “Now the left is proudly — and without any irony — stating that we should’ve allowed Sadaam to stay in power and dealt with him on a more diplomatic level. Stability uber alles … When that is your central ideology, ‘We are not Republicans’, expect to get beat in every election.”
6. “On foreign policy, the Dems have to have a more active vision than: oppose whatever Bush does, and consult the UN and Europe ten times before acting.”
7. “Bush underwent a hell of a lot more scrutiny by a media biased against him than did Kerry by a media biased for him. Somehow the voters saw through some of that nonsense.”
8. “The Democrat party could not show me that it would secure my country. Rather, it threatened (and for me, it was a threat) to subvert our security to the UN or France or wherever.”
9. “A party bereft of all ideas except, ‘GET BUSH!’ is no political party at all.”
And then there were the inevitable Leftoid turkeys:
10. “Just wondering if we’re the same species.”
I wonder that too, but, believe it or not, we are! Deal with it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:21 pm
Thanks for the refried beans, Erich.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:22 pm
John Kluge: “To do that, however, would require throwing the gays, academia, and the Holywood left overboard. Is it really practical to do this?”
Hmm… pretty much the conclusion I reached. Maybe not overboard, but at least getting them to shut up and compromise. Practical? Probably not, the rest of the party are the silent moderate Democrats with no strong organization or rallying point of their own.
John Moore: “I would suggest you consider that perhaps lots of good people disagree, and not because they are idiots, and analyze whatever odd theory you have as to why the war was fought. Until you understand why Bush went into Iraq, again, you have a problem understanding American politics.”
YES, dammit. Exactly. That is a key point. (Hint: it’s not for oil.)
Raven: “My feeling is that the party has been hijacked by an almost radical left wing.”
Yep, that’s how I call it too. You can listen to them on Air America.
If some of you cannot see that, maybe it’s possible that you are a little too far to the left?
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:24 pm
“…the deliberate attempt to modify the definition of the word ‘Marriage’ is offensive.
Marriage has its roots from the animal courtship system.”
Ahhh! The Sanctity of it all…
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:34 pm
Robin (if you’re still out there and able to find this),
It is not a question of your (or Hilary Clinton’s, and/or your community’s) relying upon your faith, or my relying upon my liberal/progressive convictions. It is a question of both allowing us to do so under our own free choice. I don’t judge others as evil should they practice pro-life or pro-choice. Yet some cast the first stone. I don’t denigrate the experience of one’s evangelical “rebirth†or a particular path to glory, but neither do I have to have their tenets bind me.
As to your “significant changes†after 9/11, I still maintain a “wholesale fear†as one of them. I spent forty years, as Dylan might say, “hating the Russians†imagining at strange and random times of my youth and middle age, missile trails across the sky delivering megaton MIRVs to all our cities. At any second, total hell could have been unleashed. Despite this, there was not this constant refrain of an enemy at the gates and this current Orwellian use of fear.
I do realize that twenty-five suitcases can now take the place of twenty-five ICBMs, that instead of dealing with one Kremlin official, we now have multitudes of unknowns who we can’t and won’t deal with. In any case, the end result is the same, the destruction of our nation. So back to the point, why can’t we determine “true†objectives in the War on Terror? Why can’t we face our fears and meet them based on our history and our traditions? Why do we need to destroy what we are in some blind and reckless fashion?
As to “human rightsâ€, I also do not use the term lightly. My experiences in the fifties and sixties were like many others of my generation and I do not relish abandoning its one and perhaps only centerpiece. We have come so far and we have much farther to go, racial, women’s and now, most problematically for some, that of gays’. As you say “no party can really achieve and hold electoral power if it bases its attempted appeal on hateful labels.†I agree, adding “and restricting basic rights.†Unfortunately, it appears to me that we are now heading that way very quickly.
Back to my original post and Marc’s article, I am still perplexed. Participating in a new “reborn†party that extends its hand across our current great divide through common economic concern, strong national security, and secure public and/or private entitlements isn’t going to cut it, without maintaining those central precepts which brought us into existence. Yet is is the meaning and application of those precepts which divide us.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:35 pm
“I’ve learned a lot of lessons in my life. There will always be heartache and trauma — you can’t make it go away. But people of good and strong will can make a difference … One lesson is sad, and one is inspiring. Because we are Americans, we choose to be inspired. We choose to be inspired because we know that we can do better — because this is America, where everything is still possible. And in the heartache we feel today resides an eternal hope for the country we’re going to fight for and the country we’re going to build together.
You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away. This fight has just begun.”
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:37 pm
“”Now the left is proudly — and without any irony — stating that we should’ve allowed Sadaam to stay in power and dealt with him on a more diplomatic level.”
If it’s ok to do that with our good friend and ally of freedom and one man elections, Musharraf, why not Saddam?
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:43 pm
“Now the left is proudly — and without any irony — stating etc. etc.”
Maybe the left’s alleged irony deficit is because all of the irony is being used up on the other side.
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:44 pm
Abortion was decreasing. When President George W. Bush took office, the nationÕs abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4% decline during the 1990s. This was an average decrease of 1.7% per year, mostly during the latter part of the decade. (The data come from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher InstituteÕs studies.)
Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.
http://www.fullerseminary.net/sot/faculty/stassen/cp_content/homepage/homepage.htm
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:47 pm
Kluge writes:
“To do that, however, would require throwing the gays, academia, and the Holywood left overboard. Is it really practical to do this?”
Now ya see, I thought that universities were privatizing as fast as possible, trying to break professors’ unions, and rewarding business schools with fancy new buildings, bigger budgets,…
low and behold, in the right wing paranoid view of academia, it’s sociology that is getting all that money!!
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:48 pm
To Unknown who wrote, “Woody, Zell demonized US as traitors. …” and
To Green Democrat who wrote, “Dream on…. Zell Miller is just a tired old racist Dixiecrat goon all teary eyed that slavery ain’t still legal. …”
I’m not going to argue. I live in Georgia and know how people feel throughout the South, and neither one of you really understands or will admit the problem. Stay in denial and continue to lose.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, then the Democratic Party should be committed.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:13 pm
“I live in Georgia and know how people feel throughout the South, and neither one of you really understands or will admit the problem.”
Yes, so do I. White southern men are backwards medieival racist cretins, but fortunately white, blue collar midwesterners are much more reasonable when given the option of economic populism. The Democrats will become the majority party again without the south, and if you’re fortunately we’ll allow you still live off generosity of the blue state taxpayer.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:15 pm
The success of minimum-wage laws in Florida and Nevada – raising the state minimum wage to $6.15, $1 more than the federal – is evidence that grass-roots organizing at the state level may be growing in significance for those with progressive agendas.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:23 pm
woody and a few other goopers here are the best argument for blue state secession yet.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:26 pm
I can understand Gov’t helping out in time of need but should Gov’t provide everything? I don’t see where the Constitution states the Gov’t should supply health care for every American. I’m happy with my health care. If the Gov’t supplies my health care why should my employer continue to pay my policy premiums? My employer will tell me to get my health care from the Gov’t.
The problem is that Socialism is not a good economic model. The US outperforms Europe in every economic category. The great socialistic experiment in Europe has failed. They cannot support a 30 hour work week. Capitalism isn’t always fair but at least the majority sees the benefits.
As long as we continue to use the Gov’t as the means to provide everything, we will continue to lose elections.
The Constitution states the Federal Gov’t will “provide for a common defense.” It doesn’t say “promote” a common defense. It says “promote the general welfare.” It doesn’t say “provide” for the general welfare.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:31 pm
“I can understand Gov’t helping out in time of need but should Gov’t provide everything? I don’t see where the Constitution states the Gov’t should supply health care for every American. I’m happy with my health care. If the Gov’t supplies my health care why should my employer continue to pay my policy premiums? My employer will tell me to get my health care from the Gov’t.”
Great! I agree. We should immediately end all the subsidies and largesse the red states get from blue state taxpayers to keep their 19th century economies from total ruin. Without the innovation, intelligence, and prosperity of California and Washington and Massachusetts Alabama and South Carolina would be living off UN aid.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:38 pm
That’s right, and we shouldn’t subsidize the police forces’ increased budgets that will invariably be needed when the states stop subsidizing health care for the working and unemployed poor. We can just let the southern politicians deal with the riots and loss of investment in the south that would result from the decreased social stability…
While we’re at it, we could stop subsidizing nursing home payments for the elderly. Let their families pay the costs of taking care of them or put them out in the street!
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:41 pm
Interesting take by the much maligned Katrina Vandeheuvel:
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/18427/0726
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:41 pm
“I know how people feel throughout the South”
Yeah, how people – and of course, Woody’s referring to WHITE people – feel throughout the region that enslaved a race, fought a treasonous war against the United States and kept a brutally racist, exploititive caste system going for another hundred years is really my bellweather of sanity and not being in denial.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:43 pm
VOTE BY INCOME in Ohio
BUSH KERRY
Less Than $50,000 (48%) 42% 58%
$50,000 or More (52%) 58% 42%
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:44 pm
“That’s right, and we shouldn’t subsidize the police forces’ increased budgets that will invariably be needed when the states stop subsidizing health care for the working and unemployed poor. We can just let the southern politicians deal with the riots and loss of investment in the south that would result from the decreased social stability…”
My friends and I in the “cultural elite” aren’t the ones arguing that folks should have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. It seems to me though that if you genuinely believe in social darwinism as red staters claim to, they should apply those values to themselves. Without the wealth created in the prosperous, cutting edge blue states the socialist, welfare dependent red states would have nothing. I suspect the red staters would be surprisingly unfond of conservativism if they actually had to live under it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:50 pm
National returns
Bush Kerry
Under $15,000 (7%) 29% 71%
$15-30,000 (16%) 37% 63%
$30-50,000 (25%) 49% 50%
$50-75,000 (22%) 58% 41%
$75-100,000 (15%) 55% 45%
$100-150,000 (9%) 58% 42%
$150-200,000 (4%) 63% 37%
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:51 pm
“My friends and I in the “cultural elite” aren’t the ones arguing that folks should have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. It seems to me though that if you genuinely believe in social darwinism as red staters claim to, they should apply those values to themselves.”
