Talking Our Game

Oh how I wish I weren’t so busy right now so that I could spend all of my time parsing the filibuster deal and thrilling my readers with my insights. Luckily, everybody else is doing it so I don’t have to.

There are a couple of points that I’d like to highlight, however. I think Dwight Meredith has the right of it in how low or high the bar has been set with Janice Rogers Brown. It’s actually a little bit more complicated than it seems at first glance.

On another point, I recognise that the right being upset and screaming about this is nothing unusual — they love to be victimized — and it doesn’t indicate that we actually won anything. In the post below, I was referring to the optics of the deal; as long as the right is screeching about this as a sell out and a Democratic victory there is good reason to think that many average folks will come to believe that it is so. The right wing noise machine bleeds into the discourse whether we want it to or not. This is one instance where we want it to.

According to Dobson and Weyrich, the Dems thrust their big swinging man(and woman)hoods at John McCain and they won. This is something we want the American people to think we are capable of. Remember, we are the party that is losing white males by the bucket load. It’s this kind of thing that may release them from their adolescent “manly” impulse to side with the alleged tough guys on the right against their own best interests.

The fact is that on the substance, this deal is a compromise that cuts both ways. That’s what compromises usually do. But for Democrats, who have virtually no power anyway, it is as important to be seen as strong and resolute as it is to actually win. The game we are really playing is for 2006. Because let’s face it, this is a Republican majority government and they can, if they really want to, do any damned thing they please whether we like it or not.

The far right and religious fanatic base is not going to convert to the Democratic party. We need to prove to the moderates, independents and western libertarians that we are tough enough. If James Dobson and Rush Limbaugh want to portray us as dragon slayers, more power to them. They have a big microphone. Let them use it to shout to the world about the big meanie Dems and the sniveling cowardly Republicans who buckled under to them. Works for me.

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