Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Support Guaranteed Health Insurance, Support Osama bin Laden

From my wingnut e-mailer, for your entertainment:

MORE DEMOCRATIC TREASON

Ronald Reagan expressed it most famously when he said , “why do they always blame American first?” Ann Coulter recently wrote an entire book called “Treason” about the Democrats. I recently turned on Air America, the new liberal radio network, to hear Al Frankin pretending to shed real tears about how much he loved our troops in Iraq but two minutes later his patriotism seemed to fade instantly as he made fun of the troops in Afghanistan for not finding Osama Bin Laden. Yesterday, Paul Krugman’s ultra liberal column in the Times dismissed the American free market, which is 100% responsibly for giving us the highest standard of living in the history of the world, in favor of single payer socialist healthcare.

So why do liberals hate America? The answer is simple: America, since the Revolution, has been mostly about freedom from gov’t and therefore about freedom from Democrats. Throughout American History the Democrats have always been for less and less freedom from gov’t despite the hundred million or so dead bodies gov’t has caused during that period. One has to consider that their philosophical illegitimacy is what makes their loyalty so questionable and their style so nasty and seemingly treasonous. They want to belong here but the facts always paint them as anti-American. In a way you have to feel sorry for the painful position in which they find themselves, but you also have to wonder why it is that they seem to have an absolute inability to learn to think?

The latest liberal treason award should probably go to The New York Times. We are at war in Iraq against Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party. By almost any standard we are the most noble country in the history of the world while Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is among the most ignoble. Today, in fact, there is a story out of Iraq about an enemy soldier who blew up a bomb in a public square killing about 20 people many of who turned out to be orphan children peddling groceries in the street. Their idea of acceptable collateral damage extends to any man woman or child who might be near anyone who might be vaguely associated, if only by geographic default, with the war against them, and this is when they cannot behead a living, fully conscious, captured soldier or hostage, and all this is in support of a regime that is arguably more grotesque and has less electoral legitimacy than even Adolph Hitler’s.

So in the last year how many times did the vaunted TIMES (the so called newspaper of “record”) run front page headlines about how perhaps the scummiest, most illegitimate regime on earth conducts war: zero! How many times did they run front page headlines about how America conducts war? There have been 49 front page headlines about our so called conduct at Abu Ghraib alone. It wasn’t that we were blowing up innocent children in the street or slowly cutting off the heads of fully conscious prisoners as the insurgents do, it was that a few Americans, later found to be criminals, were making the prisoners get in human pyramids while naked or in women’s underwear.

Why is it that the liberal Times wants you to know more and care more about the way America is conducting the war than the way Saddam’s Hussein’s Nazi Baathists are conducting the war? The answer is simple: the liberals hate America and always have. In Vietnam they shouted, “Ho Ho, Ho Chi Minh.” They are not yet shouting, “Saddam Saddam ,Saddam Hussein” but the effect is exactly the same. They are seeking to undermine America; not America’s evil enemy. So what does that make a liberal? Our troops, many of them kids, are on the battlefield with the simple moral clarity to fight against pure evil. When they get wounded they heal, when possible, and then heroically and voluntarily return to fight again along side their fellow soldiers. Don’t we owe them more than the treasonous, undermining liberal commentary we get on the front page of the Times? Don’t the liberals know that once the war is on, and there is no way out, we’re all supposed to be on the same team? Are they so alienated from the soul of America that they would rather see its children die on the battlefield than prevail against evil?

Imagine what the morale of the Nazi Baathists would be if the world’s liberal press were united against their evil, instead of united against America? Imagine what the morale of our troops would be if the most significant and influential newspaper in the world at least tried to be loyal to the truth, instead of, in effect, the enemy? Imagine what the state of the world would be if the world’s liberal press organized the world’s citizenry against evil, instead of the American freedom that they blindly see, to the exclusion of everything else, as insensitive and uncaring. But if that happened it wouldn’t be a liberal Democratic press would it?

No comment. It speaks for itself.

.

My Peeps

Schwarzenegger Jeered at Graduation Speech:

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to his alma mater turned into an exercise in perseverance when virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger’s face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor.

“Always go all out and overcome your fears,” he told the graduates. “Work, work, work. Study, study, study.”

Inside the stadium, the drone from hundreds of rowdy protesters threatened to drown out the governor’s voice at times. Many in the crowd erupted in boos when a police officer pulled down a banner criticizing the estimated $45 million cost of the Nov. 8 special election that Schwarzenegger proposed Monday.

