Democratic Intelligence
by David Atkins
John Cole at Balloon Juice has been on fire on West Virginia “Democrat” Joe Manchin’s equivocations on whether he’ll vote for President Obama. Cole notes that his “independent” anti-liberal (as if the President were some extreme liberal?) stance hasn’t reduced the incoming fire coming from the right wing:
Either Manchin has some very interesting polling internals that none of us are privy to, or his staff is just in over their heads and giving him bad advice. This is bush league stuff, and it has been since day one, when he told us that he needed to tour the state to find out what his constituents think about DADT. Apparently there was not ample time in the two terms he served as Governor to learn that. Once he had his listening tour and learned what his constituents thought, he promptly skipped the vote on DADT and the Dream Act and went partying in the country with his grandchildren. WHO IS ADVISING THIS GUY? Then later on, he advances the Blunt amendment, allegedly to promote religious freedom, while blissfully unaware that the Amendment wouldn’t advance religious freedom, it was a backdoor attempt at gutting ACA by allowing employers to deny coverage of anything they didn’t like for any reason whatsoever. Fortunately, the rest of the Democratic caucus is not brain-dead, so that amendment failed.
Then we get to this latest idiocy, which is yet another self-inflicted wound. It was obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature that the remarks about Obama would be used as a cudgel against both Manchin and Obama. This is a GOP strategists wet dream. And then to state that politics isn’t a team sport. He probably thought it made him sound independent and mavericky, but it just made him look stupid and like he doesn’t understand how politics works. Even better, he set himself up for another beating by the GOP. If I were the Republican candidate, the very first thing I would do is release and ad stating “Joe Manchin says politics isn’t a team sport. So why is he accepting money from the DNC and the DSCC to run negative ads about John Raese.” Or some variation.
And I know none of you are going to believe this, but Manchin really is, in person, a nice guy. He’s affable, friendly, my father worked with him on a number of issues and found him to be reliable and trustworthy and honest. I just don’t understand why he is doing so many stupid things. At this point, I don’t even know what parts of the Democratic party platform he agrees with.
This ties in with Digby’s excellent coverage of national Democrats being apparently willing to cut successful programs and basic social services if only Republicans would let them–as if that is somehow going to endear them to a largely mythical fiscally conservative, socially liberal constituency that likes Planned Parenthood, cuts to Social Security, gay marriage, and low taxes on corporations. These people just don’t exist in significant numbers, the Thomas Friedmans and Linda Parks of the world notwithstanding.
Every Democrat tempted into this Third Way foolishness needs to remember: The hardcore conservatives will hate you, anyway. They’ll despise President Obama just as much as if he were President Kucinich. There’s nothing to be gained with that crowd.
And the so-called independents? They don’t care much, either. They don’t pay too much attention to politics, by and large, they don’t want to think of themselves as nasty partisans, and they’re just upset that American government seems to be dysfunctional. You can try to be as reasonable as you want, but as long as the conservatives keep making the government dysfunctional, you’re not going to get credit for being reasonable. That’s because the dysfunction itself is automatically attributed to both sides being unreasonable, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.
Meanwhile, all this “reasonable moderation” makes you look weak and unprincipled to everyone. It infuriates and depresses the progressive base which not only is the majority of your volunteer base but also deserves some representation, after all. And it’s bad policy.
This should be obvious by now. If intelligence is the ability to learn from one’s mistakes, it doesn’t say much for the smarts of the people in charge.
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