Bob Sommerby rails eloquently about the total irresponsibility of the press corps in continuing to describe the California budget deficit as being 38 billion rather than the 8 billion it actually is. He quotes numerous Schwarzennegger aides and spokesmen using that figure as well.
The reason for this is quite clear. Governor Schwarzennegger is going to rescind the car tax and then “open the books” and “end the crazy deficit spending” by reducing the deficit from 38 billion to 12 billion.
I’m sure that a few lone Democrats will show up on television to argue the figures, but they will be interrupted and talked over with a flurry of competing numbers and angry denunciations of partisanship. The hosts will quickly move on to the subject of how Schwarzennegger’s superior leadership skills were able to bring California together.
Everybody knows that Davis was recalled because of the 38 billion dollar deficit and soon everyone will know that Arnold Schwarzennegger, in less than 3 months, was able to reduce it by more than two thirds.
Thank Gawd we got rid of Davis. Think how many more hospitals, libraries and police stations would have had to close if Schwarzennegger hadn’t stopped the crazy deficit spending.
There is some awfully good writing in the blogosphere today. Here, Jeanne D’Arc shares a searing portrait of her own personal brush with an Arnold-pig and how it made her feel — the powerlessness and self-doubt that such actions provoke.
And, she points out yet another example of the extreme ignorance that permeates the media coverage of politics:
My angriest moment last night did not come with the announcement that a sexual predator was now in charge of my state, but earlier, when, on MSNBC, Laurence O’Donnell was making an interesting point about Gray Davis, which I think applies to all the Democrats progressives hate.
He noted that Davis took huge amounts of money from growers, but when an issue of enormous importance to farm workers came up last year — giving them the right to mandatory mediation, which they needed to get around the growers’ stalling — he sided with the workers. Ultimately, even the worst of the corporate Democrats has the glimmer of a soul, which can’t be claimed by the other side.
O’Donnell went on to point out that this time around it was Herr Schwarzenegger who got the growers’ money, but he was struggling to talk over Chris Matthews, who snapped, “Who gave him more?”
The farmworkers? Chris Matthews thinks Gray Davis sided with farmworkers because they gave him more money than growers? Well, don’t I feel silly. I’ve lived in an agricultural part of this state for more than twenty years, and I never knew that rich farmworkers were buying up our politicians. It must be all the money they save by living five or six men to one seedy motel room.
There were so many examples of dumbass commentary last night that any questions as to why the public voted for a groping, malicious, preening movie star were answered. Rank stupidity is a ratings grabber.
To those who are jumping on Clark for being a tool of the evil DLC, while also jumping on Clark for allowing “smart cookie” Donnie Fowler to go, be advised that said smart cookie is also one of the DLC Washington crowd. He worked on all 3 Clinton/Gore campaigns and his father was the chairman of the Democratic Party. He’s not exactly a fresh faced internet activist.
It’s entirely probable that Fowler has some other reasons for resigning that are a little less…romantic.
This is inside baseball crapola and at the moment, it is far more entertaining and worthwhile to watch the Red Sox and the Cubs try to defy history.
Clark’s organizational issues will or will not take care of themselves.
One thing people really need to get a grip on about Clark’s campaign is that any thought that it’s going to be an up by the bootstraps grassroots effort like Dean’s is kidding themselves. He’s a different kind of candidate with a different approach. Perhaps it isn’t as thrillingly participatory at the moment, but it has its own logic, timing and strategy.
I’ve often been accused of being a radical left wing rabble rouser, but the truth is that I am really just a very freaked out moderate liberal Democrat. This Republican Party has been giving me the willies since they used the nuclear option of impeachment. I’ve worn my tin-foil hat with some discomfort these last couple of years, with my “shrill” carping about the GOP being seen as slightly …er…Krugmanian.
So, it is music to my ears to find Calpundit saying things like this:
So what’s next? The California recall is just the latest in a lengthening string of naked power grabs that reveal the cankered soul at the top of the Republican party these days. Even leaving aside Florida 2000, we’ve seen unprecedented mid-decade redistrictings in both Colorado and Texas; campaigns that compare Democrats directly to Osama bin Laden; an indecent and truly morally bereft performance following Paul Wellstone’s death; the end of the traditional blue slip rule for judicial nominees in the Senate — because control of both houses of Congress and the White House and most of the judiciary isn’t enough for them; and the Valerie Plame affair, a scandal that, I think, is truly an “At long last sir, have you no decency?” moment.