The governor is backing three ballot initiatives that call for imposing a cap on state spending, stripping lawmakers of the power to draw their own districts and increasing the time it takes teachers to gain tenure.

At times during Schwarzenegger’s speech, cheers and boos mingled, and the graduates themselves appeared eager to hear the governor. Many applauded at one point when the noise from the bleachers briefly subsided.

“It didn’t matter. I just ignored them,” graduate Ray Lewis, 21, of Los Angeles, said when asked about the racket from protesters. Schwarzenegger’s “political views and all that had nothing to do with the graduation,” Lewis said.

Schwarzenegger has been feuding for months with groups he calls “special interests” – teachers, nurses and other public employee unions who accuse him of selling out to big business while shortchanging education, health care and other programs. Those groups have hounded Schwarzenegger at his public appearances.

The special election “is a waste of money that you could be using for education, hospital care. He’s wasting it on his vanity election,” said Sue Cannon, a nurse who was among the crowd outside the stadium.

About two dozen Schwarzenegger supporters also rallied outside the stadium. One of them, Ben Eisenberg, who heads the Santa Monica College Republicans, said the ceremony “should be about the students.”

Schwarzenegger left the stage almost immediately after his speech, speeding across the infield in a golf cart surrounded by sprinting security guards. Across the field, he pulled up toward a waiting SUV and a large steel gate was closed behind him.

Schwarzenegger took general studies classes at the two-year community college between 1970 and 1974. He later took correspondence courses through the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where he earned a degree in 1979. “

There’s more:

The protest included a group of faculty members on stage who turned their backs on Arnold during the speech and constant booing from students throughout his remarks. At the same time, Air Arnold – a plane pulling a banner with the message: “Real Governors Don’t Steal From Students” – was forced to fly above the clouds, hiding the message to Arnold in apparent violation of federal aviation law, and forcing the pilot to bring the plane down.

A Santa Monica College student attended the graduation in a chicken suit to make the point that Arnold was too chicken to face criticism from students, after the school banned them from wearing pins and t-shirts of protest or displaying posters. Even though Arnold got the school to ban any signs of dissent (even those flown above the graduation!), he couldn’t silence the voices of students and teachers, who don’t like what they’ve been hearing.

That’s how it’s done, my friends. Movie stars and fratboy heiresses are used to being treated with deference and awe. They get all flustered when people fail to worship at their feet. Here in Soviet Monica,however, movie stars are a dime a dozen. They don’t turn heads. Rich Republican phonies, however, get our attention.

And whoever told Schwarzenneger that it was a good idea to say that teachers, nurses and firefighters were sell-outs to big business must have been drunk. (Mike Murphy, perhaps?) That kind of statement doesn’t exactly ring true, especially coming from multi-millionaire Republican movie stars. He has managed to radicalize the middle class.

Since Schwarzenneger wants to hold a special election this fall come hell or high water, maybe we need to start talking about making it a recall.

Update: To clarify, when I say above that Arnold Schwarzennegger says nurses teachers and firefighters are special interest sell-outs to big business, I’m operating from an out of date lexicon. For all of history, “special interests” referred to business interests. The Frank Luntz American Heritage Book (The FLAHB) has changed that phrase to mean middle class people who work for the public good. I forgot. My bad.

.

Apple Corp

Isn’t it interesting that the bad apples who were just having some kicks on the night shift at Abu Ghraib came up with similar kinky sexual humiliation “hijinks” to those the interrogators down at Gitmo were using on orders:

Over the next month, the interrogators experiment with other tactics. They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude. They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists. They hang pictures of scantily clad women around his neck. A female interrogator so annoys al-Qahtani that he tells his captors he wants to commit suicide and asks for a crayon to write a will.

How odd that little Lynde Englund came up with the idea all on her own of putting a leash and dog collar on prisoners like that. Is life full of coincidences, or what?

.

The Elephant

I honestly don’t know why there is any question that the Downing St Memo is the most important historical document to emerge showing that Bush and company took us into Iraq on false pretenses. It’s true that there have been many hints — the biggest of which is that, uh, there weren’t any fucking WMD — but this is clear proof that they lied prior to that. I’m not sure what Michael Kinsley is saying here, but I agree with Kevin that it’s absurd to think that the meeting minutes of the highest levels of our closest military ally were simple impressions of Bush’s body language or something. It is a full-on game plan for obfuscation and “rolling out the product” that proves they knew that Iraq wasn’t a threat.

