About The Dems

James Carville on moving the Donkey:

The problem with Democrat campaign speeches is “litany,” and they need more narrative like Winnie the Pooh stories, political consultant and pundit James Carville said.

Oh, I don't know - the Dems don't lack for "poo" - it's the "Win" bit that seems to stump them.

And the WaPo offers some Dem consultants advising all of us to stay away from liberals, and, if confronted by one, to back away slowly while avoiding eye contact or sudden gestures.

Actually, the link is broken right now, so I'm just guessing.

And cheap shots notwithstanding, we are always interested in ideas for promoting a healthy two-party system.  Here is the Memeorandum reaction.

Comments

[SteveMG]

Not to court liberals: I'm sure that this bit of advice will go over quite well with the leftwing elements.

Anyway, that'd be a good tag for a blog. "No courting of liberals allowed."

Speaking of courting the left, in college, the head of the Spartacus Youth League hit on me. No deal, I hid the salami (thanks for the line Governor Dean) - she didn't shave her armpits and I sure didn't want to find out about her other grooming habits.

Bears repeating: The inability of the liberal/left to reconfigure itself is because, unlike the right during its wilderness years, there is no feedback or ability to correct mistakes. Kaus calls it the echo chamber cocoon. Real problem and to start, you've got to acknowledge it exists.

The academia is dominated by the liberal/left, the news media still leans left, the international community (if you will) leans left, or at least the elite world opinion tilts to the port. Howls of protest from our left poster friends on the above, but come on gentlemen. Delete the Kos and Atrios bookmarks and wake up.

It is no accident, as the Marxists used to say, that the right's success was, in part, a result of them being forced, again in part, by the liberal/left elites to excommunicate the crazies from the movement. The Birchers, the Liberty Lobby types, et cetera were all jetissoned by Buckley et al. Don't see a similar call today from the intelligentsia for the liberal/left to do the same thing.

Until the movement gets rid of these more hardline types who wish to attain power more than they wish to enact good policies, I don't see much chance of success.

It seems to me that most of America believes that this is basically a good country, albeit with shortcomings, and that we're a force for good in the world. Many on the left think America is basically a bad country but with some good things about it, and is essentially a force for mischief and disruption in the world.

Until one of those things change, things won't change.

SMG

[Paul]

"It seems to me that most of America believes that this is basically a good country, albeit with shortcomings, and that we're a force for good in the world. Many on the left think America is basically a bad country but with some good things about it, and is essentially a force for mischief and disruption in the world."

Bingo.

First of all, by any objective reckoning the left is dead wrong on this and is merely regurgitating the Marxist propaganda it has so naively swallowed and internalized for decades.

Secondly, in order to "correct" the imagined disasterous trajectory of U.S. foreign and domestic policy the left proposes...what? Enacting socialist policies at home, in spite of their repeated failures in every application, and appeasement and self abasement abroad? This will only appeal to those who loathe America and thirst for it's humiliation, if not it's outright destruction, and those who are woefully ignorant of both history and basic economics. In other words, the hard left Cindy Sheehan-Michael Moore-Hollywood-Berkeley crowd. Though to be sure the DeMSM and Academia are trying their damndest to expand this base.

[TexasToast]

We aren't "good" - and we aren't "evil" - we are just the most powerful - for now. Power creates rivalry - in any sociological context.

This good/evil manachean idea is most pernicious - and no "objective reconing" is possible in the context of an a priori moral judgment of "goodness". That makes all further discussion beg the question.

This idea that there is an "objective" moral right to do what we please, invade who we want, and impose our values on others is preposterous. More later.

[SteveMG]

TexasToast:
Well, you (may have) inadvertently proved my point (btw, I hear a lot of voices on the left ascribe the "evil" label to Bush; nuanced Manichaeanism?).

Anyway, let's set aside the ontological and etymological debates.

Try this: Since its inception, has the United States of America been more of a positive development or more of a negative one in world history?

Or: Has mankind been overall benefited by or hurt by America's existence?

Or: Is mankind, today, in toto benefited by or injured by America?

Not really hard, it seems to me.

SMG

[Ryan James]

“… is being a Democrat.”

So says Democrat James Carville to other Democrats at Northwestern University.

Let’s see… equating a Democratic message with “pooh” and “crap.”

Indeed, sir.

[JayDee]

The problem with the Dems - which Carville will never be able to address - is that they simply don't have a leader who can enunciate clear policy goals that people understand. There's no passion, no idealism.

But it's emerging, and the last thing the Dems will, or should , do is jettison that portion of their party that is passionate.