It seems to me as though you’ve entirely misread my point. I’m agreeing with you for crying out loud.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:51 pm
As a Californian, I second what Green Democrat said about ending the flow of our tax dollars to the backward red states like Mississippi and Alabama. Those clowns who send the Gingrichites to Congress to rail against excessive taxation and the federal government have been ripping the reviled but far more productive Californians off for years. If they want to rub psychos like Zell Miller in our face, they need to start living on their own goddamn dime and not send their crackpot, right-wing apparatchiks to Washington to steal taxes from people who may be far more liberal but also create far more wealth.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:52 pm
You Republicans are the greatest bunch of sore winners I’ve ever seen. You won big yesterday — congratulations. Now can you please show a modicum of class?
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:52 pm
Except I don’t agree that people in the south are any dumber than those of us in the north. there’s no good empirical evidence of that.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:55 pm
You’re right Steve. The mountains of evidence are all anecdotal.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:55 pm
oh, the numbers above are for Ohio. The numbers nationally are almost the same
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:57 pm
Steve, those income numbers must be wrong because everyone knows that the Democrats are the party of the wealthy elites who look down their noses at average Americans.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:58 pm
Ditto for red state “values.” Massachusetts has the lowest rate of divorce in the country. The bible belt has the highest (so much for gay marriage destroying the institution.) Southern states have among the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, to say nothing about the fact that abortions have increased markedly since George W Bush took office. The most conservative states in the country are rife with the very things they claim to abhor. There is a word for this: hypocrisy.
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:59 pm
“It seems to me as though you’ve entirely misread my point. I’m agreeing with you for crying out loud.”
My apologies Steve.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:03 pm
Compare Florida with Ohio…
look pretty similar to me in terms of voting by income results…
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/FL/P/00/epolls.0.html
Even in the state of Alabama, the quintessential southern rural “backward state”, Kerry is way ahead of Bush in the below 15K group and hanging on pretty close, though losing in the 15-50K group by only a few points. Then he gets massacred by the over 50K group…78%-22%!!
Hold it, I thought poor southerners were dummies?
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:04 pm
No worries green, not trying to provoke you with these numbers, just a different take. one that our “liberal” media rarely share with us, or if they do it’s only in passing.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:39 pm
Blank emits:
The antiwar movement’s alliance with the soldiers was actually very strong. In fact, the only way it could grow the way it did so rapidly was by conducting itself in a manner that the soldiers coming back from Vietnam could accept and want to become a part of.
Yo! Wake up. I was there – as a soldier and as a participant in demonstrations. In the San Francisco 1971 (I think) demonstration VVAW had at most 20 soldiers, out of an overall attendance of 300,000. They were grumpy, too – they discouraged me from walking with them even though I am a Vietnam Veteran.
Your statement is beyond non-factual. It is pure fantasy.
The vast majority of soldiers returned and went back to their lives. They didn’t join the anti-war movement. Most soldiers did not return anti-war – a large percentage in a survey said they were proud of their service in Vietnam and would be willing to go back.
Also, the demographics were wrong. The anti-war movement was largely college kids, while the soldiers were mostly not college graduates (except for the officers). Every Vietnam Vet I know but one has scorn for the protesters, and in fact consider them traitors. I am less harsh than that, but I guarantee you that there was no closeness between the soldiers and the anti-war movement.
It’s a delightful fantasy that no doubt fits in some leftist narrative about the Vietnam Years. FANTASY. UTTER, TOTAL BS.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:51 pm
“I live in Georgia and know how people feel throughout the South, and neither one of you really understands or will admit the problem.”
You’re right. We just don’t understand how hard it is not to be able to accept that people of color shouldn’t be discriminated against, that women shouldn’t be treated as property, and that gays shouldn’t be treated as human beings.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:06 pm
“In the meantime, I shed no tears for the humiliation of this Democratic Party– only for those who suffer for having invested their hopes in it. . .”
Should have put 65 million dollars on red 18. We would have had better luck.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:10 pm
Marc, your expanded Weekly version is very, very good.
On another subject: all this anonymous posting becoming EXTREMELY tiresome.
If you’re not willing to own it, I personally see no reason read it.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:18 pm
Make that: “…IS becoming EXTREMELY tiresome.”
(Note to self: In future, proofread all rants and hectoring lectures.)
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:48 pm
What’s wrong with these numbers? The lower classes are most successfully duped–that group paying almost no taxes at all–by that part of the $75-100K crowd who’s resentful they don’t break into the big time at work because the Man is keeping them down. If not for these distortions, Bush would have had a steady 55-60% landslide. Great. You have all the failures. Welcome to ‘em.
Posted by: steve | November 3, 2004 07:55 PM
Steve, those income numbers must be wrong because everyone knows that the Democrats are the party of the wealthy elites who look down their noses at average Americans.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:49 pm
A very good piece Marc. The good news for the Democrats is that they’ve finally reached the point Republicans reached in 1964, when they had nothing more to lose. The bad news for the Democrats is that they’ve finally reached the point Republicans reached in 1964, when they had nothing more to lose.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:50 pm
Rosedog et al… Indeed you are right. In order to be in harmony with the second term, I will soon be cracking down hard on this comments section (really). When people are disciplined, stay on message, succint and polite it makes great reading. When it gets repetitive, anonymous and long-winded it’s a frigging bore.
I just drove in from Vegas and I’m wiped out. So no more from me tonite. But let’s try and keep the comments to the point.. this thread already has more than a half dozen links and is getting thousands of hits.. let’s keep it interesting for the newbies.
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:51 pm
Hey rosedog, we are using pseudonyms or handles. Are you in the book under “rosedog?” I agree it is grating to have a nameless interlocutor, but it hardly seems a question of ownership.
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:17 pm
“In the San Francisco 1971 (I think) demonstration VVAW had at most 20 soldiers, out of an overall attendance of 300,000.”
The rate of AWOL offenses increased as the war dragged on, ranging from a low of 38.3 per/1,000 in 1968 to 84.0 in 1973. For starters.
WW2 Vets were actively involved in support groups for these in-service GIs. 50 veterans alone, in just 1965, signed a public ad in the NYT protesting the war, yet Moore would have us believe the amazingly revisionist number of “25″ vets attending the 1971 SF protest.
GI Press Service, the “AP” of the GI movement’ put out 25-30 k press bundles, that over 300 GIs subscribed to.
Life Magazine (hardly a leftwing publication, run by Henry Luce I believe or some such Pro-capital publisher), May 23, 1969 published an article stating, “The gi movement against the war was taking forms that pose an acute dilemma…for the military establishment” ..
Prowar NYTimes columnist James Reston reported, “President Nixon has worried about the revolt of the voters against the war…but now also has to consider the possibility of a revolt of the men if he risks their lives in a war he has decided to bring to a close”.
By 1969, 1,365 GIs, with rank and station of each signer, ran a full page ad in the NYT opposing the US war in Vietnam. This occurred after the moratorium march.
Sgt. James Ruh wrote, “It has been argued by people such as Vice President Agnew that the peace demos are demoralizing..to the troops..I returned from Vietnam on Oct. 15 and found nothing to be further from the truth…In my own company…the Moratorium had wide support”…
GI-Antiwar Coffehouses were widespread throughout the country…despite all the efforts the government put into disrupting such peaceful activities of public GI dissent.
“Most soldiers did not return anti-war – a large percentage in a survey said they were proud of their service in Vietnam and would be willing to go back.”
Possibly, but not relevant. Many many protested despite the pressure put on them not to do so by the military and the government. So many so that the government had to invent all kinds of myths about the antiwar activists being anti-soldier to shift focus away from a debate on the causes of the US involvement in the war. You also forget that most soldiers reported in surveys at the time that they were encountered friendly receptions upon their return to the US, contrary to rightwing mythmakers.
In 1971 Harris Associates, for a US senate study, found that 75 & of Vietnam era vets disagreed with the statement “Those people at home who opposed the Vietnam War often blame vets for our involvement there”. 99% polled described their reception by close friends and family as friendly, while 94% said their receptoin by people their own age was friendly. Only 3% described their reception as unfriendly”.
In 1979, at the behest of the leftwing UN controlled Veterans Administration, Harris found that antiwar activists had warmer feelings toward Vietnam Vets than congressional leaders or even those who demonstrated against the war.
Guess where the image of the soldier victimized by antiwar activists came from? From rightwing politicians like Spiro Agnew. Guess who would help promote the myth actively throughout the 70′s and 80′s? You guessed, it, the “liberal” hollywood filmakers!!
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:20 pm
” But let’s try and keep the comments to the point.. ”
My apologies for posting the irrelevant numbers on voting results by income.
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:22 pm
Great. You have all the failures. Welcome to ‘em.
–huh? how many of the unemployed or those who have taken big paycuts in the last two years have done so as a result of being ‘failures’? Do try to be serious…
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:32 pm
stev.. u are a hopless serial poster/commenter who posts and comments on every possible occasion and then some even when the conversation has nothing to do with you. I hadnt even read ur number postings. Go to sleep, man.
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:38 pm
To anonymous…
I’m answering because you addressed me directly.
Yes, I realize many of us are using pseudonyms or cyber handles. But using a name—any name— creates a persona whom one may address. Anonymous posting does not. It’s as if someone is forever shouting at you then ducking behind a wall.
By the way, as you probably know, if you’ve checked, most of our pseudonyms either link to a live e-mail addresses (as mine does) or websites.
In any case, please either fully join the party or don’t.
Celeste Fremon AKA rosedog
November 3rd, 2004 at 10:39 pm
Soldier victimized by anti-war activists? I guess you like strawmen. There were some soldiers who were spit on (a friend of mine, who never went to ‘Nam, was spit on in the SF airport just becauses he was in uniform). I was never harrassed.
Look at the numbers in all the crap above. There were over 2,500,000 Vietnam Vets and the biggest number there is just over 1000.
As for my “revisionist” number – I was there, you were not. So apparently you think I’m a liar. Screw you – I report it as I saw it. I remember the group clearly – a bunch of long haired men in fatigues, marching in a group, or more accurately walking in a group, because they weren’t in step. I was a long haired person in nerd dress – shirt and slacks.
You have failed to prove that the anti-war movement was close to soldiers.
Again.
You also appear to have a numeracy problem, when you think the tiny numbers you provide are significant against a group numbering over 2,500,000.
But I’m sure you have some odd reason to stick to your myth. It probably is required for some narrative that is important to you. So go ahead and believe your myth.
Just don’t expect others to believe it – especially those of us who were there when you were probably not yet even born.