Now, it’s true that many of us knew that already. I wrote back in September of 2002 over on Eschaton:

I don’t object to going into Iraq because I think Saddam doesn’t want nukes. Of course he does. So do a lot of people, including al Qaeda. And a lot of unstable regimes already have them, like the countries of the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. I object because I don’t believe there is any new evidence that he’s on the verge of getting them or that he had anything to do with 9/11, or that he’s crazy because he gassed his own people (without our objection at the time), or that he’s just plain so evil that we simply must invade without delay — all of which have been presented as reasons over the past few weeks. There are reasons why we are planning to invade Iraq, but they have nothing to do with the reasons stated and are based upon political and ideological not security goals.

I particularly object because I deeply mistrust the people who are insisting that Saddam presents an urgent danger because they have been agitating for invasion and regime change, offering a variety of rationales, for 11 years. Pardon me for being skeptical but there is an entire cottage industry in the GOP devoted to the destruction of Saddam for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with an imminent threat to the US. Until they concocted this bogus 9/11 connection, even they never claimed that the threat was to the US, but to Israel, moderate Arabs and the oil reserves.

I very much object because among these obsessives are the authors of the Bush Doctrine, which is nothing more than a warmed over version of the PNAC defense policy document that was based upon Cheney’s 1992 defense dept. draft laying out the neocon case for ensuring the continued status of the US as the only superpower after the cold war. They did not take the threat of terrorism into account when they formulated this strategy and have made no adjustments since the threat emerged. Instead they are cynically using the fear created by 9/11 to advance goals that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and in fact will make another attack more likely. We will not be able to protect ourselves against another 9/11 by asserting a doctrine of unilateral preventive war in Iraq or anywhere else.

I’m not an insider at the pentagon nor do I have any connections with the intelligence establishment. But I’m a political junkie who obsessively follows this stuff — and who had made it my business to investigate the writings of the neocon faction of the Republican establishment. Most Americans in September of 2002 were still in a state of shock, or felt that we couldn’t take any chances, or believed that Bush and company must know something that a broken down nobody blogger in Santa Monica California couldn’t possibly know. I was told by more than one Democratic friend of mine that I was being ridiculously arrogant to be so sure that they weren’t holding back important information for security reasons.

But, you know, I grew up in a period in which the government repeatedly and blatantly lied about a war in which friends of mine died and that tore the country in two in ways that I’m seeing mirrored today. I have not had the illusion that one should “trust” the government in these things since I was in high school. And this group made McNamara and his best and the brightest pals look like open books. If there was ever a case to be made for open government and transparency it was with the neocons.

It is obvious that the political media had access to the same information I did, and much much more. Bob “muckraker” Woodward was inside the planning rooms in late 2001 when the administration was agitating for the war. Wolf Blitzer could get anyone he wanted on the phone. They knew. But I wrote about what I could see and discern and they didn’t. As Atrios says in his post today, blogs did their best, but we all knew we had slightly less influence than a lone protestor on a freeway off ramp. Millions of people in the streets all over the world could barely get the press to look up from their safari suit fittings — and the bosses all told the kewl kidz that this was not a story they wanted flogged.

The fact of the matter is that the media are part of the political establishment, as as such, had as much of a stake in making the case for the war as the administration did, despite the fact that many of them knew very well there was no threat. They couldn’t wait to go to war. They were intoxicated by bloodlust and they sold that bloodlust like it was the best reality show in history — “9/11: America’s Revenge” and they were right. It was a hell of a show.

All of this we know and have known for some time. But that doesn’t mean that there is no story now. Indeed, the Downing Street Memo presents a chance for the press to redeem itself; this isn’t the end of the story. So far, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into even broaching the subject of what this administration has done and their own complicity in it. They may never be able to admit all that. But in that it officially documents the fact that the administration knew there was no threat and knew there was no connection to terrorism, the Downing Street Memo gives the press the chance to ask, finally, why we really invaded Iraq.

Have any of you been at a social gathering in which this question comes up? Have you felt the palpable discomfort? Nobody really knows. Those that adhere to the “CIA fucked up” rationale can’t explain Downing Street. Those who think you had to back the government in a time of war, are visibly discomfitted by the fact that we never found any WMD. Flypaper is crap. The amount of money we are spedning is becoming salient. The project looks endless.

