Sounds Orwellian, don't it? But on the other hand, that's the world we live in today. Up is down, white is black, and black isn't allowed to vote. We are dealing with people like Ed Kilgore, DLC apologiste extraordinaire whose explanation comes from the Twilight Zone by way of Richard Nixon's ghost and Richard Mellon Scaife's checkbook. In his Salon answer to Greenwald's serious criticisms, Kilgore makes it clear right off the bat that he's spent years sitting at the feet of Karl Rove and Frank Luntz.
Anyone who listens to the regular talk among progressive activists on- and offline is familiar with such terms of opprobrium for Democratic politicians, particularly in Congress, who are alleged to be ideologically unreliable, insufficiently partisan, too cozy with corporations, or subversive of efforts to fight the Bush administration.
No, Ed, they're not. They're "alleged" to be just like Republicans. This is Lee Atwater's old trick - define any criticism in extremist terms no matter how mild it is, and subtextually (know what that means, Ed? I bet you do) tar your opponents with a neon sign that shouts "Flaky! Irresponsible! Ideologues!" in the hope that it will distract people from seeing that it is your own positions which are flaky, irresponsible, and out of the mainstream. Sadly, this ancient and pathetic slight-of-hand, as creaky as the pulling-a-coin-out-of-your-ear bit, still works more often than not.
But if nothing else, Kilgore's resorting to a Right-wing debater's trick, and an antique one at that, this early in the game should tell you something about the whole DLC: if they look and talk like Republicans, that's because it's Republicans they worship and copy. Clinton got elected twice in the 90's by pretending to be a moderate Republican and ever since the DLC mavens have been punching his victory as proof that they were right.
But even if you were, Ed, this isn't the 90's any more.
It doesn't get any better. He drags out all the usual DLC talking points as if he's just discovered them, totally unsuspecting that they were debunked years ago.
Greenwald seems to think that it's self-evident that "complicity and capitulation" by Democrats are responsible for the extremely low approval ratings of the current Congress, and that the entire Democratic "base" shares his own feelings of betrayal on issues ranging from Iraq and FISA to the confirmation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
If Congress' unpopularity (the norm rather than the exception, regardless of party control, over the past two decades) is mostly attributable to Democrats, why then (as Greenwald himself points out in rationalizing immediate efforts to reduce their numbers) are Democrats poised to make significant gains in both houses in November?
Because everybody hates the Republicans even more, you moron.
Such limited polling as exists on perceptions of the two parties in Congress invariably shows higher ratings for Democrats than Republicans.
Well, look at your competition, fer chrissake. Everybody HATES THEM. This is the Luntz/Rove School (Dan Bartlett assisting) in which as long as there's anyone anywhere in the world who is worse than you are - a bigger murderer, a more autocratic dictator, or perhaps, someone who doesn't feel bad when he tortures people - then you're A-OK and nobody's got a thing to complain about. That kind of logic is how Rove lowered the bar for Bush so far that the concept of a bar lost all meaning. We are now all flailing around in the muck together.
Moreover, the disappointment and frustration of self-identified Democratic voters (the actual party "base," as distinguished from the "activist base," according to most definitions) with Congress' record undoubtedly encompass some recognition of the residual power, via the veto pen and other executive powers, of even the weakest president. And aside from continuing public ambivalence about how, exactly, to end the war in Iraq, there's simply not much evidence that issues like FISA or habeas corpus, much as they should matter to voters, actually do, even in the ranks of the Democratic "base."
And there, finally, the DLC coup-de-grace: Nobody cares. They've been using this one to devastating effect for over a decade though I can't imagine why it's as powerful or as convincing as it seems to be. Once upon a time it was considered the job of political parties to make voters care about their issues. Now it seems that in the Atwater/Rove/Kilgore Era, political parties don't even make themselves care about what's going on and can normally be found crouched in a corner quivering with outrage whenever anybody who does care dares to suggest that it's that uncaring attitude that makes voters not care ("If the party doesn't think it's worth worrying about, why should I?")
I could go on but I think I've made the point: the very people denying that Democrats are turning into Republicans are using Republican PR tactics to deny it. Take a look at Glenn's full list and ask yourself why it sounds soooo familiar.
When you've got a honker like the bill of a Macaw, it's kind of pointless to call it a "button nose".
There is one last thing to be said about Kilgore's "defense": where Greenwald centers his criticism on serious issues like the protection of the Constitution, the only thing that concerns Kilgore is Glenn's secondary argument that they should be removed. Ed, like every other member of the DLC PR Brigade who's ever tackled this, prefers to ignore or even ridicule those concernsIn hios rebuttal, he writes only about the numbers, making the case that Dems can WIN, without answering the much more serious questions everyone's actually discussing:
Do they deserve to win? What makes the results when they do any different fcrom when don't?
Greenwald:
It's difficult to imagine how even Reid and Pelosi themselves could contest the claim that the Democratic-led Congress, from the perspective of Democratic voters, has been a profound failure.
Kilgore:
According to Congressional Quarterly's (subscription-only) voting analysis, House Democrats achieved the highest level of party unity in history last year, with 92 percent sticking together on party-line votes (as compared with the low of 58 percent back in 1972). Senate Democrats' party-unity rating in 2007 was 87 percent, just below their all-time high of 89 percent (achieved in 1999 and 2001), and far above the levels common in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
The contrast is instructive.
It's becoming clearer by the day that whatever superficial differences may still exist between conservative extremists in the GOP and the slightly-less extreme Blue Dogs are fast vanishing like fog on a sunny morning. Their habits of mind, the way they think, what they want, and who they don't care about - us - are all the same. The Republicans hate us and the Democratic leadership thinks we're irrelevant, dangerous, and foolish. The outcome is the same - we get written off by both.
Greenwald's strategy is based on that small truth. He thinks we can force them to take us seriously if we can be the instrument of the defeat of a few of them. I'm willing to try it, gawd knows, but the more I learn about the Blue Dogs' deepest belief structures and the way their minds work, the less convinced I can make myself that they'll ever learn anything counter to what they believe now or that even humiliating losses will have any effect on them except to make them dig deeper and hang onto power harder, meanwhile clinging even more tightly to their cherished myths about how right they are. They're just, at root, too much like Republicans to change.
I'm afraid that the only way to break their power is to BREAK IT. No half measures. And to do that I might even be willing to suffer a McCain victory. The conservatives of the DLC, like all conservatives, never learn. They have to be broken and only a humiliating loss a la 1972 is going to do that. In fact, it may be that an overwhelming defeat is all that can save the Democrats from themselves.
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