And now this. Fighting Arnold or trying to recall him is hopeless, and we should forget about it. A recall would fail, it would engender a big backlash among California voters who are tired of the circus, and it would make the Democratic party look like obstructionists and crybabies.
But this has got to stop. We should be mad as hell over what’s happening, and we do need to be willing to fight every bit as nasty as the Republican leadership is obviously willing to fight. It’s pretty obvious they simply don’t understand any other language.
But we don’t just want to get mad, we also want to get even. And that means picking our battles. State and local action is important, and we should fight hard for every governorship and every congressional seat, all the way down to every city council seat. But — to kill a snake you cut off its head.
Texas-style Republicanism is the engine of the radical right today, and George Bush is its leader. He should be our target, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. So stay mad, stay mad as hell, but stay smart too. November 2004 is the next battleground, and evicting George Bush from the White House is our goal. Don’t forget it.
Please, please read this excellent piece by Cary Tennis in Salon (who writes the best advice column ever) called The Moviegoing Voter
This election — on the heels of the only slightly less celebrity driven win of the equally unqualified George W. Bush — is a reflection of an abdication of citizenship and an entertainment addled collective id. As Tennis says, it will not make me sleep better at night.
I have been thinking for some time now about the appeal of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the appeal of an avenging hero from a foreign land who rescues us from our indolence and despair. I have been thinking about the visceral appeal of a terminator, the man of violence and certainty who will end things as they are and bring about a new world that looks as fresh and bright as the world of childhood. I have been thinking about Schwarzenegger as a man with the appeal of a violent Christ into whom all our sins of weakness and equivocation are poured in the form of punch cards: A Christ with special sticker options, a V8 Christ, a Hummer Christ who does not turn the other cheek but fires his weapon with the vehemence of Jehovah and the casual coolness of a gangster, who slaps around the whimpering, duplicitous and heartless — actionless! — gray father Davis who has unforgivably let the roof collapse on California, who has let Easterners and Southerners trick us and take our stuff, who in his pasty, wimpish impotence has failed to register even one pure, simple, masculine note of outrage at what he has allowed to happen, whose gestures are as cold and empty as the gestures of a department store mannequin, whose face is as unmarred as the face of a virgin, whose tactics seem the tactics not of a lion but of a lowly, cunning reptile, a snake or poisonous insect.
This photo from the Joe Weider Collection was published in the Sports Illustrated edition of December 7, 1987
The article linked above was written in 1991. We’ve elected an ruthless, fascist misogynist and the press has known all this about him for many, many years.
As I roll around the various comments boards this morning, commiserating with my brethren, I’m finding a rather disturbing strand of analysis that portends very ill for the future of the Democrats if this idea gets perpetuated within the party.
There is a strong and vocal group within our coalition that have come to believe that the reason the Democrats have come up short recently is because they are simply not liberal enough. If it weren’t for the DLC and Joe Lieberman and, most importantly, the evil pernicious Bill Clinton, these people believe that the Democrats would be running the country today. Indeed, Gray Davis would have survived if he had not been such a tool of the DINO wing of the Democratic Party.
By golly, he got what he deserved for not being a true liberal and if he had been none of this would have happened.
This is followed by calls to action to purge the party of these nefarious centrists and moderates who have cost us our natural majority by playing to the middle.
I would be very interested in seeing the evidence to support this, particularly in light of the fact that the state of California, including 30% of self described liberals, just voted for a Republican who can in no measure be seen as more liberal than the man he replaced.
I have complained vociferously about the establishment’s unwillingness to fight the Republicans and I am certainly supportive of the idea that consensus politics will no longer work. I agree that a change of tactics is necessary to defeat a very ruthless and dishonest GOP political machine.
But, everybody had better wake up to reality and wake up quick if they think that centrist/moderate Democrats should be drummed out of the party because that is the surest ticket to minority status for a generation.
