Fester responded exactly the same way I did to a column by Larry Sabato about Clinton and the freep, except that Fester got off his butt and wrote a longer, better post than I would have. He wraps up:
So if my assumption that the Freepers and their ridiculous attacks are a short term constant, what should we do? We could appease and only elect reactionary Republicans, or we can actually behave like adults and not allow these political two year olds dictate our entire political discourse. We can do it by ignoring the obvious conspiracy theories, the wildly contradictory and lurid tales, and by actually bringing facts into the debate. Otherwise, we give a loud and wrong quarter of the country a de-facto veto.
Yes indeedy, the Clintons only brought on so much hate because they sat in the White House for eight years, and they knew better than to apologize for every hysterically overblown socksgate that Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg could cook up. Sabato completely breaks down when you look at the next two Democratic candidates. Al Gore, a genial milquetoast and the personal opposite of Bill Clinton in every imaginable way, picked the Senate’s most sanctimonious Clinton scold for veep and banished Clinton from his campaign altogether.
It practically boggles the mind to think that the Clinton hate squad would get terribly worked up about Gore’s campaign and yet, gosh, they found a way. Dems nominated John Kerry, another anti-Clinton, and what do you know! The hate squad hated him just as much.
Dems seem painfully slow to internalize the simple message that frothy rightwing hate is not a variable. Like the speed of light and Avogadro’s number, Bush’s stalwart 26% will hate anybody who doesn’t wear their team colors just the same as any other, regardless of personal character or outreach efforts. It’s tribal for these guys. By summer 2008, no matter who Dems nominate, some chump with a camera and a couple of swiftboat vets will chum the base into the exact same state of hysteria (my bet: twelve OIF vets and some old-fashioned Dolschtosseglende).
Please, let’s stop worrying about what will make crazy people crazy.
ThymeZone
I don’t disagree with any of the detail in this item.
But I fear we are missing a couple of very salient points.
One, we lost in 2004 because Kerry was not our best candidate. We can lose in 2008 for the same reason, and IMO, there are a couple of wrong candidates, HRC being my number one among them.
Two, just as “they hate us for our freedom” is balony, so is the CW about why that 26% hates us. They hate us because we are libruls, pointy headed intellectual wishy washy people with relative, and therefore useless, morals and who shoved civil rights down their throats and then welfare down their throats and think we are smarter than everybody else when we are really just godless hedonists and hypcrites. THAT’S why they hate us, and to keep winning, that’s what we have to work against. And if a particular candidate gives them the material they need to reinforce those stereotypes, they will. And despite a populace that did not love GWB at all, they reelected him because they disliked Kerry just a bit more. That is a political reality and we will be wise not to forget it.
We didn’t lose because of Swift Boat. We lost because we didn’t counter Swift Boat, and THAT is why Kerry was the wrong man for the job. We sat on our asses and waited for the press to do it for us.
orogeny
Tim,
Is there a link to Fester? I’m not familiar with that blogger.
Barry
Tim F., a link, please?
Zifnab
One more reason I eagerly await the nomination of the Obamarama. It’ll be a fun game to see the Republicans try and smear him while not appearing like gigantic racists. I mean, they couldn’t run a can against John “Bleach Face” McCain without taking a dig at black people.
Yeah, this will definitely a popcorn-filled electoral cycle.
Tim F.
Sorry about the link lack. I have no right to blog this much and be this busy at the same time.
Eye
note: it’s “Dolchstosslegende”.
Rome Again
By the way, speaking of Freepers, I was pleasantly surprised when I headed over to see what’s going on on FreeRepublic (as I do every few months or so) and found that their usual 100-700 postings on threads is now down to like 2 or 3 and no more than 70. Hmmmm.
They’ve apparently become rather unpopular lately. ;)
DougJ
This just goes to show that the world is flat.
Flat, motherfuckers, flat!
Just got back from B&N and say the dreaded mustache’s book.
Sorry about that.
Rome Again
Okay, I didn’t peruse down the page the page far enough before making that statement, but I saw no threads with more than 92 replies last I looked.
Zifnab
Didn’t they do a big purge of the Guilaini-cans? When you go rooting out everyone who says, “I have something nice to mention about the second most popular GOP political candidate”, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll loss a respectable chunk of readership.
Punchy
Uh….what?
and:
see above.
RSA
Mmmm, guacamole at the speed of light. . .
ThymeZone
The number of molecules in a mole. Or, the number of lies told by the Bush administration so far.
Chad N. Freude
Would that be the mole that James Jesus Angleton pursued so obsessively?