It is your sort of attitude that will hold back the left. Clinging to myths is just an indicator of an inability to adapt to reality as opposed to more comfortable fantasy.
Just for fun, I’ll tell you a bit more about that protest. It ended up at the Polo Grounds. Everyone sat on the grass in front of a raised stage. At first, the soft anti-war folks (SMCC or whatever) started speaking. Then the hard groups – SDS, Maoists, La Raza, Communists – don’t know exactly which and all were there – told the people on stage that they were going to take over, by force if necessary. Since the organizers were true pacifists, they just gave up. Then the hard left, showing the lack of understanding of their audience like we see in the comments section here, started harranging us. At some point, the La Raza guy took over, told us how worthless we were and various other insults, and then switched to Spanish and continued to yell at us.
300,000 people got up and walked out. Anti-war rallies were supposed to be fun. This one stopped being fun. So the crowd left.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:02 pm
Unknown wrote, “Yeah, how people – and of course, Woody’s referring to WHITE people – feel throughout the region that enslaved a race, fought a treasonous war against the United States….”
No one on this board really knows me or how I was raised, so comments like the above are without basis and are false.
Listen, it’s late but I’ll share very briefly my experience at the polls. I’ll skip the harrassment directed against whites in the voting line and jump to what happened later, which was more positive.
After I voted, I went to the gas station down the street and started talking with a black man who had been in line with me. We both grew up in Alabama at the same time–during the civil rights struggles. We initially talked about the presidential vote. He was for Kerry (wanted free health care) and I was for Bush (trusted him more with war on terror.) I joked with this man some and told him that when I saw about 300 blacks and 10 whites in line, that I figured that the Democrats had done a pretty good job of getting out the vote and that Bush would lose. The church buses were busy that day.
As we continued to talk, he told me that he had been full of hate his whole life for whites–and that would equally apply to any white person on this board. That took me back, as I could tell that attitude existed with many in line–but, few would admit it. As with Unknown, it didn’t matter that this man would initially judge me without knowing me or my beliefs. All white people, especially southern white males, must be the same.
I asked him where he grew up. (We do that down here). Because I knew about the tiny Alabama town he was from, that created a link between us that led to a lengthy and open coversation about everything from SEC football to Bull Conner and George Wallace. That continued with frank discussions about discrimination that existed and the lack of opportunities for blacks during the late fifties and early sixties. We discussed the different race attitudes that were held and how they could exist. The vast majority in the Birmingham area were good people–both races. However, there was the bad element in the Klan and many of the good people were afraid to say much.
Then something changed that. He brought up the church bombing that killed the three girls. Unknown would probably think that I celebrated that, but the city was outraged–including the whites. That started a period of change and attitudes that led to the citizens thowing Bull Conner and his fellow commissioners out of office and began a period of awareness and steps to make things better. (As an aside, I once knew the father of one of the girls, and a friend of mine was the one that forced Wallace to step from the “school-house” door.)
I know what he went through and I felt bad for him. I told him so, and I think I understand because of some things I have been through. He also understood me better and appreciated my openess about attitudes during segregation and how they could exist–but, especially how they could change.
It’s good that we had a chance to talk. I think it helped him with his hate and gave me even more insight into our race issues. We walked away friends and there is a chance that I’ll see him again. I bet that few of you ever try this.
As long as people want to stir up division and hate and call each other names, there never will be peace in the area of race relations. Only honest talking, without the feel-good psycho-babble mediators, will lead to healing. If the Democrats want harmony between the races, then they should quit stirring up the hate. Likewise, people on this board should quit stereotyping white people from the south.
I believe that it is highly likely that I interact on a daily basis with more southern blacks and whites than anyone on this board. I think I am qualified to talk about the attitudes that they hold. And, if you ask any of my black neighbors or want to talk to that man I met, let me know and they will tell you that I am a fair, open, and understanding person.
While we may have a few cultural differences, we all worry about paying the bills, cutting the grass, taking the kids to school, and worrying about whether our team will win this weekend. I think that it’s many others on this board who need help with their views and attitudes–not someone who lives and interacts with all races daily.
I’m an accountant, not a writer, so this may not have the flair that you like. But, it is written by someone with a lot of personal experience and from the heart.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:18 pm
Woody.. it’s a good anecdote u post. But, really, how could you suppose to know or surmise how anybody in this anonynous world lives, who they know, who their friends and experiences are. Those can only be dangerous assumptions.
You encounter with the black man was revealing for both of you. But Woody, in Modern America, what u describe is hardly a rare occurrence.
I also think it’s completely unfounded to say Democrats stir up racial hatred. Democrats certainly pander on race. As do Republicans.. please note Kevin Phillips’ discussions of how he helped invent Nixon’s race-based Southern Strategy, or how the Bush campaign spread the now infamous rumour in South Carolina in 2000 that mcCain had fathered a black child.
I think it’s great for people to have political debates over their real (or imagined differences). I also think it is perfectly legitimate to believe that one or another party has mistaken or errant positions.
BUT… I think it is absolutely absurd to believe or posit that the people in one party or another are …… fill in the blank….. because they are members of the party. Take my word for it, there are plenty of fools, fanatics, and evil-doers in ALL parties.
On the specific question of race…. here ARE racists in America, as in every country (France brims with them). And plenty of racists prefer the Republican Party, That doesnt make the party racist. It’s just a fact. But to somehow suggest that the Democratic Party — which fought for and wonf passage of the Civil Rights Act– is more racist than the GOP– which opposed the Act, defies all logic and history.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:29 pm
Hard teaching of the election: Whereas the Right/Center coalition can assemble a majority with only a minority of the centrist vote, the Center/Left coalition can attract every left vote that’s out there and a majority of the center and still wind up in the minority. As the Democratic Party is now the Cause That Dare Not Articulate Its Agenda, the only hope is for the right to drive the center out of its coalition.
November 3rd, 2004 at 11:46 pm
There’s another question that needs to be asked about this election. I realize that the conventional wisdom has been that it was “the most important election of our lifetimes” and I realize the newly emerging conventional wisdom is that it was won and lost over “values,” but let’s look at the facts.
First of all, the question of gay marriage is likely to remain an issue decided by states for a number of decades from now. It just so happened that last year the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in that state, and that a number of propositions banning gay marriage were on the ballot in crucial swing states. It is unlikely that many, if any, of these bans will be overturned for years, which is to say the issue is unlikely to be revisited in these states anytime soon. The GOP can only play this card once per state, and by my count its pretty well running out of swing states to play it in.
On the abortion issue, if Bush packs the Supreme Court with Scalias and Thomases (as we all predict he will), and the Bush court overturns Roe V Wade, it will be a terrible thing for poor women in red states, and particularly poor women of color, but it may well be the greatest thing to happen to the Democratic Party politically since the great depression. Abortion (like gay marriage) will be sent back to the states and pro-life, economic populist Democrats will I suspect begin running and winning all over the midwest, the southern border states, and the southwest. Reagan Democrats will finally come home en masse. The GOP could be sunk for a generation.
November 4th, 2004 at 12:10 am
Documentation of Systematic dismantling of public information on gov sites–and it didn’t start with Sept 11. It started immediately in early 2001. Some of it seemed to happen over night, others more recently, such as ERIC/EECE.
Examples:
gone: Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. After 36 years of service to the education community, ERIC/EECE is now closed.
gone: National Parenting Information Network. NPIN.org
missing: (thousands? hundreds of thousands?) research articles, reports and documents on topics like: effects of family violence on children, child abuse, effective prevention of HIV/AIDS, health and welfare of nontraditional populations/groups and much much more — removed, missing, obscured, delayed, distorted or impossible to locate at gov websites such as department of education, HHS, CDC, etc. Example: Articles by people like Dr. Murray Straus who have researched and documented the detrimental effects of spanking, capital punishment and other forms of family violence on children.
Missing: Key information on unhealthy realities of violence against women in ‘Healthy marriage’ proposal
http://www.ncrw.org/misinfo/misinfo_05.htm
This was research and information that ‘we the people’ paid for.
OMBWatch, National Council for Research on Women, and American Library Association are among those trying to challenge and document this phenomenon.
Administration Removes Web Information on Women’s Issues
The current administration is removing information pertaining to women’s issues from government websites, according to a new report by the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). The report, “Missing: Information About Women’s Lives†cites a number of examples from the Department of Labor (DOL), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and other agencies as it catalogs how the Bush administration is removing or distorting information. http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2151
While acknowledging the need on the part of government to consider potential security risks when making public information available for access, it is the conclusion of the [ALA] Task Force that recent federal government actions limiting access promote a climate of secrecy tending to upset the delicate balance between the public’s need to access government information and perceived national security concerns. This is particularly true of published information that the government has recalled or removed from public access, such as the USGS CD-ROM, “Source-Area Characteristics of Large Public Surface-Water Supplies in the Conterminous United States,” reports pulled from the Department of Energy’s Web site subsequent to 9/11, and the removal of risk management plans from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site.
from: Restrictions on Access to Government Information (RAGI) Report by the American Library Association Committee on Legislation & American Library Association Government Documents Round Table Task Force on Restrictions on Access to Government Information issued by the American Library Association June 9, 2003
http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/ogr/ragifinal.pdf
page 14 of the report lists 20 specific gov agencies/websites where information had been removed as of the pub date. True some of it is security related such as DOD, but the Department of Education? The IRS?
ALA’s 11 Key Principles on Government Information (expanded info at site)
1. Access to government information is a public right that must not be restricted by administrative barriers, geography, ability to pay, or format.
2. The government has a responsibility to collect, maintain, and disseminate information to the public.
3. Government information regardless of form or format should be disseminated in a manner that promotes its usefulness to the public.
4. Depository library programs must be preserved to provide equitable, no-fee access to government information for the public.
5. The cost of collecting, collating, storing, disseminating, and providing for permanent public access to government information should be supported by appropriation of public funds.
6. The role of private publishers should complement government responsibilities in the collection, storage, and dissemination of public information. Private sector involvement does not relieve the government of its information responsibilities.
7. Government information policy must ensure the integrity of public information.
8. It is essential to safeguard the right of the government information user to privacy and confidentiality.
9. Government has an obligation to preserve public information from all eras of the country’s history, regardless of form or format.
10. Government has a responsibility to provide a comprehensive cumulative catalog of government information regardless of form or format.