The Social Security defeat for the Repubs is instructive. People who voted for Bush, people who adore Bush, turned against it in droves. Why? Because Americans at heart absolutely believe in a social safety net and a sense of community responsibility. They know the system is stacked against the less than wealthy and they aren't willing to risk their own dignity supporting a utopian ideal that they don't believe in.

The Dems won on this issue because it was as plain as the nose on Bozo's face and the Repubs didn't see it. They came out loud and clear about it, because they were certain. The problem with the Dems in general is that they aren't braver, and they're too beholden to corporate interests themselves.

The Social Security defeat is also instructive as to why Bush nominated Miers. They weren't going to risk having a Janice Brown shooting her mouth off at hearings, defending her beliefs that minimum wage and Social Security are unconstitutional. They have to hide their true agenda from the American people. I really don't know why the Dems don't take advantage of this, beyond the corporate whoredom (though maybe that's enough). Personally, I think if Kerry had come out cursing at the Swifties, he'd be President right now. People have hearts and souls. The Repubs manipulate that, the Dems ignore it.

[Paul Zrimsek]

One of the things the American public has not failed to notice is that somehow the squishy relativism only gets trundled out whenever the claim is that we're good. No such preemption of all moral debate takes place when the accusations of evil start flying; when it comes to these, we're expected to at least consider the possibility that they're true. The non-Manichean position on Abu Ghraib, for example, has yet to be heard from.

[JayDee]

The question of American chauvinism: I never understood the Republican addiction to believing in an almost supernatural goodness for the USA. I believe that our Revolution and our Constitution and our philosopher founders were a powerful force for good in world history. I believe that in WWII we fought on the side of goodness and defeated evil. But I don't think there's some genetic component that insures any and all American behavior is automatically of a moral superiority to those of other human beings. That's absurd. We have to earn respect every day, like everyone else in this world.

I think Repubs are off course thinking liberal Democrats aren't patriots. To the contrary, we believe we are embracing the real spirit of the Constitution. Republicans have perverted it, through their advocacy of the personhood of corporations, for example, as a means to accrue unnatural wealth for a miniscule minority. This is a perversion of the Constitution and of our founding principles, in the minds of liberals. The USA was created as a haven for individual liberty and has become, under Republican domination, merely a haven for the accrual of wealth and power to the few. That kind of America is despised because it's really a shameful blasphemy of the American raison d'etre. It isn't America that is good, but America is good to the extent its people uphold the spirit of the founding American principles.... Speaking for myself of course.

[TexasToast]

There are certainly acts of evil - 9/11, Abu G, the London Underground bombings - its the notion of a priorigoodness justifying acts of evil that I object to.

to answer your question directly, from wher I sit the US has and is a net positive. Lets not blow it by acting like God and trying to recreate everone else in our own image.

[JayDee]

I agree the USA, at this point in history, is a net positive. But it's going through some dark days.

[Paul Zrimsek]

In that case, TT, you're flailing at a strawman. If I may take the liberty of speaking for such a large group of people: conservatives do not believe that America's goodness is axiomatic, only that it is obvious. By the same token, our support for the intervention in Iraq is not based on the belief that that sort of thing is our prerogative everywhere and always just by virtue of our being America, but on the belief that it was the right thing to do in the specific situation at hand. Does everyone see the difference?

JayDee's attempt at a patriotic ode reminded me of this:

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous.... since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother-- the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

[JayDee]

That quote says a lot more about your preconceptions, Paul, than it does anything I wrote, or intended.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Jay, if you continue going around calling America (the actual, existing America) a "shameful blasphemy", you're going to find that my preconceptions are pretty widely shared.

[JayDee]

Geez, "that kind of America" is a blasphemy. A vision of America as a haven for wealth and power to the few as a blasphemy to the original American principles. In other words, oligarchy is antithetical to fundamental American values. Lay off, Zrimsek. One of these days you guys are going to have to acknowledge that "personal property" was NOT the only liberty the founding fathers sacrificed their lives to protect.

I'd like to hear you respond to my comments on Social Security. The prideful Republican self appropriation of patriotism, based on a willful confusion of patriotism with chauvinism, is a concept whose usefulness in political manipulations has been played and overplayed. The people are on to that game now. Show some ingenuity.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Pal, I'd love to respond to your comments about the imaginary plot to abolish Social Security. But I'm too busy laying off.