Fledermaus
It’s a nice thought, Tim. And sound advice for a rational world, alas we don’t live in a rational world. The biggest problem remains the media who will put on any two bit shyster with a story to tell about a leading democrat. I mean, jebus, wackjobs who insisted ‘Hillary killed Vince Foster because he found out about her lesbian lover’ got REPEATED airtime on CNN, MSNBC and this was when FOX News was just a glimer in Rupert Murdoch’s eye. And it wasn’t just Clinton, there were the Swift Boat liars “Kerry shot himself”
Meanwhile Joe ‘Low Information Voter’ Schmoe whose busy and doesn’t pay too close attention hears all this and thinks “well if there wasn’t anything to all this why is every one talking about it” Al Gore is right, there is a systemic problem here and I have no idea how to fix it.
Zifnab
Call me a John Stewart Whore, but I think the Daily Show has gone a long way towards bringing respect back to the media. I mean, they brought down Hardball. That’s a big something. And Stewart/Colbert regularly put the spotlight on MSM reporters like Copple and Williams and even O’Reily, which gives anchors the celebrity status they crave while keeping them within some degree of accountability (how many times have we heard Stewart rip a guy a new one for his hypocritical or foolish policies).
The Daily Show gives America a reasonable alternative to normal news. So does NPR/PBS. We need more reasonable alternatives and then we need to step back and let the market do its work. Because people watch the news because they geniunely want to be informed. You have to inform to reform.
ThymeZone
I think you are referring to Crossfire. And I think Crossfire died of both old age, and of Robert Novak being a horse’s ass.
That said, I do admire Stewart. I think he’s ready to move on to a better gig, though. Something maybe a little more like Olbermann is doing.
Chad N. Freude
I wish I could share Zifnab’s optimism. Stewart is brilliant, but Comedy Central doesn’t have the reach or the gravitas of the networks that purport to present news. (Yeah, I know, they don’t have gravitas, but they’re taken seriously by their audiences.) And Stewart’s audience, at least the bell curve middle, skews young, and a lot of them don’t vote. Stewart’s (and Colbert’s, and for that matter, Olbermann’s) skewering of the O’Reillys and Limbaughs doesn’t reach the people who pay attention to the skewees, the ratings stay up, and the shouted sneers and lies just go on and on.
I read an item recently that one of the major networks, I think it was NBC, is flirting with Stewart, and I shuddered to think what is likely to happen to his journalistic satire if he goes Big Network.
Chad N. Freude
Fixed.
I’m not very optimistic on this subject.
Bruce Moomaw
One can only hope that the next Dem nominee’s reaction to that “Dolschtosseglende” attack — which is indeed surely coming — is, shall we delicately say, a wee bit more forceful than Kerry’s was? (One part of it, by the way, might be to pick James Webb as a running mate, which would be fine with me.)
Rome Again
Chad N. Freude isn’t optimistic? Never let it be said.
Tim F.
“You stab-in-the-backers better fucking hope that I don’t win this.”
Or is that too forceful?
Bruce Moomaw
That would be a promising start.
Another would, of course, be to run TV ads by other Iraqi vets stating that they thought the war was idiotic, thereby neutralizing the New Swiftboaters and returning the public to its current 70-30 inclination to believe (correctly) that the war was stupid. A third would be for the Democratic nominee to be able to explain coherently (A) that the White House got every single thing it ever asked for to win the war for four frigging straight years (or longer), and (B) just WHY the war snd the GOP’s other actions and suggestions in the GWOT have been strategically stupid (something which — as pointed out by the likes of Yglesias and Drum — Democratic candidates have trouble doing, for the simple but ominous reason that they themselves really don’t like to put in much thought on military strategy).
The Other Steve
Main problem Democrats have, is they think the candidate should move them.
It’s like looking for a pleasurable bowel movement, frankly.