11. Copyright or copyright-like restrictions should not be applied to government information.
http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/governmentinfo/keyprins.htm
But hey, what’s to be concerned about? They’re not fascist or fascist-lite or fascist-anything. They just want what’s best for everybody.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:22 am
“I will soon be cracking down hard on this comments section (really).”
As if you had never blithely eliminated short jocular posts you disliked…
“When it gets repetitive, anonymous and long-winded it’s a frigging bore.”
Except for the “anonymity”, that’s pretty much the standard contribution from the horde of sycophants that monopolize this blog.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:42 am
Marc,
Tarring Republicans with opposition to the civil rights act is absurd. I can tar the Democrat party the same way: the Southern racist politicians at the time were ALL Democrats. So the Democrats had far more racists than the republicans. Therefore, by your logic, the Democrats are the racist party. Furthermore, a glance at history might help:
Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96. Republicans supported it in higher proportions than Democrats.
So this Democrats supported, GOP opposed is a bunch of nonsense.
Have you forgotten that Robert Byrd was a member of the KKK? He wasn’t a republican, last I checked. Other Democrat southern senators were racist, before and after the act.
However, the Democrat party is the racist party today. It supports government discrimination based on skin color: so-called Affirmative Action. It used to be overtly racist, but under pressure has become more covert.
I remember when college acceptance time came to my daughter’s school. When the blacks and hispanics (including one pure-bblood Korean with a hispanic name – chose just for this reason) were chosen for the best colleges, even though their academic qualifications were way below that of whites that were bypassed, the result was instant racists. The kids, who had been together with no regard for race or ethnicity, suddenly found themmselves split into the privileged and non-privileged groups, and privileged was black and hispanic (or hispanic surnames).
That is racist. I also led to real racism on the part of some of the students harmed by it. And it is Democrats who are in favor of these policies (and even worse, the nation destroying concept of multiculturalism).
As to racist individuals, I have no idea which party they prefer. There is no reason to pick one over the other, except for beneficiaries of racial preference policies who happen to be racist themselves (mostly blacks). They will be Democrats.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:44 am
Marc,
I am going to have to guess that your follow-up to “The Democrats Have Met The Enemy” is going to have to be “There is none so blind,” if the atitudes expressed in the majority of these comments are what most Democrats are thinking.
They just will not let go of the fact that the major Democratic party theme this time was “Get rid of Bush”,or worse.
I was thinking of re-listing all the inane insults these folks have thrown out,but it was almost like listening to second-graders.
Until the Dems/left finally realize that first, they do not have by political leanings an automatic “moral correctness” any more than the rest of us,and second, that those that disagree with them are NOT wrong,just because they disagree,you folks won’t be able to make the Democratic Party a viable party again any time soon.
As it stands,and the comments here have pretty well shown it,no one in your party wants to take a look at themselves,they would rather blame someone else.
Maybe you should have used the entire Pogo quote,although on the whole your article was pretty clear.
Maybe they just don’t want to see…
November 4th, 2004 at 6:20 am
I have read the comments from the left and right above. I’m excited to see this much display of childish paranoid thinking, lashing out at each other using inane arguments and castigating each other. “My dad can beat your dad” and other stupidities. As a mental health professional that’s more business for me.
The reality is that for every leftist democrat espousing one idea you can find a liberal republican saying the same thing. For every rightish republican expousing an idea you can find a conservative democrat saying the same thing.
Folks, we damn sure better find a way to overcome our differences and begin working together to solve some very real problems or we are sure to become a “has been” country.
The left needs to give up the idea that conservative republicans are racist, fundamentalist gay bashers. The right needs to give up the idea that the liberal democrats are commie sympathizers out to expand government to the point where we all share the wealth and no one goes hungry. That kind of thinking is not productive.
Good people on the left whimper that they are freightened of the future, good people on the right self-rightously crow about the trashing of the left and the increase in republican representation in congress. Both are totally wrong. Both are locked into a mindset that will eventually destroy us.
The fact is that (with the exception of a few radicals on both sides) the vast majority of America has differing ideas about how to get where we all want to go. We all want a peaceful world, we all want killing and fascistic expansion to stop. We all want to see people pulling together to solve problems.
OK, maybe I’m wrong, maybe there are quite more than a few radicals, maybe there are even a whole damn bunch of them. So what? There are more of us.
At the end of each presidential election, the losing side turns on itself and devours its young, each side points to this or that as why their side didn’t prevail. The Republicans did it in 76, 92 and 96. The Democrats did it in 68, 72, 80, 84 and 88.
How about instead of trying to figure out how “our side” lost, or “their side” won, we instead put the recriminations and name calling aside and try to figure out truly what this country needs to do.
I won’t hold my breath though.
While I’m delighted that Bush won, I also know that his administration has made some big-time errors and has to make every effort to correct them. While I’m glad that Kerry lost, there were some good ideas on his side that need a careful vetting and looking at as possible solutions.
We have a very, very narrow window in which to do this. It’s time we got busy and started working together and GROW UP!
November 4th, 2004 at 8:20 am
Marc Cooper wrote: “But to somehow suggest that the Democratic Party — which fought for and won passage of the Civil Rights Act– is more racist than the GOP– which opposed the Act, defies all logic and history.”
Marc, I don’t have but a moment so here’s a quick response. I grew up around George Wallace and Bull Conner–both Democrats. I grew up in a South dominated by Southern Democrats who fought the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
In Birmingham, the Republicans were voted in and they changed the bad racial image of the city. Maybe some Democrats were different where you lived, but their colors were obvious where I lived.
By the way, when I pointed out to my fellow voter that Wallace and Conner were Democrats and that it was that party that dominated Southern politics and created the laws and obstacles that held him down, you could see a pause and sense of reality sweep across him. He had forgotten about that.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Democrats are racist today, and Republicans weren’t racist then or now. (By the way, the term “racist” is being misused in all these posts. Maybe prejudiced, etc. might be better.) However, I remember the NAACP ads for Gore showing a black man being dragged behind a truck and blaming Bush for it. More recently, Kerry said that two million black voters were disinfranchised by the Republicans–which was completely false.
Today, the Democrats stir dissension far more than the Republicans. It suits their needs to pit one group against the next. That goes to all groups. Just create envy or distrust and you’ve got them.
To my original point and to keep this on track, the tactics of the Democrats will not get them electoral votes in the South.
Also, I find it incredible that race issues seem to be so key to some people when the war on terror, the economy, taxes, etc. are what were listed at the top. Why do some people have to define every issue by race?
Gotta go. Thanks for your response.
November 4th, 2004 at 8:26 am
What better time is there to evaluate the lessons of the election (who won, why, what does it mean) than the few days following said election? And isn’t this part of the “healing” process?
I, for one, have been reading all these posts over the past 24 hours and find much to think about and discuss. I think it is very useful and interesting. Sure there is annoying stuff, especially annoymous flame-ish posting, but the majority of what has been written in these 160+ posts is compelling.
Keep it going!
November 4th, 2004 at 8:49 am
Problem is, the radicals on the Republican side have taken power in DC. Unless and until you are willing to see the implications of that, all of your moralizing and conventional wisdom is just hot air. There is no “coming together” when you are under fire from the likes of Delay and Frist in Congress and the White House is pursuing disastrous foreign and domestic policies. Any good conservative should know how dangerous disarmament is when you face an aggressive enemy. If you, in effect, support what many of us recognize as an aggressive dangerous enemy in the Republican Pary, let the chips fall. You ask people to grow up. We have. Frankly, you’re the one who sounds childish. If the right had taken your advice in the sixties and quit fighting for power, quit organizing, quit trying to influence their own party so it had more backbone, the political map would be very different. They didn’t. It’s the job of serious liberals to change it back, not pass out hugs to people who are dragging the country down. When Limbaugh isn’t an influential broadcaster, when Karl Rove is no longer the guru of conservative poltical strategy, when Ralph Reed retires, etc. etc., liberals can head for their armchairs and make nice with conservatives. That day is very far in the future. But it will come. Had Kerry won I’d still not be willing to disarm, beause the right would simply be rallying their congressional troops and planniing a counter-attack. If you think this mindset is foolish, you are right. But it’s based on the terms of engagement that were initiated years ago by right-wing special interests determined to turn back the gains made by liberalism. They fought first against African-American civil rights, then against women’s rights, now against gay rights. They have consistently attempted to build up the power of militarists and assisted some of the worst actors on the world stage, including Saddam and the radical Islamic fundamentalists. They deliberately wooed the most regressive elements of the Democratic Party when it supported civil rights and questioned misadventures abroad. They have made tenets of religious fundamentalism a political issue. Much of what we are reaping internationally in the post-Cold War era is the result of seeds they have recklessly sown. They brought the tactics of division into Congress. It’s the way the political world works now. To turn one’s back on the reality is to lose. We will not lose our country to the right-wing. It’s as simple as that.
November 4th, 2004 at 8:55 am
Woody, those racist “Democrats” you talk about all became Republicans in the wake of Democratic support for the civil rights movement. The Republican pary welcomed the racists and changed it’s “colors”. Why do you think black voters went dramatically from Republican to Democrat over the years, as the Democrats became more effective in promoting civil rights ? Your history is anecdotal, not analytical. And if you think black voters weren’t deliberately franchised in Florida in 2000, you simply are living in a cocoon.
November 4th, 2004 at 9:17 am
Woody – “fair, open and understanding” people supported the slave system, launched an attack on the United States of America to protect that system, kept a brutally enforced system of segregation in place, fought against the civil rights movement, and defected to the Republican Pary in droves when the Democrats finally decided enough was enough. Now those fair, open and understanding people are running the same game on gays – we don’t hate ‘em, just don’t want ‘em marrying our sons. Why don’t they keep to themselves. What they want ain’t Christian.
Oh, and we know how southern whites interact with black folk every day and understand them better than northern whites do. Always have, always will. Incidentally, that black man’s “hate” is a very rational bitterness and mistrust based on his experiences. Even your characterization of him just voting for Kerry because he wants “free health care” betrays your own attitudes to expanding health coverage – a critical issue for low-income people. Your response on this was patently lame.
Why the hell I’d even bother to respond to it is a whole other question. Guess I’m just sick of reading your nonsense and the glib attacks on liberals. Frankly, without liberals, I shudder to think what this country would look like – especially in your parts. I’m sick of “fair, understanding, open” people who have no sense of either the big picture or the roots of what’s right and what’s wrong beyond their self-righteous bible-thumping.
