11Th Commandment

by digby

Seeing The Forest has a great piece today on the Al Gore electricity smear:

There’s a tragic but true old expression that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth can even get its pants on. Sadly, this has been proven true again this week with the $mear attack on Vice President Al Gore and his energy consumption. Today, we noticed that the lie has made it to Germany. How did this happen and, more to the point, why does it continue to happen?

It’s a good question that Dave Johnson and James Boyce go a long way toward answering in their post. There are many factors, but this is, I think, what it really comes down to:

Where was the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday as these lies gained hold? Where was any Democratic-oriented Group? There were the progressive bloggers, Media Matters and CAP’s Think Progess and very few others — the usual suspects — and this is all that Gore and our other leaders have watching their backs. They sure aren’t watching each other’s.

I recognize that there is an intense primary underway and that everyone is choosing up teams. But unless the Democratic establishment bands together to condemn this stuff en masse it will be used against every one of them. And it is very, very foolish to use any of these tactics against each other.

STF ends the post with this:
First the wingnuts came for Bill Clinton,
I remained silent;
I am not Bill Clinton. When they made up stuff about Gore,
I remained silent;
I am not Gore. When they lied about John Kerry
I didn’t speak up for him;
I complained about how he ran his campaign. When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out;
I am a Democrat.
Ronald Reagan famously invoked an 11th Commandment: thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. Democrats should invoke one of their own: thou shalt not use Clinton Rules against fellow Democrats and will defend fellow Democrats when they are used against them.

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