I speculated back in September of 2002 that the neocon faction was pushing its American Empire wet dream and using 9/11 as an excuse. Others believe that in the grand sweep of things we invaded to place permanent military bases to protect the oil fields.(Ann Coulter says “why shouldn’t we invade for oil? We need oil.”) Still others think we needed to show some muscle and Afghanistan just wasn’t sexy enough. Was it Israel? I wrote the other day that it now appears that Bush may have bribed Blair into invading Iraq by promising that he’d hold back just long enough to cripple al Qaeda and keep them from blowing up London — something which the evidence suggests that Bush and his cronies really had no interest in. And then there’s the racist and revenge motives.

We really don’t know, do we? Perhaps it was all those things. Which would then raise another important question. How is it possible for the United States of America in 2003 to invade and occupy another country for a handful of different, unstated reasons? What kind of fucked up process could have the president with one reason for invading, the vice president another, the Secretary of Defense yet another — and the congress and the press simply signing off on official lies?

These are the big questions that the Downing St Memo has opened up. Yes, we already knew the intelligence was fixed, we knew they understood that Saddam was no threat, we knew they lied to the American people and we knew that they intended to go to war no matter what. But we still don’t know for sure why they did all that. Until we do, I don’t think we will be able to figure out how to deal with it.

Update: To answer Atrios’ question, and in keeping with this post, I would submit that the pithy way to frame this is by asking the question: “Why did we invade Iraq?”

.

Courtiers and Fools

Press The Meat today was one for the books. After a colorless exchange between the usual ineffectual Democrat and a looney tunes, delusional Republican (Joe Biden and Curt Weldon) Monsignor Lil’ Russ joined the roundtable where they ignored everything that had just been said to breathlessly offer their learned opinions on the runaway bride and Michael Jackson of the beltway — Hillary and Howard.

Gwen Ifill pointed out that while Dean is popular with the rank and file, the Washington Democrats are very upset. The Knights of the Botox all made it quite clear that while Bush catering to his base is a smart strategy, they agree with the DC Dems that catering to the filthy Democrat rabble is quite beneath any civilized politician. But then, as we all know, Bush’s base are Real Americans while the Democratic base consists of a bunch of godless, bi-coastal, terrorist sympathizers who are waaaay outside the mainstream. All 49% of ’em. No way are Judy, Gwen, Father Tim, and Dean Broder associated with those treasonous bastards. Why, everybody on Nantucket practically lives on pork rinds these days. (Atkins, don’t you know.)*

Woodruff pointed out that the Republicans have wisely learned to throw their red meat “below the radar” — through the local news and direct mail —while the Democrats haven’t. No comment on why the Republican red meat remains “below the radar” when the creme de la creme of Washington punditry clearly knows all about it. Nor was there any speculation about how it came to pass that Dean’s comments dominated the cable news networks with an obsessive glee usually reserved for Bill Clinton’s pants, while Tom Delay can put out a hit on federal judges and it gets a one minute segment betwen the blog report and Bay Buchanan.

Certainly, the press wasn’t in any way responsible. The news is apparently an organic thing, unconnected with those who report it. The subjects of the news determine how it’s going to be reported and evidently the Democrats consistently mishandle that responsibility quite badly. Dean was asking for trouble and he got it. As Ifil pointed out, Democrats need to learn to “act right all the time because someone’s always watching.” (Unless they can figure out how to cleverly stay “under the radar,” as those awesome Republicans do.)

The roundtable also agreed that Hillary Clinton’s comments this week about abuse of power and timid press coverage were simply silly little broadsides designed to get her elected in 2006 and 2008 and nothing more. Broder, especially, seemed miffed, saying that she needs to read some history books where she will see that this is common practice. As we all know, the only crime in Washington is when some cracker Rhodes Scholar and his smartmouth lawyer wife come to Broder’s town and “trash the place.”

All Hillary’s complaints are just typical Democratic carping, particularly the complaints about the press. What does she know from press coverage anyway? They used the Downing St. Memo as an example of how the press has been just as hard on Bush as they ever were on Clinton. I’m not kidding. Broder mentioned Walter Pincus’ front page article today to prove that the WaPo has been on Bush’s case about Iraq from the very beginning.