November 4th, 2004 at 9:35 am
The president says he’s “humbled” and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don’t get their way. If W. didn’t reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a “broad, nationwide victory”?
November 4th, 2004 at 9:50 am
I’m dead.
November 4th, 2004 at 10:36 am
John Moore writes:
“However, the Democrat party is the racist party today. It supports government discrimination based on skin color: so-called Affirmative Action”.
Affirmative Action is a corrective program. Its purpose is to provide a remedy to people who have been consistently wronged and kept in an inferior state because of their race, i.e. victims of racism (“a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” — webster.com)
November 4th, 2004 at 10:48 am
(a friend of mine, who never went to ‘Nam, was spit on in the SF airport just becauses he was in uniform).
–I find that curious. I use the Marc Cooper approved *Spitting Image* by Jerry Lembcke in my sociology class, yesterday as a matter of fact. I had a Marine in that class, 2 of them actually. They both stated that they found it offensive that people believe that Marines (or Army) would come back after fighting in Vietnam and *let* people spit on them, especially in public places. They asked, former Marines themselves [I think it's legitimate for Marines to ask this question, though I know it's not PC], how it was possible that they would not ever fight back [or as the Marine put it so eloquently–”whip out a can of whoop ass”}, get them arrested, restrain them, etc. How very odd indeed I say.
No I don’t believe much of what you say actually John. The facts documented in both military and government publications, not to mention mainstream corporate media o f the time indicate the opposite. The antiwar movement could only build its alliance with soldiers by pointing the finger at the political leaders as responsible for the policy of sending soldiers to die and get maimed in Vietnam, and to kill hundreds of thousands or millions of Vietnamese.
“There were over 2,500,000 Vietnam Vets and the biggest number there is just over 1000.”
I hardly cited all the numbers, plus which you cite participation in terms of numbers who signed public petitions. Many many more participated in local demos, local GI antiwar coffeehouses, writing letters to the editor, marching in demos…Indeed, if they hadn’t, the military and the Government wouldn’t have had to spend so much energy attacking them for doing so. Nor would they have been threatened by them if they were such a small number. Agnew wasn’t that dumb to concern himself with people who constituted a small number after all!
Let me put it like this. You’ll never hear an antiwar activist talking about soldiers as the primary cause of America’s foreign policy causing such damage world wide or to the fabric of American democracy. But you will often hear people like yourself condemning fellow soldiers as ‘traitors’ for exercising their democratic right to march in an anti-war protest. Go figure.
November 4th, 2004 at 10:49 am
Affirmative Action is a corrective program
–John doesn’t recognise the need to correct systematically keeping people out of labor markets for 300 years in a capitalist economy.
November 4th, 2004 at 10:59 am
Dictionary.com racism: “Discrimination or prejudice based on race”
Affirmative action *was* a corrective program, but it was still racist. My daughter, who has Native American blood, was amazed at the form she had to fill out from Stanford to prove she was qualified (she threw it away). This is racism using precise measurements of blood fractions the Nazis would be proud of. Racism is racism, no matter the intent, and Affirmative Action is racist.
The people were victims of racism is without a doubt. And perhaps affirmative action was a good idea 30 years ago. But today you are not likely to find an anti-black racist in a university anywhere in the country.
AA is an example of a program which, when its useful time has been exceeded, continues, with damaging effects on its “beneficiaries” and those who lose out to them. There is nothing in the statements of the left that indicate there will ever, ever be a time when AA would not be a preferred social engineering tool. When conservatives oppose AA, they are labeled racist.
Furthermore, most beneficiaries of AA in school admissions are middle class blacks who are at no disadvantage. If people were serious about dealing with disadvantage, they would replace AA with programs that measure disadvantage, not race. The assumption that anyone with a hispanic surname is disadvantaged is both insulting (to many hispanics) and incorrect.
Notice that this analysis looks at conditions now in order to recomment aid to certain groups, rather than looking at the past, and then hypothesizing the negative effects of that past into the present.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:14 am
“The assumption that anyone with a hispanic surname is disadvantaged is both insulting (to many hispanics) and incorrect.”
In other words, 300 years of exclusion from labor markets under capitalism…no big deal, not anything that requires measures that specifically address that group.
BTW, the way that Whites can be won over in the debate usually is with promises of full employment policies too, which the Dems once stood for. When that is on the agenda, most Whites have no issue with AA and it is less easy to use as a wedge issue.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:15 am
“middle-class blacks who are at no disadvantage”
total monstrous horseshit – ask any middle-class black (or read Dalton Conley’s “Black and In The Red”
November 4th, 2004 at 11:20 am
or just ask, who during a recession is most hurt by the ‘last hired, first fired’ phenomenon?
November 4th, 2004 at 11:40 am
Steve… Go back to your cave. Can’t you see that you are out of touch? Did you learn nothing from the other night?
The election is the backlash. Thomas Frank is the man of the hour. What’s The Matter With Kansas was on the money.
The reality is that minority groups in urban areas did not come out in mass to vote. Evangelicals did. The effort to organize these communities was immense this time around. I can attest to the efforts of that my wife and her co-workers made in Long Beach California. The numbers of how many people in North Long Beach actually voted is depressing. This is a city where 47% of the families are below the poverty line.
Minority communities will continue to be disenfranchised unless they vote. This reality actually reinforces the efforts of the DLC to turn the party rightward. What is the point of putting so much focus on affirmative action and identity politics if the very people who benefit from affirmative action cannot bring themselves to vote? Why should gay marriage be such a vital issue for democrats when gays are a blip of the population (in LB, the second largest gay population in the US, it is 6% of the population). Get some priorities.
It is time for the Democrats to make economic inequality the primary issue. Make it a moral issue. Build a movement first.
The left is not a movement like the conservatives. The left has no institutions and no real effort to build any. Instead the left is a loose knit group of self-righteous individuals trying to grab headlines. The ACLU, the Mayor of SF, they are all doing damage. For gods sake stop trumping out entertainers!
Religion has a historic place in American culture. Institutions on the left like the ACLU should really consider if it is worth it to try to remove the cross from the LA county seal. Is the backlash worth it? I think not. Economic issues are more important.
Without institutions and strategies, the opposition will go nowhere.
November 4th, 2004 at 12:29 pm
(Posted in wrong thread…apologies)
Two things….
Marc’s at it again….why oh why pieces about the Democrats being crocked (I think he’s right, to an extent) but no real discussion of what could replace the current mess. While he’s a journalist and its not his job, he’s also a citizen, and hardly “objective”. What is his sense, in a more specific way, about where the left *could* go?
And for all the rightist triumphalists, if every political movement gave up and went home when it got beaten, you’d all be Great Society liberals by now. People can change their minds…yes even 3 million Republican voters. And there’s four more years to change their minds, methinks.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:14 pm
“You won big yesterday — congratulations. Now can you please show a modicum of class?”
This is kind of cold blooded and I apologize in advance, but I am serious here.
I’m considering whether we ought to. My first thought is that we should all play nice together. However, the Left has been nothing but shrill and hate filled. They offered no alternative, no plan, nothing of substance other than “Defeat Bush”. Reading Lefty blogs I find that I am a stupid, racist, fascist, homophobic moron because I voted for Bush.
Maybe you can tell me why we should be nice.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
This may be the first time I’ve ever agreed with
Marc Cooper on anything. Usually on issues ranging
from Cuba to Mumia to Pacifica I disagree with him. But I think he is on the money here. I do
not think Nader is pathetic nor responsible for
the 2000 election. There were half a million
Democrats in Florida that voted for Bush then
and probably more now. I do think that if Kerry
had been strongly anti-war, willing to criticize
Israel, been strong instead of weak on abortion
and had offered a New Dealish economic program
he could have won. The GOP has more support
on the god, gays and guns front so we need to
not play on their terrain.
Alex Cockburn, whom I can’t stand personally,
has actually been quite good on Kerry, in contrast
to Noam Chomsky, Norm Solomon and Eric Alterman
who have made asses of themselves baiting Nader.
They just should ignored Nader instead of poisoning the progressive well with their constant, overwrought attacks.
Now I’ll predict the Great God Chomsky’s reaction.
He will say as he has done in every election since
1980 that there is no conservative support, that
only a small fraction voted and that Bush has no
mandate. It’s like his tiresome books, the last
thirty have all been the same book recycled !
Well, many more of the PEEPUL voted, Noam, than
voted last time, and guess what, Bush got the
largest vote ever for a President !
Where’s that hidden leftwing majority ????
How come no one has seen them since 1964 ?
Of course, the jokers on KPFA and Air America
were saying it was really a great opportunity
for us………….wonder why they were saying
a few days ago that Bush’s reelection was almost
like the Holocaust………Maybe I’m missing
something here……
Marc, I do have one confession here, in retrospect you may have been right about KPFA,
Bensky, et al. They run that station as a left
Stalinist fascist PC enclave. If as whites,
my wife and myself, have been victims of black
crime here in Oakland and saw the criminals
get off & we get punished by a PC Judge who
was formerly a board member of KPFA, whenever
we have tried to bring up this matter on KPFA
the censors Bensky et al immediately will cut
us off. Some “free speech” !
November 4th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
WAY up, “I mean an antiwar movement that shows we will do anything to stop what is happening in Iraq, that shows that we really care and are willing to make sacrifices.”
Peace AND genocide are better than fighting evil.
In Vietnam, the USA was fighting evil. Doing a LOUSY job, at something quite good. Trying to avoid a Great Leap Forward (genocide), or a Cultural Revolution (genocide) or a dispossession of Kulak peasant owners (Ukraine genocide before WWII).
When America followed the Kerry-led anti-War folk — the Killing Fields (genocide) came to SE Asia.
Clinton and the Dems LIED about genocide in Rwanda (Clinton ordered the word NOT be used).
Fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom is a good fight, a noble cause; and is expensive in US lives, Iraqi lives, and cash. But Iraqi lives and cash were going to be used/ lost in leaving Saddam in power, too.
