April 6th, 2006
Chris Matthews, or Tweety, as he is affectionately known in the liberal blogsphere, is a total tool… just listen to him as he fawns and trips all over himself just before going on-the-air to “interview” the disgraced republican congressman Tom Delay. Man, any farther and Tweety, err, Chris Matthews, would’ve had his entire pumpkin head too far up to see the light of day ever again:
This video was originally posted at HuffingtonPost.com, by Harry Shearer.
Of course, as Harry Shearer points out, the money quote from this brief video is Tom Delay saying: “Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all,” in response to a comment by Chris Matthews on a focus group in which Hilliary Clinton did not do well.
April 3rd, 2006
“We’re all Sistah Souljah now.” This is how back in the 90s then candidate Bill Clinton re-branded himself as a different kind of Democrat — a New Centrist Democrat, critical of the apparent corruption of popular culture and not afraid to speak against it, even at the expense of calculatingly "alienating" a core Democratic voting block, African-Americans (at least that was the calculus):
Many will recall Sistah Souljah, a relatively obscure political rapper who was propelled into national fame by then-candidate Bill Clinton’s condemnation of her in 1992. It was a quick way for Clinton to position himself as a "New Democrat" who was mainstream, moderate, and "just like you and me" in his values (that is, of course, if "you and I" are suburban and middle-class.)
The centrist approach worked for Bill Clinton in ’92, but things were different then (including a three-candidate race).
[...]
In addition, Clinton picked a marginal figure in attacking Sistah Souljah.
This is how RJ Eskow introduces us to his thesis, Running Against the Base – Hillary, Obama, and the Democrats’ High-Risk Strategy:
"We’re all Sistah Souljah now." At least, those committed people who form the base of the Democratic Party might be forgiven for thinking that. The Party’s leading Presidential and Vice-Presidential contenders seem committed to running against the interests and values of their core constituents. It’s a very risky strategy – for them, and for their party.
Unfortunately, it is patently obvious that RJ Eskow has it right. The conventional wisdom in DC, in spite of the utter failure of conservatism as a governing force, is that to win national elections Dems must tack to the Right. This is how one can explain Hillary Clinton’s attempt to criminalize flag burning, and Barack Obama’s thumbing his nose at the activist base of the party by endorsing Joe Liberman, while the grassroots rallies around Ned Lamont (Liberman’s challenger in the primaries). And, of course, there was Senator Obama’s post at DailyKos.com where he, more or less, scolded the vocal base and urged that cooler heads and civility must prevail — now, of course, it’s hard to argue against that… I mean, who would prefer the opposite, right?
As RJ Eskow explains, aside from appearing cynical, opportunistic and unprincipled, treating the Dem base as Sistah Souljahs is risky:
There are number of risks for the party here. One is the fact that Presidential elections are decided far more on the basis of character and trust than are other elections. Like most voters, I’m more comfortable with a politician who sincerely disagrees with me about an issue (even a critical one like Iraq) than I am with one who appears calculating and cynical in the pursuit of my vote.
Another concern is having an energized base. The Democratic base may not perceive a "clear and present danger" in ’08 the way they did in ’04.
Now, in a fair and rational world one could easily respond to being treated like this by one’s representatives by simply saying, Fine, I’ll just take my vote elsewhere — to another party. Unfortunately, we live in a two-party winner-take-all system; thus, given practical realities, all we’ve got are the Dems — for better or for worse. It is because of this that Matt Stoller’s suggestion, which basically calls for progressives/liberals to assert ourselves in the Dem party, must be taken seriously. As Matt suggests, not now, but progressives/liberals must start to challenge the entrenched establishment/centrist interests during the primaries and, too, we must build a competing infrastructure within the party if progressives are to control the Democratic policy apparatus.
Sure, going after Sistah Souljah may have had some short-term pay off for Bill Clinton. However, over time, his system of triangulation, proved to be nothing more than a political Band-Aid; because, as we know, while Bill Clinton governed successfully, his tenure in office did not help nurture the progressive movement/grassroots, which is what would’ve been necessary to build a long-term governing coalition to challenge the then ascending Republican coalition. Rather, Bill Clinton chose to side with the corporatist of the DLC and, too, put all his eggs in the new-economy-workforce basket to be the new base of the Democratic Party.
In 2008 we’ll see just how far to the right some opportunist politicians are willing to go. In the meantime, I hope that we, progressives, take Matt’s suggestion to heart and begin to elbow our way to the table — it’s the only that party insiders will begin to pay any attention to us.
April 3rd, 2006
I must accept that I will never know the full story of how it was that my country was mis-lead to war by the conservative Bush Administration. Perhaps my kids, or my kids’ kids will one day learn the truth, after historians have had the opportunity to make sense of the record. A record that, it is clear, is warped and intentionally distorted… a record that the Bush Administration and its supporters will do their darndest to keep secret and in the dark — but, eventually, even in the darkest corners, light seeps in, and one day an intrepid historian will uncover how many of my contemporaries allowed themselves to be hypnotized by the Administration’s drums of war.
Now, while the full record may not be uncovered any time soon, if ever, little by little light is seeping:
After the fall of Baghdad, three years ago, the United States military began a secret investigation of the decision-making within Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. The study, carried out by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, drew on captured documents and interviews with former Baath Party officials and Iraqi military officers, and when it was completed, last year, it was delivered to President Bush. The full work remains classified, but “Cobra II,” a recently published book about the early phases of the war, by the Times reporter Michael Gordon and Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor, has disclosed parts of the study, and the Pentagon has released declassified sections, which Foreign Affairs has posted on its Web site. Reading them, it is easy to imagine why the Administration might resist publication of the full study. The extracts describe how the Iraq invasion, more than any other war in American history, was a construct of delusion. Frustratingly, however, we now understand much more about the textures of fantasy in Saddam’s palaces in early 2003 than we do about the self-delusions then prevalent in the West Wing.
[...]
The President and the members of his war cabinet now routinely wave at the horizon and speak about the long arc of history’s judgment—many years or decades must pass, they suggest, before the overthrow of Saddam and its impact on the Middle East can be properly evaluated. This is not only an evasion; it is bad historiography. Particularly in free societies, botched or unnecessary military invasions are almost always recognized as mistakes by the public and the professional military soon after they happen, and are rarely vindicated by time. This was true of the Boer War, Suez, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it will be true of Iraq. At best, when enough time has passed, and the human toll is not so palpable, we may come to think of the invasion, and its tragicomedy of missing weapons, as just another imperial folly, the way we now remember the Spanish-American War or the doomed British invasions of Afghanistan. But that will take a very long time, and it will never pass as vindication. — The New Yorker, Issue of 2006-04-03.
Now go and tell this to the 2,342 Americans that have died in this conservative president’s "construct of delusion;" and, then, turn around and tell the over 30,000 dead iraqis that they must wait decades to witness the fruits of their "liberation."