They all agreed, furthermore, that all of this had been amply dealt with during the election and that the public just didn’t think it was important. Strangely, however, the polls seem to suggest that they are beginning to care now. Why would that be? Nobody knew.

Their assessment of Bush’s tumbling poll numbers went like this. Broder said (and the bobble heads all nodded affirmatively) that if Clinton were in the White House they would be burning the midnight oil to change course. Bush doesn’t do that. He stands firm. His codpiece veritably bursts with confidence. All hail the massively unpopular George W. Bush.

And anyway, Democrats are icky and everybody knows they have no chance in 06 or 08, so whut-evuhr. Michael Moore is fat.

Christopher Isherwood once wrote:

“You have never seen inside a film studio before?”

“Only once. Years ago.”

“It will interest you, as a phenomenon. You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw: the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favourites. There are great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is an insane extravagance, which is a sham; and horrible squalor behind the scenery. There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no-one speaks of. There are even one or two honest advisors. These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seriously. They grimace, tear their hair privately and weep.”

The political press became a ranking member of the entertainment industrial complex some time ago. And the full flavor of the court Isherwood describes has returned to the seat of power in Washington DC. I’ll leave it to you to decide in today’s media and political world, which are the courtiers and which are the fools.

*In fairness, Ifil and the guy from the WSJ (can’t remember his name) mentioned that Dean has raised a lot of money and that this Dean flap is mostly a beltway game that will not have lasting impact as long as Dean doesn’t run for president. Ifil, in particular, made a point of puncturing the slavering Monsignor Tim’s balloon over a Harold Ford quote that he would not want Dean to come to Tennessee. Small favors.

.

Nuh-uh, I Never Said That

I’m taking bets on how the wingnuts try to re-write this embarrassing history. You know they will have to eventually. They’ve had to rewrite their history for the last 60 years. (And in the case of the hard core confederates, the original “Ownership Society” — 200.) But it’s getting harder what with these internets and all.

This may be the ultimate reason why they have had to resort to the alternate discourses of “I know you are but what am I” and “You can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes.” (Not to be confused with “the emperor is strutting around stark naked in the white house, but at least he isn’t getting a blow job.”)

Any thoughts on how Wolfie and his cadre are going to explain this to the children?

.

The Coolest Robots In The World

I just saw Kraftwerk, the Beatles of electronica, outdoors at the Greek Theatre on a beautiful summer night in LA.

Sometimes life is really sweet.

.

A Land Called Honalee

Those liberal activist judges are at it again. They really are. A majority, which includes the moderates on the court, just ruled that the federal laws against medical marijuana are constitutional (as opposed to federal laws against guns near schools or violence against women.) If this were a case about, say, a federal law that overrode state laws against gay marriage, I suspect you’d be seeing a slightly different reaction from the wingnuts and probably on the court. The moderates (there are no liberals) upheld federal power over states’ rights which is consistent with their position.

Rehnquist, Thomas and O’Connor dissented on the basis of states’ rights, which is also consistent with their position. Kennedy swung with the majority — he has no discernible position. The “surprise” is that Little Nino, who is proving himself to be more and more of a straight-up whore every day, voted with Ginsberg and Stevens and the rest. Not because he agrees with the legal doctrine involved — nothing in his judicial history would suggest that — but because he just doesn’t want people smoking pot. Or perhaps he just thinks that federal power is ducky when it’s in the hands of his friends. Either way, he’s intellectually bankrupt.

The court is operating on the same basis that the political system operates. The liberals and moderates in the minority play by the rules thinking that consistency and intellectual integrity are important and that people will hold it against them if they deviate from their stated position.( And, of course, they are right. Even when they haven’t actually deviated from their position they are accused of it and called “flip-floppers.”) The shrinking number of real conservatives pay lip service to their belief system as long as it won’t affect the outcome: they are subject to the same intimidation as the moderates and liberals if they don’t. The right wing radicals just power their way through using any means necessary, willingly taking the help of liberals and moderates who perform the function of useful idiots with their fealty to process and institutional integrity in a time of pure power politics. I’m sure they are greatly soothed by the fact that all good children go to heaven.

The good news is that, as Stevens says in the opinion, it preserves the right of federal legislators to change the laws, so that’s nice. When we finally get over our reefer madness in this country, which I expect to be in a couple of hundred years or so, maybe the Armageddon Party can join with the Theocrats and make it legal. But of course, it won’t be necessary because Pfizer will have found a way to perfectly re-create the effect of marijuana in a pill form and will have made millions selling it by prescription to those who can afford it — which is, after all, the whole point.