Bush is doing a pretty good job. No Democrat would have beaten him this year.
see http://www.tomgrey.motime.com/1099581990#368736
(in reply to MJ Totten’s Why Kerry Lost — no, Bush WON)
November 4th, 2004 at 2:11 pm
One observation to some of the commenters above who believe that Kerry lost because he was not sufficiently anti-war…
Kerry lost because he was anti-liberation. Yeah, it was about values, but not the ones you think. It’s very simple. Presented with a fait accompli of one country which has been successfully liberated, and another well on its way (although with a lot of pain and suffering) he weaseled and hemmed and hawed and didn’t say “that was a GOOD THING ceven though it cost us”. Not a position anyone can respect. IF Kerry came out and said, “Okay people, we’re going to wrap up Iraq along the same lines as what the Bush is doing, and here is how we can turn Iran and Syria into free countries in four years without a war” – he would have won hands down. Whether or not it is actually possible (I don’t know but I suspect it isn’t).
November 4th, 2004 at 2:22 pm
Steve,
You remind me of academic Marxists. You cling to your theories in spite of contrary evidence. You have, in me, someone who both served in Vietnam and went to anti-war demonstrations. That you choose to ignore the facts I put out is your problem, not mine.
I’m not going to waste much time on someone who is so rigid, so out of touch with the world, and who calls me a liar when I present when I saw. You can’t handle it. Your type will do the Democrats no good, except perhaps a a grunt laborer. You are clinging to a philosophy that even the left has somewhat given up on in this new century.
The test of an ideology is what it does in the real world. I am a conservative, but I don’t believe every bit of the variations of the ideology that go around. For example, I think the a significant government presence in the health payments world is important – hardly a conservative position.
Your ideology, whatever it is formally called, is clearly one that is out to lunch. You are clearly out to lunch. There were a lot of people running around in the late ’60s and early ’70s spouting ever possible variant of leftist ideologies. Those people wrote books full of BS, and often full of lies, because most of the leftist ideologies encouraged lies if it was advantageous.
If I am to have dialogues with the left, I want to do it with people with whom dialogue is possible. It is not possible with you.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:41 pm
Moore, nobody in their right mind on the left would want to have a dialog with you. You are a pathetic dead-ender, lefto-over from the Vietnam era. Go have a debate with Bernardine Dohrn.
Your trashing of John Kerry was despicable. You are poison in the well of American politics. Your lectures are tiresome, your history is bunk, your moral sense is miniscule. Steve needs to get a grip and ignore you, as will I.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:46 pm
This pathetic dead ender’s party won in spades. My trashing of Kerry was the truth, but expect many on the left to fail to deal with truth when it is unpleasant. I would say that the left’s trashing of the Swift Boat veterans was disgusting. It was a rerun of 1971.
But then I never expect good behavior from the left. It is contrary to tradition. And people who don’t even have the cojones to use their name. Well, that speaks for itself.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:55 pm
“I do think that if Kerry
had been strongly anti-war, willing to criticize Israel, been strong instead of weak on abortion and had offered a New Dealish economic program he could have won. The GOP has more support on the god, gays and guns front so we need to not play on their terrain.”
–I regret to inform you that while you believe you are making an argument against Chomsky, you actually are agreeing with Chomsky, since Chomsky would certainly agree with what you’ve just said there.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:59 pm
“Steve… Go back to your cave. Can’t you see that you are out of touch? Did you learn nothing from the other night?
The election is the backlash. Thomas Frank is the man of the hour. What’s The Matter With Kansas was on the money. ”
Josh, I regret to inform you that everything I just said Thomas Frank would agree with. In fact, he would strongly support a program of full employment being advocated by the Dems in addition to AA. Your belief otherwise is based on a mistaken reading of Frank.
November 4th, 2004 at 3:02 pm
“The reality is that minority groups in urban areas did not come out in mass to vote. Evangelicals did.”
And Thomas Frank would tell you, of course, if you read him correctly, that the Dems offered the minorities less on the economic front than the Repubs offered on the spirtual front. Are you sure you’ve read Thomas Frank?
November 4th, 2004 at 3:10 pm
“If I am to have dialogues with the left, I want to do it with people with whom dialogue is possible. It is not possible with you.”
You mean you need to have a dialogue with people who think that veterans who march in antiwar protests are “traitors”.
Well, you’ve lost two quite patriotic Marines that are in my class who don’t agree with you on that and who think it’s rather silly that people believe that Marines or Army vets like your friend went Ghandi in large numbers returning from the war and turning the other cheek when “spat” at.
I can see why you run away from dealing with the two marines I cite disagreeing with you. It runs against your belief that all vets are like you. Not even close I’m afraid.
Tom Grey, I’d say there is one positive thing about Bush’s reelection. The mess in Iraq is now entirely on his watch for the next four years. Given the level of dissension on the Iraq issue within the Repub Party already, that doesn’t bode well for that Party in four years. Four more years indeed, Bring it On!!!
November 4th, 2004 at 3:22 pm
Steve… You are part of the backlash.
How do you think that 51% would react to you comparing the Red Sox come back to the insurgence in Iraq? Those that voted for Bush are not rooting against the troops like you. I can assure you of that. Your position fueled the backlash.
The backlash in What’s The Matter With Kansas has nothing to do with policy! It has to do with culture. If they voted on policy than the Dems might look more attractive.
People like you utterly repulse the red state Christians and people like YOU make it impossible for the Left to get focused.
November 4th, 2004 at 3:48 pm
*********************** THAT’S ENOUGH ********************** STOP THE ONE ON ONE BICKERING *********
****************************************** MOVE IT TO EMAIL *************************************
I count FIVE! posts in a row from you steve — one after another. For Chrissakes, GET A GRIP!
*******************************************************************************************************
Folks:
This thread will remain open only for non-personal statements, opinions, suggestions about policy and political strategy. Otherwise I will charge you by the word!
November 4th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
“The backlash in What’s The Matter With Kansas has nothing to do with policy! It has to do with culture. If they voted on policy than the Dems might look more attractive.”
I listened quite carefully to Thomas Frank on NPR yesterday, on Talk of the Nation. He explicitly disagreed with that claim.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:14 pm
There is a kind of despair, a glamorous pessimism, that liberals must at all costs avoid. The cartography of the electoral college may show a continent of red with some blue lesions at the extremities; but the popular vote in the election of 2004 was 51 percent for Bush and 48 for Kerry, and those are not the numbers of a political or philosophical rout. Fifty-one to forty-eight: Those are the numbers, rather, of a conspicuously unclear and unthrilling Democratic candidate, whose advantage in money did not offset a disadvantage in authenticity. But the important point is that, all the healing pieties of the morning after notwithstanding, this is a country divided against itself about many matters of first principle. The diversity of worldviews upon which we pride ourselves is haunting us. In such a welter of fundamental differences, the work of argument and organization becomes even more necessary. American liberalism did not die on November 2. It merely lost an election.
There is honor, moreover, in a certain kind of loss. In our distracted and accelerated and gamed society, with its religion of winning, we sometimes forget this. But the many millions of Americans who believe that the tax code should be more fair; and that one of the ends of government is to bother itself about its neediest and least fortunate citizens; and that the morality of the market is not all the morality that a society requires; and that the Bible is not the basis of a democratic political order, or of our political order; and that robust stem-cell research, and science more generally, is a primary social good; and that gay marriage is a question of equality and not the beginning of the end of civilization; and that American troops must not be sent to war ignorantly or dogmatically, or without the means to win; and that the good reputation of the United States in the world is one of its most powerful historical instruments–the many millions of Americans who believe these things are not wrong. They are merely not a majority. But they are a very large minority.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:32 pm
“here is how we can turn Iran and Syria into free countries in four years without a war”
Gosh Obsidian, I was trying to take your ideas seriously there for a minute, and then I hit that bump. And you wonder why we think that the “liberation” crowd is little more than a bunch of nuts who shouldn’t be handed the steering wheel.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:33 pm
Regarding the above post. I can see the IP addresses of those who post. Do NOT post in the name of the others or u will be blocked, I understand the above to be QUOTING Beinart, editor of The New Republic. Next time make that clear and do not “sign” someone else’s name.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:47 pm
Well, that explains why when I tried to email “Yassir Arafat” who posted above, I got no response. Or maybe he’s just too sick to check his AOL account…
November 4th, 2004 at 7:01 pm
I think Peter is close to right. Unless the trend to the right continues, the current election shows that the Democrat party is not too far from lots of Americans. I would point out that both sides candidates that were hard to sell. Bush with his well know occasional aphasia, and in the middle of a war that many people feel is doing badly, and John Kerry, a man with no visible empathy, a superior attitude he could not hide (“I don’t fall down”), and hated by the bulk of Veterans as his history became available.
I would also agree with *one* item out of the second paragraph: the morality of the market isn’t enough. I am a free market conservative, but thoughtful conservatives recognize that government has to temper the law-of-the-jungle nature of free markets – especially recently as the lack of morals has flowed into and through the business schools. I have been a business executive in a large company, and I have watched these forces first hand. Large companies have trouble showing much heart, except in their charity afccount.
Furthermore, large companies have to please their shareholders, who are largely school teachers and government employees whose retirement accounts invest in those companies for them. The latter is something to think about, by the way, as you bash corporations – they are owned by the little people – you, me, your kids teacher, whatever. Small businesses often are better – they don’t have stockholders, and the owner can do good things (if you have a good owner). A government mandate to “be good” is silly, of course. In general, regulations are needed to protect the owners, to some extent to protect the employees, and to deal with externalities.
Externalities are things like pollution – a cost a business creates but doesn’t pay. The market, which is very good at creating progress and lower prices, does nothing about externalities. Hence appropriate environmental regulations are required.
Where the Democrats often lose us is going too far on regulations, and then complaining about the job losses. There is a dynamic in the environment industry that leads to a ever increasing demands, and that is a serious problem.
November 4th, 2004 at 7:05 pm
“Small businesses often are better – they don’t have stockholders, and the owner can do good things (if you have a good owner).”
Au contaire:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Myth-smashing.html
Very very few people send their children to college with the hope they will work in a mom and pop shop, for obvious reasons. lower wages. lower benefits. less vacation time. longer hours. higher turnover.
November 4th, 2004 at 7:32 pm
“thoughtful conservatives” failed to “recogonize that government has to temper the law-of-the-jungle nature of free markets” until thoughtful liberals forced that issue into the public sphere. One more instance when we were called Communist and Un-American for simply trying to bring some sanity to bear. But we’re used to it. I wish I could think of something fundamental that conservatives did to make the country a better place. Can’t…
(Cue “Reagan won the Cold War” – my favorite bit of bunk historical analysis.)
November 4th, 2004 at 8:47 pm
What a nice, calm, thoughtful post re: Peter Beinart, John M.