Spork
I comment very rarely, if at all, but I think that you (including Tim F., TZ, Bruce Moomaw and other notables) are kind of missing the point. It’s not that we should select a candidate out of fear of the freepers wailing and rending their garments. You’re correct, that will happen regardless, the 26%ers will not vote for a democrat ever, and we need not concern ourselves with them. It’s that a whole lot of the country, including a not inconsiderable number of ourselves, if I may be so presumptous as to include myself in the community here, don’t like Hillary for a number of different reasons.The two primary reasons (IMHO) are first, personal antipathy towards her. The second, and I think personally more meaningful (although I also think making less of an impression on the electorate at large) is the beginnings of acceptance of an aristocracy. Ms. Clinton has all of the tools, and just enough public acceptance, to win a primary. However, I also believe she has all the baggage, and just enough personal dislike of her (reasonable or not) to lose a general election. It’s not just that the 26%ers will never vote for Hillary, it’s that a whole lot of others wouldn’t as well. I believe this is the point Mr. Sabato was making, and I believe it is well worth considering. We can’t make the mistake of presenting a candidate already judged unworthy by 50% of the general electorate. Note that although this prejudgement has little to do with policy, merely personal dislike, it is nonetheless present, and must be considered. Personal animus is not nearly so strong with any of the other likely Democratic primary contenders, and if this isn’t taken into consideration by the party at large, we’ll be making a grave and potentially election-losing mistake.Or I could be totally wrong, you never know after the 6th beer.
Spork
and all my paragraph breaks that were displayed in preview, seem not to have appeared in my comment. Sorry about the text density folks.
ThymeZone
Good points. And I pretty much agree with you.
And, comment more!
Joshua
“We can do it by ignoring the obvious conspiracy theories, the wildly contradictory and lurid tales, and by actually bringing facts into the debate.”
The unfortunate handicap we face is that a huge chunk of the left’s spiritual leadership — postmodernist academics — simply don’t believe in facts. Fortunately, those idiots are (painfully slowly) on the way out, but for now they still hold undue sway over the Democratic process.
The other handicap is that most Beltway Democrats somehow have failed to noticed that the “liberal media” is as much as myth as dry land. As a result, they make the mistake of actually listening to those ignorant buffoons when they murmur about manly characteristics and pull “conventional wisdom” out of their asses. The Democrats would do much better if they all turned off their damned televisions — which I suggest only because I think expecting them to apply some basic skepticism to what they see there is probably asking too much.
Spork
TZ, you disappoint me, the first time I publicly disagree with you, you not only fail to flame me, but give me nothing to latch onto to continue the discussion. There must be something you can force me to defend.
ThymeZone
Well, we came at it from different directions, in terms of Hillary, but I pretty much agree with your assessment.
And in my case, the only reason I would vote for her in a general election is because she is the Democrat. And I hope that doesn’t happen. I don’t like her on a personal level, I don’t think she’d make a great president, I don’t want the Clintons back in the White House, I don’t think she is good for my party.
I’d really like a Gore-Obama ticket, I think that gives us a good chance at 16 years in the White House, and non-crazy presidents without a ton of baggage, either personal or political. What is your thought on that?
Spork
I would also like to see a Gore/Obama ticket. I’m very much not a fan of Tipper, and didn’t vote for Gore in 2000, but since his amazingly inept run, Gore has matured admirably, and not to put too fine a point on it, has found his balls. And Gore with balls is either my favorite horrorporn movie ever or a straight shot to the presidency and the start of a great future for America. I must admit I have only headline reading knowledge of Obama, but he’s made the right noises so far. Still, you’re right, this election is too important to let a (R) win, so I’d bite my tongue till it bleeds and vote Clin-ton if I had to. And I still hate Tipper Gore, no matter how much I like her husband.
Rome Again
Who did you vote for? Just curious. I’m thinking Nader?
Spork
Yeah, Nader. Sorry. I live in a safe state (WA), so a protest vote seemed appropriate. Remember, this was pre-Bush. And the biggest impression the Gore family had made on me to date was the PMRC doing its best to gut free expression.
Spork
Oh yeah, not to mention Lieberman.
Rome Again
Yeah, well, hindsight is 20/20 on Lieberman. None of us knew he was going to go all wingnut on us.
The fact is you may have been in a safe state, but you weren’t in a safe country, you just didn’t realize it at the time. Again, a hindsight thing for you probably. It wasn’t for me. I knew we shouldn’t have another Bush in the White House. I can’t say everyone knew that, so I’m not blaming you.
Spork
Well, I wasn’t a fan of Lieberman’s then, either. Like I said, my vote didn’t matter. Gore still lost, he still carried my state and it’s electoral votes, and in that calculus my vote didn’t really matter. No regrets in hindsight, if it would have been closer here, I would have gone Gore in a second. I’m a strongly dem leaning independent, and independent precisely because of the nanny state shenanigans that Tipper and Lieberman stood for at that time. I’ll admit I didn’t know how horrific Bush would be, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I would have voted for him.
Andrew
I’d just like to point out that it’s still fairly ridiculous that God created donkeys 14 billion years ago. Because, really, that meant He designed Joe Lieberman back then too.
Andrew
Also, I met a chick and things where going really well until she mentioned that she actually liked Lieberman. I was sort of shocked, and that was pretty much that.