Here’s a little list of Democrats for you:
Tom Allen, U.S. Representative, ME Joe Baca, U.S. Representative, CA Brian Baird, U.S. Representative, WA Chris Bell, U.S. Representative, TX Shelley Berkley, U.S. Representative, NV Marion Berry, U.S. Representative, AR Earl Blumenauer, U.S. Representative, OR Lois Capps, U.S. Representative, CA Dennis Cardoza, U.S. Representative, CA Brad Carson, U.S. Representative, OK Ed Case, U.S. Representative, HI Jim Cooper, U.S. Representative, TN Bud Cramer, U.S. Representative, AL Joseph Crowley, U.S. Representative, NY Jim Davis, U.S. Representative, FL Susan Davis, U.S. Representative, CA Artur Davis, U.S. Representative, AL Peter Deutsch, U.S. Representative, FL Cal Dooley, U.S. Representative, CA Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Representative, IL Anna Eshoo, U.S. Representative, CA Bob Etheridge, U.S. Representative, NC Harold Ford, Jr. , U.S. Representative, TN Charles Gonzalez, U.S. Representative, TX Jane Harman, U.S. Representative, CA Baron Hill, U.S. Representative, IN Ruben Hinojosa, U.S. Representative, TX Joseph Hoeffel, U.S. Representative, PA Rush Holt, U.S. Representative, NJ Mike Honda, U.S. Representative, CA Darlene Hooley, U.S. Representative, OR Jay Inslee, U.S. Representative, WA Steve Israel, U.S. Representative, NY Chris John, U.S. Representative, LA Ron Kind, U.S. Representative, WI Nick Lampson, U.S. Representative, TX Jim Langevin, U.S. Representative, RI Rick Larsen, U.S. Representative, WA John Larson, U.S. Representative, CT Zoe Lofgren, U. S. Representative, CA Ken Lucas, U.S. Representative, KY Denise Majette, U.S. Representative, GA Carolyn Maloney, U.S. Representative, NY Jim Matheson, U.S. Representative, UT Bob Matsui, U.S. Representative, CA Carolyn McCarthy, U.S. Representative, NY Karen McCarthy, U.S. Representative, MO Mike McIntyre, U.S. Representative, NC Gregory Meeks, U.S. Representative, NY Michael Michaud, U.S. Representative, ME Juanita Millender-McDonald, U.S. Representative, CA Brad Miller, U.S. Representative, NC Dennis Moore, U.S. Representative, KS Jim Moran, U.S. Representative, VA Grace Napolitano, U.S. Representative, CA David Price, U.S. Representative, NC Silvestre Reyes, U.S. Representative, TX Mike Ross, U.S. Representative, AR Steve Rothman, U.S. Representative, NJ Loretta Sanchez, U.S. Representative, CA Max Sandlin, U.S. Representative, TX Adam B. Schiff, U.S. Representative, CA David Scott, U.S. Representative, GA Brad Sherman, U.S. Representative, CA Adam Smith, U.S. Representative, WA Vic Snyder, U.S. Representative, AR John Spratt, U.S. Representative, SC Charles Stenholm, U.S. Representative, TX Bart Stupak, U.S. Representative, MI John Tanner, U.S. Representative, TN Ellen Tauscher, U.S. Representative, CA Mike Thompson, U.S. Representative, CA Jim Turner, U.S. Representative, TX Tom Udall, U.S. Representative, NM Robert Wexler, U.S. Representative, FL David Wu, U.S. Representative, OR Evan Bayh, U.S. Senator, IN John Breaux, U.S. Senator, LA Maria Cantwell, U.S. Senator, WA Tom Carper, U.S. Senator, DE Kent Conrad, U.S. Senator, ND John Edwards, U.S. Senator, NC Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator, CA Bob Graham, U.S. Senator, FL Tim Johnson, U.S. Senator, SD John Kerry, U.S. Senator, MA Zell Miller, U.S. Senator, GA Herb Kohl, U.S. Senator, WI Mary Landrieu, U.S. Senator, LA Joe Lieberman, U.S. Senator, CT Blanche Lincoln, U.S. Senator, AR.
The above are the national representatives who belong to the DLC. Notice the states they represent and then tell me that the key to victory is to purge these people (and their constituents) in favor of more liberal candidates.
19 of our 49 Senators are members. 74 of our 204 Representatives are members. They represent 37% of the Democratic coalition in congress.
That is not just a fringe group. These people don’t subscribe to centrist thinking because it’s cool. They do it because a rather large number of Americans do too. And even in a state like California, which is as good a Democratic state as exists, you find one of the Senators and many Representatives belong to the DLC. And again, it isn’t for the wild and crazy slumber parties. It’s because, as we’ve seen, even a Democratic state is not monolithically liberal.
Seeing the DLC as the reason for our troubles is simply the wrong analysis. That is not the problem. (If anything, it’s the Republicans who have the policy problem — they could not win if they ran honestly. And they’re on the verge of crashing into that internal inconsistency.)