And thank you to whoever posted the Peter Beinart quote, however oddly attributed.
November 4th, 2004 at 8:56 pm
reg: “Gosh Obsidian, I was trying to take your ideas seriously there for a minute, and then I hit that bump. And you wonder why we think that the “liberation” crowd is little more than a bunch of nuts who shouldn’t be handed the steering wheel.”
reg, that’s not an argument. Why am I crazy for thinking that those countries can be freed without a war? It worked in Eastern Europe, didn’t it? Both Iran and Syria have seen significant internal unrest over the past year. Their governments are intensely unpopular, and in the case of Iran, ridiculed more than feared. Anyone with half a brain would start funding dissidents, and radio broadcasts into those countries are also a no-brainer. Beyond that, I’m sure there’s a lot the CIA can think of… Will it result in a change of government? I don’t know, but it is certainly a low-risk, high-gain approach.
November 4th, 2004 at 9:46 pm
Why am I crazy for thinking that those countries can be freed without a war? It worked in Eastern Europe, didn’t it? Both Iran and Syria have seen significant internal unrest over the past year.
–Actually you’re not the only one who makes that reasonable argument. I’ve heard Chomsky and Tariq Ali both make that argument. Because they’re on the left however they get excoriated for making it. Since you’re on the right, you’re much less to get attacked for making such an argument.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:17 pm
Obsidian misses the point (again). I certainly believe that Iran has a good chance of moving toward democracy and I certainly hope that something better will develop in Syria over time. Because I’m a liberal, I the inevitable spread of democracy is a tenet of my faith. But I also recognize that the Berlin Wall didn’t fall because Ronald Reagan gave a speech.
It’s particularly important that Iran begin to shift toward liberalization because when America inevitably leaves Iraq after a few more years of bungled, bloody occupation a Shiite Iran-Iraq alliance will control the Persian Gulf. Of course the geniuses who planned the invasion of Iraq didn’t tell us about this most likely of outcomes and how inimical that could be to U.S. interests.
But all of that aside, to suggest that a presidential candidate make “I have a plan to bring democracy to Iran and Syria IN FOUR YEARS without war” one of his promises to American voters is more than just a little bit nutty. If you can’t see that, frankly it proves my point.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:47 pm
Obsidian
I doubt that Iran and Syria can be liberated without a war, but it remains a possibility, especially in Iran. I agree we should be funding dissidents (and also training and arming them), and psychological operations such as radio broadcasts should be made. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of faith in the CIA’s capabilities here, although they did well in Afghanistan, which was conquered by 750 Americans – almost all of whom were special operations troops working with CIA operatives, motivating, paying and providing air support for local factions – especially the Northern Alliance.
Iran represents a difficult problem. It has one and probably two nuclear weapons programs, and will have ICBM capability shortly. It already has missiles that can range all of Israel out to Cyprus, and I think they can now range much of Europe (don’t remember if that one is deployed yet). It is urgent that the nuclear programs be stopped. Iran with nukes would be very dangerous, and they could have them next year.
Iran has also threatened us – that if we attack their homeland, they will attack ours. They have the largest terrorist capability of any ccuntry on earth, and have cells in the US already, so we could expect to see bombings at a minimum. There might be some instances in the US of release of toxic agents. A single one of the Sarin shells that we captured in Iraq would provide enough agent to kill thousands, and as binary weapons, would be transportable and low risk until the two chemicals are combined. I suspect some of the bad guys in Iraq also have these. The rebels in Fallujah recently threatened to use chemical weapons
Iran also has a mostly young populace, who hate the current regime and want freedom. But of course the Ayatollahs have their own forces of repression, who are extremely brutal.
So whatever trick is tried, it has to work fast, or we (or the Israelis) are going to bomb Iranian nuclear and missile facilities. Such a bombing might work (plutonium production from Bushehr reactor is trivial to stop, but buried Uranium enrichment facilities are another matter). One we have bombed Iran, it is likely that many of the young will, our of Persian nationalism, turn against us. Personally, I suspect that one reason for the existencec of the Bushehr reactor is to be a target, which when attacked would allow the Ayatollahs to crack down on dissidents and switch peoples’ concerts to nationalistic.
I don’t think Syria has a chance of getting free. There is no active resistance movement (riots were by the Kurdish minority, I believe). The government is totalitarian. Syria almost certainly has WMDs (as does Iran) in the form of chemical and perhaps biological weapons, and the ability to saturate Israel with them. It controls Lebanon as a satellite country, and provides the Bekaa Valley for terrorist use – multiple groups – and allows Hezbollah to control southern Lebanon. Hezbollahj has abbout 10,000 rockets and missiles, and chemical warheads, and can hit northern Israel down to Haifa.
In spite of all this, Syria would be a pushover for our military to conquer, even more than Iraq was. Converting it to a democracy, as we see with Iraq, is a lot harder, as stakeholders in the current status quo would revolt. Once we reduce Fallujah, we might even have forces to do it.
One thing rarely mentioned in any confrontation of these terrorist nations is their potential for releasing a doomsday biological weapon. There are contagious agents which can be genetically modified (by adding an ILK-4 gene) to be extremely deadly and vaccine resistant. This level of danger is almost science-fiction like – a fasst kill – 24 hours or so. The technology was discovered by Australians who created mousepox with ILK-4 in an experiment. The result was devastating, even to vaccinated mice.
There are other ways of making very dangerous pathogens – for bacteria like Anthrax, adding antibiotic resistance; toxins can be grafted into other genomes – the Russians added the Ebola toxin to Smallpox about 10 years ago.
Eastern Europe was a very different situation. It had puppet governments dependent on the USSR. Poland was subverted by an interesting collaboration of the CIA and the Vatican, teamed up with rebels. When the USSR fell, the rest of eastern Europe was simply falling dominos. In Iran and Syria, there is no master power controlling them. Hence they are more capable of putting down internal dissent or revolution.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:51 pm
Preview, John, Preview. Sorry about the typos.
November 4th, 2004 at 11:56 pm
reg: “Because I’m a liberal, the inevitable spread of democracy is a tenet of my faith.”
There is absolutely nothing inevitable about it, it needs a *lot* of help. Democracy happening on its own is a freak accident.
reg: “to suggest that a presidential candidate make “I have a plan to bring democracy to Iran and Syria IN FOUR YEARS without war” one of his promises to American voters is more than just a little bit nutty”
Well, obviously nobody can reliably deliver on a promise like that, but it won’t be the first time a politician has made such a promise
Mind you, I’m not suggesting that it is particularly likely to be possible to do that, but it would be an appealing political platform. Instead we got Mr K saying that Iraqis are not ready for democracy and we should scale back our expectations.
November 5th, 2004 at 7:55 am
I don’t have the time or energy to respond to every response made to my post, but let me touch on two of them and then it’s back to work. (Just where do all you get your time?!)
–
Comment wrote; “Woody, those racist “Democrats” you talk about all became Republicans…. … And if you think black voters weren’t deliberately franchised (disinfranchised) in Florida in 2000, you simply are living in a cocoon.
Response: There’s some truth to your first statement, but I lived in Birmingham during the civil rights struggles and I saw first hand that it was the Republicans (Republican mayors Albert Boutwell and George Seibels)who took over and created a progressive city for Blacks. State Democrats didn’t change, but the National Democrats gained black support when it introduced the “Great Society” that ended all poverty forever.
As a footnote, I remember a meeting with a very old lady shortly after Nixon ran against McGovern. She was taught to pull the Democratic lever because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican–so, she did. However, parties and people can change–unless, apparently, they run the Democratic Party today.
Your second statement is totally false and without support. After all the hearings and studies, not one black, not one, was found to have been legally denied the right to vote. Kerry’s only support was that felons were not allowed to vote and that many of the felons were black. Maybe we should give them voter registration cards when we finger print them.
—
song to woody wrote: “Even your characterization of him just voting for Kerry because he wants “free health care” betrays your own attitudes to expanding health coverage – a critical issue for low-income people.”
Response: Those were his words and only reason he gave and upon which he elaborated with me. I didn’t express an opinion either way on health care except by omission, as I only expressed what I considered a different primary motivation for voting for Bush.
I’m surprised that people can find racial connections to everything. To me, that indicates that some people have misconceptions or personal issues that might go beyond reality. (Even Marc didn’t realize the true breakdown of the civil rights votes between Republicans and Democrats in the 1960s.) If you were not an adult living in the South before 1970, then you have no idea of the worst forms of discrimination. Some of you need to get help.
If you beg me, I’ll share an another recent and interesting conversation I had with a 78 year-old black man, who was born in West Virginia and worked most of his life in Atlanta. His life was full of hardships, but his attitudes and spirit let him move on without bitterness or hatred.
Now, to re-state what started this, I still think that the Democratic Party will continue to lose nationally as long as it ignores the positions of the majority of voters in the South–and, that doesn’t include one racial position. We put national defense and small government high on the list. We enjoy individual liberties and don’t like being put into groups.
That’s it, y’all.
November 5th, 2004 at 7:57 am
Dear “youpickone4me…”
Just noticed your comment from way earlier in the thread. “Mawkish good guy?” Evidently you’ve not been reading this site long enough or you’d have caught more than enough of my rants.
If I was temporarily projecting the above attitude, I think it’s because, in the past 24 hours, I’ve had the unnerving sensation that if I start screaming I won’t ever stop.
November 5th, 2004 at 8:01 am
I didn’t mean to imply that democracy in and of itself was an inevitability. But given the economic and cultural hegemony of the western democracies (our military hegemony is a fact, but greatly over-rated, as we are seeing in certain current events), there are myriad ways in which the forces that “inevitably” promote democracy are more potent than feudal notions of theocracy or outright thuggish and ultimately petty dictatorships. I’m sure we’d agree on much that relates to this. The one thing I think is absolutely crazy – and events are proving it – is glib assertions about either the efficacy or the ease of promoting “democracy” via military conquest – particularly in the Middle East. (Cue: wildly decontextualized references to Japan and Germany…) That is a route for fanatics who quite clearly have agendas that run far afield from the interests of American families who ultimately pay the price for foriegn adventures concocted by Beltwary elites. I have about as much regard for such folks, bred in think tanks, academia and factional politics, as I do for aged leftists ensconced in Italian villas.