.

The Drinking Debate

I hope that everyone is making a habit of checking out Harry Shearer’s column over on the Huffington Post because he’s got access to some of the most amazing footage you are ever going to see.

Check this out. George and Laura on Larry King talking about “the drinking debate” in South Carolina in 2000. As Shearer points out, the strange, mummified puppet who calls himself Larry King didn’t have the wherewithall to follow up. He was too busy pimping himself, as it seems he does constantly, to his guests.

Has anyone heard anything to the effect that everyone was drunk during the famous South Carolina debate between Mccain, Bush and Keyes? Oddly, Karen Hughes didn’t mention it in her memoir.

.

Whose Party Is It Anyway?

Atrios is on fire today. This explication of the Democrats’ position and challenges on Iraq is spot on.

He mentions Matt Yglesias’ observation that the liberal hawks are unwilling to admit they were wrong because to do so would create a hit to their credibility. This is very interesting. We know that Bush and his cronies believe they will lose credibility if they admit they are wrong about anything and they are probably right. Without their claim to God-like infallibility, I suspect they know that their whole delicate house of cards might collapse. They do not want their base to ever get it in their heads that the emperor has no clothes and they will fight like hell to see that they don’t.

However, there are plenty of liberal hawks like Joe Biden, for instance, who also seem to be backed into a corner because they think that they will lose credibility with…who, exactly? Fred Hiatt? Tim Russert? Because they sure as hell won’t lose credibility with the base of the Democratic party — they’d be heroes. See, to us, admitting you were wrong about Iraq means that you gain credibility, not lose it. Indeed, the reality based community tends to believe that it’s important to admit when you were wrong. It’s all part of that whole godless scientific method, empirical data, age of reason, enlightenment lah-de-dah we hold so dear.

But then it’s obvious they have no respect for the base of the Democratic party. Just this morning, both Biden and Edwards dissed Howard Dean big time. While Bill Frist bumps and grinds the pole to James Dobsons’ every command three years before the presidential election, our presidential hopeful club is already running to the middle as fast as their chubby little legs will carry them. Or perhaps they are just running toward their nannies, the liberal punditocrisy who get ever so upset at the harsh rhetoric being flung by that rabble rouser, Dean:

Dean ”doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats,” Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday on ABC’s ”This Week.”

While discussing the hardship of working Americans standing in long lines to vote, Dean said Thursday, ”Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.”

Oh mercy me, pass me ovah the smellin’ salts, daddy! I’m like to be bowled ovah with a feathah!

Dean’s words are actually quite powerful to anyone who isn’t a hypocrite, a member of the Sally Quinn circle jerk society or a paid spokesman of the RNC. It’s the kind of thing that real people say in real life. It’s authentic, Real Murica speak, not Washington pearl clutching bullshit. The presidential race is three long years away and Joe and John both should have laughed and said, “Howard was talking about the Republican leadership and their lobbyist buddies who can’t seem to get anything done for the American people — but they sure do take care of themselves. I think a lot of people probably agree with him on that.” Instead they twisted their little lace hankies like a couple of rich old biddies and sniffed and whimpered about how they don’t agree with such tawdry sentiment. It’s really a wonder we get any votes at all.

Which brings me to Rick Perlstein’s guest post on Political Animal the other night. I still haven’t received my copy of his new book, and I’ll discuss it in much greater depth when I have, but I think that Perlstein’s quite correct when he asks:

Here’s a riddle: what is a swing voter? More and more, it is an American who thinks like a Democrat but refuses to identify as one.

…If it is true that party identification — which, as Stan Greenberg argues, is a form of social identity that endures over the long term — is the best predictor of voter behavior, isn’t getting this selfsame public to identify with the Democratic Party much, much more than half the solution?

There is much more to his prescription, of course, than merely respecting the base. But if party ID is a form of social behavior that endures over the long term, it is a necessary first step. The grassroots of the Democratic Party were the ones who pushed for Howard Dean to become the chairman of the DNC. When you treat him like an unruly child or a slightly crazed relative, you are saying to the voters who have already committed to the party and strongly identify as Democrats that they are a bunch of losers. Why on earth would anyone join a party that does that?

.