The Democrats’ problem is one of tactics and strategy. We have been too complacent and too stiffly unresponsive to the modern politics of personality, public relations and advertising. We have consistently underestimated the power of Republican dominated talk radio (which I believe was hugely responsible for Arnold’s victory yesterday.) We have been slow and sluggish in recognizing that we are in a new political era in which symbolism and image are going to substitute for serious dialog and in which substance is only relevant to those who are deeply engaged.
The problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the perfidious DLC or a legacy of Clintonism. Moderate Democrats are a fact of life and if liberals insist on turning this election into a refendum on purity or make it a “grassroots vs the establishment” battle, we will lose.
The Republicans are going to have more money than anyone can even imagine in this election. They will be spending it on everything from blanketing the airwaves with patriotic images of Junior at Rushmore to opening offices in every single precinct to get out the vote. If anyone thinks, after watching this debacle of an election here in California, that we can win without using every single resourse at our disposal — and that includes establishment Democrats with experience and access to money and power — then we are fools.
The lesson isn’t that we aren’t liberal enough. And, it’s not that we are too liberal. It’s that we are naive about the modern political landscape. That’s what we need to change.
If you are watching MSNBC and Fox this afternoon, it’s pretty clear that Arnold has won. The exit polls usually tell the tale early in the day and if Matthews and Noonan are any guage (the first is grinning and spitting maniacally and the other is sitting by the shore with wave after wave of orgasmic anticipation rolling over her face) the recall has been a rousing success.
I plan to vote anyway, hoping that their statistical analysis is wrong, but I can see that they’re pretty sure it’s going to be a long night of Republican gloating. Tune in and join the premature party. We only have 4 hours until the polls close. No reason to wait.
My Gawd, these Republicans and their mediawhore cheerleaders have the grace and class of chest thumping neanderthals.
Update: I just voted. The lines were longer than I’ve ever seen them and the poll workers said it was a lull.
Something needs to be done about the press on this. I’m sure their ratings are very important and all, but they have behaved very irresponsibly since about 2pm this afternoon, completely unable to contain their excitement at what they believe to be a rout by their favorite groping misogynist.
If they can contain breaking news for an entire evening, teasing the story ad nauseum to get us to tune in to their regular news cast, they can keep their pie holes shut until polls close on election day. This one is completely out of hand.
Update II: Atrios reminds me that the Republicans were all atwitter when they called Florida 15 minutes before the polls closed in the panhandle. I wonder how they would have liked seeing the press having a victory party for Gore on television 5 hours before the polls closed.
Not a problem, I’m sure. See, that was in Florida and it took place three years ago and people were driving to the polls and it was a plot. This, on the other hand, is just old fashioned, shoe leather reporting.
Update III: Jesse has the perfect rundown of MSGOP election coverage:
Apparently, Ann “88” Coulter is going to be on the show, too. This brings the balance of confirmed conservatives/hacks/nostalgists for Germany circa 1938 to anyone left of Zell Miller up to 5:1.
Via Counterspin Central and Atrios I read that gubernatorial candidate Georgy Russell claims she was roughed up at a couple of Schwarzennegger rallies.
I have no idea if it is true, but I can say that here in Santa Monica yesterday afternoon about 15 young white males with signs were standing outside Arnold’s headquarters on 4th avenue shouting down some code pink protesters across the street in very crude and intimidating terms.
One man walking across the street shouted, “your guy is going down!” to which the honorable and dignified “Schwarzennegger Studs” replied, “he’s not going down on you, you fucking faggot!” followed by more cries of “faggot, pussy … etc.” Then they literally goosestepped down the sidewalk. I’m not joking. I saw it.
So I’m not surprised that Arnold’s followers would rough up a woman at a campaign rally. That’s how brownshirt thugs operate.
Susan Faludi has an interesting take on the subject in this piece for the LA Times this past week-end:
According to the article, after Schwarzenegger had bedded the woman, he picked up a phone and, claiming he was dialing his lawyer to reschedule an appointment, asked her to take the receiver. It turned out the number he dialed was her husband’s, and while she held the phone, Schwarzenegger yelled into it these words, cleaned up by The Times’ censors: “I just [made love to] her! I just [made love to] her!” As Tina Turner would say, what’s love got to do with it?