November 5th, 2004 at 8:15 am
Woody, the felon list scam pulled by Harris in Florida has been documented. It swept rolls in predominantly black counties using the names on the list and no other verification. People with the same names as felons were scrubbed. You can deny this all you want, because it doesn’t fit with your narrative.
My point about the Republicans embracing the Dixiecrats doesn’t “have some truth”. It was the deliberate strategy of the Republican party in the wake of the civil rights movement and it is one reason I consider the GOP a soulless bunch of cowards. And there’s no evidence that will change. Dick Cheney’s primacy in this administration is a testament to that sorry fact. (I’ll leave the President out of it, but I also find him unimpressive on the character issue. Suffice to say that smug, poorly informed assertiveness isn’t evidence of character in my book.)
November 5th, 2004 at 8:53 am
“It’s particularly important that Iran begin to shift toward liberalization because when America inevitably leaves Iraq after a few more years of bungled, bloody occupation a Shiite Iran-Iraq alliance will control the Persian Gulf.”
I can think of no other better gift to the conservatives in Iran than the invasion of and current US occupation of Iraq.
November 5th, 2004 at 9:12 am
Woody – if people in the South put self-reliance and small government so damned high on their list, how come most of those states abscond with such a disproportionate amount of the tax dollars that are appropriated from folks in more economically productive regions like California ?
Not that southerners have a monopoly on hypocrisy. It’s just that the accents make you seem so damned earnest, when I sense that you’re merely a bunch of wily characters expert at telling a good story if it serves your interests.
And thanks for the tales of old black men. Sort of reminds me of that great Jerry Jeff Walker song, “Mr. Bojangles”. Always loved that one.
November 5th, 2004 at 9:18 am
Actually, I’m pretty sure Iraq WILL be a “model” Arab Islamic democracy. How good a model is a big guess — especially if they continue with proportional representation (national parties that will become ethnic/ tribal groups, almost inevitably).
Iran is about to put a pause on its nuke program, I think — but push the NPT to its limits. And I’m really glad it’s Bush on our side when I think of any ultimatums he might need to use.
Yes, many Bush-haters think it’s good that Bush won, so the results are clearly his and the Reps. Funny how the disastrous Democratic Vietnam War got pinned on Reps, thanks to Nixon — who won because the racist Southern Dems supported racist Wallace in 68, instead of Humphrey. Then the racists joined the Reps, mostly; but racism was already uncool.
Mixing blood helps end racism — and its lack helps keep Jew hate alive (unfortunately).
November 5th, 2004 at 9:21 am
Reg, we just come from different backgrounds and experiences. However, when I realized it was you who wrote the post to which I responded, I went back to read it and wanted to comment, and agree somewhat with you, on one other of your points.
You wrote: “… Frankly, without liberals, I shudder to think what this country would look like – especially in your parts. I’m sick of “fair, understanding, open” people who have no sense of either the big picture or the roots of what’s right and what’s wrong beyond their self-righteous bible-thumping.”
I agree that liberals have made positive changes. Every view point, yours and mine, has value–and, change can be good. Sometimes, it’s not. I just want government to make changes based upon what is right and best for this country and not what is politically expedient. Both parties are guilty here.
I, personally, tend to make changes after extremely long and careful thought as to the ultimate outcomes. I might never finish a chess game unless there is a timer. The other side of the coin are the formerly labeled “knee-jerk liberals” who couldn’t see two weeks into the future for changes they wanted. I think that the demise of the inner cities can be attributed to some liberal policies–but, let’s not go there.
Regarding seeing the bigger picture and what’s right or wrong, I don’t profess to see it all and I’m willing to change my mind. I have lived in Alabama and Georgia all of my life and don’t have reason to travel much, so I’m sure that I miss some other viewpoints. But, by the same token, I have two sisters who were raised in the same household and both are staunch Democrats. When I was little, my older brother and sister told me I was adopted–so, maybe it’s genetic.
Neverthless, I’m trying to remember who made a certain remark, but someone (honestly, I think it might have been James Brown) said that if you believe the same things at age sixty that you did at age twenty, then you wasted your life. That’s similar to another quote that if you aren’t a liberal when you are young then you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative when you’re old then you don’t have a brain. I like to think that I’ve developed a brain while developing compassion at the same time. I know what it’s like to hurt.
On the last part of your sentence, I don’t have any problem with people taking positions based upon the Bible any more than those who take positions based upon being athiest. What they believe is more important than why they believe, and how those beliefs affect legislation is important. The Bible is not evil and it has steered many into offering charity and hope to people who are down.
I would like to add that I think that it’s sad when Christians are bashed for problems in this country. Christians I know are some of the finest people around.
A friend of mine in New York called me last night after he had written me an email hitting “born again Christians.” By definition, all Christians are born again. When we talked, I think that he understood that maybe this convenient label of blame can be offensive and inaccurate. By adding that descriptive phrase or the “evangelical” phrase to the word Christian along with a disparaging remark is just a way for the left to try to slander a good religion and those who practice it. That is intolerance and prejucice in itself.
I appreciate your comments and position. I’m sorry for what may appear to be glib attacks, as most of it is meant in good-natured exchange or competition. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the glib attacks between Auburn and Alabama fans. Putting up with that must have made me less sensitive in this area.
Anyway, we can learn from each other as long as the exchanges are honest, factual, and not personal. Neither liberals or conservatives are bad, and finding a balance between the two can be good. I appreciate Marc Cooper for allowing and controlling such discourse on his board.
That’s all the time I have and exceeds my quota on this subject. I hope you and others who have disagreed with me have a nice day.
November 5th, 2004 at 10:38 am
Thanks Woody.. you are a true asset to our little community here of yakkers.
November 5th, 2004 at 10:47 am
Just to clarify – I have great fondness for Christians who exemplify the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount…like my parents. Just don’t like people who reduce it to “bible-thumping” dogmatics or a glitzy, commercialized product sold like patent medicine.
November 5th, 2004 at 3:09 pm
Three initial suggestions for Democratic rethinking:
1)A lifetime ban on presidential campaign participation for any senior officials in the last six campaigns or so. If you didn’t get YOUR candidate elected, you obviously don’t know how to elect anybody else.
2)No more “free speech zones” at future Democratic conventions, or other convoluted attempts to suppress dissent or force everyone to be “On Message.” “On Message” only works if you actually HAVE a message.
3)How about maybe having the nominee DEFEND the word “liberal”? If only Kerry could have said “Hell yes, I’m a liberal, and proud of it. If it weren’t for liberals and liberalism, we’d still have Jim Crow, uncontrolled pollution and troops in Saigon. We’d still have the majority of the population being treated as total doormats just because they’re women.
And Jesus damn sure wasn’t a straight ticket Republican type.”
What a different and better race that could’ve been.
Just a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.
November 5th, 2004 at 5:26 pm
“Yes, many Bush-haters think it’s good that Bush won, so the results are clearly his and the Reps.”
Translation: Bush hater==anyone who disagrees with Tom Grey’s assessment of George Bush’s policies.
November 5th, 2004 at 5:29 pm
“I think that the demise of the inner cities can be attributed to some liberal policies–but, let’s not go there.”
As I recall it, deindustrialization and union busting has been prevalent since Jimmy Carter-Reagan-Bush Sr.-Clinton-Bush Jr.’s presidency…
November 5th, 2004 at 5:32 pm
rosedog: received and absorbed.
I’m pouring ashes over my silly head
m(_ _)m
November 5th, 2004 at 5:43 pm
Working class voters were willing to consider a Democratic option, but when they didn’t hear a compelling enough economic narrative from Kerry they let cultural issues drive their vote. “‘Democrats need to have a bold economic narrative. Not just policies,” said Greenberg.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html#greenberg
November 6th, 2004 at 12:45 am
Dear youpickone4me…
No need for ashes. We’ve probably all got more than enough to go around. ; -)
November 8th, 2004 at 10:40 am
Nice analysis.
Now that Bush has won, history will either prove Bush was a great president and that the majority of Americans were right to vote him back into office or history will prove that the Europeans are smarter than us, Bush is an idiot, and that he was a terrible president.
Only time & future history will tell.
Tom Keating
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/
November 8th, 2004 at 12:57 pm
I am very confident now that Tony Blair will lose his next election, one more bright side to the Bush victory!
November 8th, 2004 at 3:39 pm
Marc Cooper is right on the mark, ( yes, I know), with this editorial. Thank you for saying what needs to be said Marc. Let’s hope that the party leadership can change things around. And if neccesary, I believe it is, we change the leadership to bring about such change.
November 8th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
Marc Cooper is right on the mark, ( yes, I know), with this editorial. Thank you for saying what needs to be said Marc. Let’s hope that the party leadership can change things around. And if neccesary, I believe it is, we change the leadership to bring about such change.
November 3rd, 2004 at 12:43 pm
Left-wing Blogosphere Reactions
John Kerry’s side of the blogosphere offers a diverse range of views of Bush’s victory. Marc Cooper: Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insult…
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:11 pm
Why The Democrats Hate Us
Kerry-Osama vs. Bush-Hitler Quasiblog has decided to get a head start on postmortems by commenting on one of the most striking features of what can reasonably be described as the campaign against George Bush. A top Kerry strategist, whose name
November 3rd, 2004 at 1:37 pm
Rethinking the Dialectic II
What can Democrats become?
The only possi…
November 3rd, 2004 at 4:29 pm
Dems: Show Some Humility and Get Real
James Wolcott a citizen of the upper West Side (who roots for hurricanes to kill people living in tidewater country) has this to say about the Bush victory: Should Bush win, I shall post a statement of philosophical resignation tentatively…
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:57 pm
Whew!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*La Shawn exhales…*
From My Way News:President Bush won a second term from a divided and anxious nation, his promise of steady, strong wartime leadership trumping John Kerry’s fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness. After a long, tense n…
November 3rd, 2004 at 7:03 pm
Some Intelligent Post-Election Thoughts
Here are some of the really intelligent essays floating around the blogosphere in the wake of the 2004 election.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:59 pm
Dragging the Democrats Back From the Precipice On
Some advice for Democrats from a sympathetic libertarian/conservative:
There are two groups within the Democratic party. The moderate majority (union workers, suburban mothers, poor minorities), and the socialist fringe (limousine liberals, radica…
July 1st, 2010 at 11:10 am
Regarding multiboxing in WoW, the upcoming shaman patch notes say “We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.” How are you thinking this will affect multiboxing shaman groups in WoW?