Spork
Andrew, I love to argue, and I’m up drinking for the next couple hours. And since I just engaged in conversation on this site for the first time after reading it for something like 2 years, I’m monitoring responses (by refreshing every time I get back from a cigarette). But, I gotta say, I have no idea what you mean by that. Or that. So if you’re agreeing with me, thanks. But if you think I’m being foolish, please feel free to explain why. And I don’t believe in including closing punctuation within parenthesis. Just doesn’t make sense to me (I mean, it closes the entire sentence, while the parenthesis indicate an aside, within the structure of the sentence as a whole).
Tulkinghorn
The problem is that the ol’ liberal media will push whatever the rove/drudge/politico wurlitzer gives them and when the Dems make a response it will be ridiculed by the TV snoozemakers, and when the Dems respond to the ridicule the issue will be dropped with a new dead white woman somewhere taking 95% of the coverage.
If we presume that the news system is thoroughly corrupted, we can find a way to get out of the damn we keep finding ourselves in.
Andrew
Someone tell this Spork fellow that I am talking to the zombified elf head in a jar.
Barry
Joshua: “The unfortunate handicap we face is that a huge chunk of the left’s spiritual leadership—postmodernist academics—simply don’t believe in facts. Fortunately, those idiots are (painfully slowly) on the way out, but for now they still hold undue sway over the Democratic process.”
Freudian projection.
Zifnab
The Daily Show gets tons of outside coverage. I found an article in my aunt’s alumnus magazine once just talking about how the Daily Show came to her campus. Colbert regularly gets spotlight on “This Week” with Stephanopolus and crops up on CNN or MSNBC whenever they pull a particularly humorous stunt. And don’t forget the Colbert White House Correspondence Dinner. They get a great deal of play.
That said, this is the sort of wedge that starts the ball rolling. Stewart isn’t going to single-handedly revamp the media, but he does bring a particularly valuable asset to the game: Shame. News corps care about their image.
The Other Steve
It’s more interesting than that.
The wingnuts adapted the 1960s bleeding heart liberal rhetoric so well, they started to ultimately believe it. That’s what dragged Lieberman into their clutches.
If you cared about children, you’d be a wingnut too!
The Other Steve
I look at the nominee for 2008 somewhat differently. I’m not interested in a pleasurable bowel movement. Rather I want to see the dynamics of discussion change.
That is, I don’t find the Republican party to be particularly good for business. Certain businesses perhaps, but that’s it. Handing out supply-side tax breaks in 2001 when our recession was caused by over-supply and demand problems. That was rather stupid. But it helped some international businesses expand into China, which undercut small businesses here in the states.
To give an example, I just got back from vacation… and even the craft items you see in boutique stores in vacation areas. They are made in China. blankets, baskets, etc. The argument that this helps the store, and possibly consumer by lower prices, is short-sighted. The last bastion of cottage industry in America is going to China.
This is an area that Clinton excels in. I see over at msnbc that Buffet is doing a fundraiser for her.
The thing is, there are two strains of business in America. The long-term growth thinkers, like Buffet, and the short term suck everything out and bail thinkers like Ken Lay. Republicans represent the short-term blood suckers.
It’s just for many years, the long-term thinkers have not been sure who represents them.
The other area of the dynamic I want to change though is foreign policy. Sadly, there I’ve not seen anybody who is standing up and really telling it like it is. Bits and pieces of Edwards, Obama… John Kerry’s private thoughts were the best in this regard, but the moron was afraid to come out and state it publically.
We’ll see.
I’m somewhat resigned to Clinton being the nominee. Not enthralled, but I recognize there is no such thing as a pleasant bowel movement.
The Other Steve
BTW, I wonder how our constructionist judges will view this.
My guess is they favor the federal government overruling local governments.
Bubblegum Tate
Ain’t that the truth. I mean, I expected him to be kinda douchebaggy, but I didn’t see him going all wingnutty. Time makes fools of us all, I suppose.
As for Hillary…she bugs me, and I do agree with the assessment that she can win a primary but not an election. That said, she could capture the “Well…she’s less of a fuckwit than the Republican candidate” vote.
HyperIon
well, that’s a relief. and what are your thoughts on the serial comma?
Rome Again
Wrong, I care very much about children, but that doesn’t mean I believe in conventional wisdom, or wingnuttery in the least. As a matter of fact, I think most of what conventional wisdom and wingnuttiness teach is absolutely backwards from what it’s supposed to be and they’re doing more harm to our children than I am.
;)