Politics

Teresa Heinz Kerry screwed up yesterday, and actually spoke the truth about the idiotic Democrat debates (and I have no doubt if there were nine Republicans, it would be just as idiotic):

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, says nine-way presidential debates are “silly” and a waste of time for the candidates and the voters.

“I don’t think it really helps the American people, I don’t think it helps the candidates,” Heinz Kerry told the Boston Herald in an interview published Tuesday, the same day her husband was to face his rivals in a debate in his home town.

Heinz Kerry said debates have become about scoring a punch with quick soundbites.

“It’s just silly,” she said. “I think those debates are really unproductive and they made it hard for all of them to (get their message across).”

Speak it, sister. These debate formats are absurd, and the winner every time they have held one is George Bush. These formats, as she has stated, are all about souindbites, and that is the only reason every time they have had one of these debates it has been all about the vile Al Sharpton. In fact, it appears the Rev. Al was up to his usual tricks tonight:

A heated exchange between the candidates erupted when Cooper asked former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean to clarify his recent remark that he wanted to be the candidate for “guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks.”

“Martin Luther King said that it was his dream that the sons of slaveholders and the sons of slaves sit down around a table and make common good,” Dean said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said, “First of all, Martin Luther King said, ‘Come to the table of brotherhood.’ You can’t bring a Confederate flag to the table of brotherhood.”

Sharpton went on to address Dean: “You are not a bigot, but you appear to be too arrogant to say, ‘I’m wrong,’ and go on.”

Dean did not back down: “We’re not going to win this country, and even worse, Democrats, if we don’t have a big tent.”

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina later said, “Unless I missed something, Governor Dean still has not said he was wrong. Were you wrong, Howard?”

“No, I wasn’t, John Edwards, because people who vote who fly the Confederate flag, I think they are wrong because I think the Confederate flag is a racist symbol,” Dean said.

“But I think there are lot of poor people who fly that flag because the Republicans have been dividing us by race since 1968 with their Southern race strategy.”

Those wascally wepublicans and their southern strategy. Actually, idiots, you have been dividing yourself with your own southern strategy for the last 20 years. At any rate, tersea Kerry was right- and her husband will probably pay the price.

BTW- All the candidates were asked if they ever used pot, and Lieberman, Clark, Sharpton(good thing they didn’t ask about any failed coke deals, right Al?) and Kucinich (who I think is on acid) said no, only Mosely-Braun had the dignity to refuse to answer (good for her- and I am as shocked as anyone to be praising CMB), and Dean, Edwards, and Kerry said yes. Assholes- that was the perfect opportunity for all of you to say “It is none of your damned business, and it is none of the government’s business either.”

She Speaks The Truth- And Will Probably Be Punished For ItPost + Comments (9)

If the DNC reads this Max Sawicky post, they might be able to stave off their free-fall into irrelvance:

Dean’s comments about seeking the votes of people who put Confederate flag stickers on their trucks are not objectionable; they are praiseworthy. The other candidates are indulging in cheap moral posturing and race politics. As public policy, we can criticize hanging the Stars and Bars on the Courthouse without futile attempts to marginalize individuals for their own choices in this vein.

What’s at stake is whether we are going to have class politics in the U.S. Cultural conservatism, which in the South can include some type of sentimentality for the Lost Cause, or resentment of what is perceived as excess in the name of civil rights, should not be treated as an enemy ideology. I am not talking about adherence to segregation in public accommodations, denial of the right to vote, or other obvious breaches of democracy that nobody in good faith could endorse.

Coalitions are about reaching understandings through dialogue and/or compromise with people of different views. The Democratic Party needs to be a coalition of working people. It needs to ease up on cultural and social liberalism. I mean fetishes about gun control and tobacco. It needs to stop pretending that Southern whites are more racist than other people. It needs to welcome the “seamless web” Catholics who oppose both abortion and the death penalty. It needs to stop overselling rehabilitation and underselling punishment. It needs to find ways of establishing reasonable environmental regulation other than on the backs of workers. What it endorses as a party is ideally the outcome of a rational debate and compromise on these issues. For some, one or another such compromise could be a ‘deal-breaker.’ So be it. That’s the process we need. The constant and lodestar should be an unwavering commitment to the living standards of working people, and opposition to the corporativist, war-mongering ways of the Republican Party.

Granted, I do not necessarily agree with his final remarks about the Republican Party, but if Democrats ever intend to win again, they need to stop acting like the only people who live in the South are the Dixie Chicks and a few former slaves. To show you what Max’swing of the Democrat party is up against, a commenter to this very reasonable post from Max attempted to do just what Max had cautioned against- ‘cheap moral postuing and race politics’- when he said:

Max: you think you can win majority support for your “progressive” economic agenda returning the socially marginal–uppity blacks, feminist women, gays–to their proper places at the back of the Democratic Party bus. To which I can only say, not with my vote you won’t, pal. This is the same game the smart-ass White Boys at the DLC have been playing for years (albeit with a very different economic agenda from yours). Well, here’s a news flash for you *and* the Bubbas: that game’s over.

-and-

And I find his empathy, if not sympathy, for the neo-Confederates deeply repugnant. If they are not representatives of an “enemy ideology,” then I don’t know who is.

Max’s response:

*** wants to have his/her cake and eat it too. Also his/her pie, sorbet, and chocolate mousse. If the full plate of progressive positions was a going political concern, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. So demanding it embodies a desire for political irrelevance, or some kind of elaborate wishful thinking. Multiple organizing principles mean no principles at all.

The rest of your argument is just inflating my words until they look like something ugly. Sorry but opposition to affirmative action does not equal racism; opposition to gay marriage does not equal homophobia; etc. I don’t have those positions, but making any deviation from liberal orthodoxy on them into a moral indictment is obnoxious and, as we have all seen, spectacularly ineffective politics. If you want to bear moral witness, I suggest joining a monastery or a trotskyist sect.

It just sounds so much better when a limousine liberal is smacked down by a progressive than when they are smacked down by a conservative.

Uh Oh- They are LearningPost + Comments (24)

John Hawkins has two great interviews up that you should read. The first is with Bernard Goldberg, the second with Michael Medved. Go check them both out.

More Great InterviewsPost + Comments (2)

I am of the opinion that the primary process is broken. How do we fix it?

Primary ConcernsPost + Comments (31)