A Schwarzenegger spokesman told The Times that the episode with Peters and his wife was just a case of “locker room humor.” Which actually explains a good deal of Schwarzenegger’s appeal to male voters. He comes out of the testosterone-ruled world of weight rooms and action movies, where women are the designated observers and adorners, and where men find their place in the wolf pack through a well-established ordeal of hazing and humiliation.
The men who don’t make it to the top in that world still have the compensation of identifying with the one man who does, as long as they don’t identify with any of the women, as long as they don’t “say nothing.” They still belong to the pack, by virtue of being male.
No matter how much sand gets kicked in their face, they still can fantasize that one day they, too, like Charles Atlas, will do enough leg lifts to rise in the ranks. At a time of deep economic and international insecurity, the easy power of the bully boy is a siren call to the American male populace, as evidenced by President Bush’s continuing allure to the very men whose interests are least served by his domestic and foreign policies. The locker room game works as long as only men get to play, and only as long as they agree to play by certain rules. One rule is that sensuality is verboten, but aggressive jocularity is not. Humiliating women in a “playful” way can signal a powerful rejection of “the feminine” and a powerful reinforcement of male bonding.
It is a very peculiar sort of sexual/cultural/political theatre we seem to be playing out in this country these last few years. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the vast fundamental changes that have happened as women and gays have begun to become professional and social equals.
The resulting confusion and obsession with stupidity, coarseness and vulgarity on the part of sexually repressed white males (and the women who love them) in the political realm is the best explanation as to why people like Arnold and George W. Bush could become iconic masculine figures.
They are not, after all, real heroes. They pretend to be heroes — one being a rich playboy who never had to work hard a day in his life and the other a vain fame seeker who spent his entire career wearing make-up and posing naked in front of a camera.
In fact, you could say that these two great manly heroes of the right are not manly at all. Bush, who refused his opportunities to truly compete in any traditionally masculine spheres, whether in sports, business or the military, has actually led the life of a wealthy socialite. Arnold, whose body has been the source of his fame and fortune, is little more than a beauty queen turned cheesecake actress.
But that doesn’t phase the starry-eyed droolers of the right whose faith based philosophy permeates every aspect of their lives:
Republicans have seldom shied from an embrace of manliness. The New York Times recently ran a report on the new Bush re-election headquarters. It explained that the offices display two large photos: one of President Bush “sweating and looking rugged in a T-shirt and cowboy hat”; another of Ronald Reagan “also looking rugged in a cowboy hat.” And all this was before Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for governor of California. Yup, that’s the Republican Party.
Of course, George W. Bush is famous for his “compassionate conservatism.” He is capable of great tenderness of expression, much of it related, no doubt, to his triumph over alcohol and his religious awakening. But Bush as hombre has been the dominant theme of his post-September 11 presidency.
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, likes to tell a story about Mr. Bush out in Iowa, early in the 2000 presidential campaign. A group of Hell’s Angels rode into town, and Gov. Bush simply waded into them, hugging them, bonding with them, relishing them. Not every American politician could manage this, without affectation. Mr. Bush was also, in that campaign, known to have a much better time with the rough ‘n’ ready cameramen in the back of the plane than with the (much more effete) reporters who also accompanied him.
Was this written by Peggy Noonan? How about Kathryn Lopez? Kate O’Beirne of “Clinton couldn’t credibly wear jogging shorts” fame?
Can you hear the desperation in his words? The neediness? The deep and abiding desire to be part of that wolf pack? Indeed, it seems to be a desire so deep, and yet one so impossible for these men and women to achieve in any authentic way, that they have embraced a faux, fun house mirror version of masculinity so imbued with symbolism and phony iconography that it has inverted upon itself and become a parody of the manliness for which they yearn.
As a matter of fact, this Republican obsession with manliness is remarkably similar to the good humored, self referential, hyper-masculinity of the gay scene. A scene in which “cowboys” often “relish” wading into crowds of “bikers” and where body builders are the epitome of masculine pulcritude.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
But, I think the least these goosestepping adolescents and breathless columnists on the right could do is stop pretending to be manly and brave when they are obviously refusing to face up to some very complicated feelings about their place in the world. And, I’d really appreciate it if they’d spare us the romance novel drivel about their masculine icons at least until either of them do one seriously manly thing in their lives that doesn’t include cosmetics, daddy’s money or sophomoric frat boy sexual behavior.
(Thanks to Dwight Meredith for the Nordlinger tip.)