[AT]

The Social Security defeat for the Repubs is instructive. People who voted for Bush, people who adore Bush, turned against it in droves. Why? Because Americans at heart absolutely believe in a social safety net and a sense of community responsibility. They know the system is stacked against the less than wealthy and they aren't willing to risk their own dignity supporting a utopian ideal that they don't believe in.

Stocks were up today. Why? Because there was a nitrous oxide leak at the NYSE today and everyone was euphoric. While it may be fun to state that certain things are "absolutely" true without any supporting evidence, and despite established theories and contervailing evidence that make other conclusions far more likely, it doesn't burnish your intellectual reputation.

Americans don't want to change Social Security simply because they are absolutely socialists at heart? See, there's this thing called "public choice theory," which works much better. Start from where we are now, which is a system that taxes future generations to provide present and past retirees with superior returns on their investments. Who would not want to change this? Obviously, current and imminent retirees, i.e. anyone over 55, and poorer workers because the system actually gives them decent returns. Who would want to change it? Younger workers with middling or higher incomes, children, and posterity. Who doesn't care? People with no incomes. All you have to do is some demographic arithmetic and then consider which of these groups have the franchise to see why reform of Social Security is impossible. This conclusion would be reinforced by polling data.

To the contrary, we believe we are embracing the real spirit of the Constitution.

Ahh, so you found the lost Article 0 of the Constitution: "Purpose and Findings." Darn, that would have made 200 years of bloody struggle over the meaning of the Constitution unnecessary. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my Constitution is inanimate.

Republicans have perverted it, through their advocacy of the personhood of corporations, for example, as a means to accrue unnatural wealth for a miniscule minority.

You'd think these corporations were a gang of 6'4" white men from the Northeast wearing top hats and spats and chasing women and children through dark alleys and stealing their cookies. Again, I'm pretty sure I've never had one of these corporations with personhood do unnatural things to me. Also, I think well over half of Americans own corporations.

This is a perversion of the Constitution and of our founding principles, in the minds of liberals.

Somethin's perverted, all right.

The USA was created as a haven for individual liberty and has become, under Republican domination, merely a haven for the accrual of wealth and power to the few.

I'd point out that actually, even if true, these two points are not logically related, but Howard Zinn makes baby Jesus cry.

That kind of America is despised because it's really a shameful blasphemy of the American raison d'etre.

That must be why everyone wants to move here. Note: unnecessary French is pretentious.

It isn't America that is good, but America is good to the extent its people uphold the spirit of the founding American principles.... Speaking for myself of course.

Of course. The only difference between you and me is that I take my founding principles from the men who wrote the Constitution.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Unnecessary French may be pretentious, but sometimes you want to use it faute de mieux. For instance, when pointing out the absurdity of portraying the Founding Fathers (who were well acquainted with corporations, and not at all with Social Security) as Green Party members avant la lettre.

[kim]

I dreamed I saw Joe Wilson last night.
========================================

[Jim Rockford]

JayDee -- your comments are Exhibit A on why Dems lose. OF COURSE Dems are not Patriots. How could they be when Dems do not believe in a "supernatural goodness for the USA." Reps believe (as do almost all Americans) that the American Dream as exemplified by Dr. King, FDR, etc is the strongest force for good in the world. Dems believe that the US is basically a force for evil or at best neutral and that we should "shut up" and follow our betters (such as the Europeans).

The usual anti-corporation sentiments are of course icing on the cake. For all means let's live in feudalistic squalor or at best Jeffersonian agrarian aristocracy and dirt poor tenant farmers. Sorry the nation has embraced Hamilton's vision, which has made the average American have a better life than the crowned heads of Europe 200 years ago.

The desire of a few to live under a Philosopher king (with themselves as natural leaders) is very old (and frankly, ugly). Castro, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and everyone else who wanted to make a "new man" used this tendency and it's large presence in the Dem Party is particularly ugly and self-defeating.

Dems will win when they love their country and the common man, stand with him/her instead of looking down in contempt at the "yokels" from the West Side of Manhattan or Malibu. Of course the weakness for talk as exemplified by West Wing blather instead of military action will have to be overcome. But that's another story.

[kim]

Joe Hill sees the Man's regulations hardening and cheapening his daily labor, and an increasing portion of the fruits of his labor disappearing as taxes into the Man's maw.
==============================================

[kim]

And Social Security is the kind of income transfer scheme that should make him rise up out of his grave.
===============================================

[Seven Machos]

This is all so rich. The liberal ninnies here are demonstrating why they can't win in their very own writing.

Texas Toast is my favorite:

"From where I sit the US has and is a net positive." What does "postive" mean? Clearly, it doesn't have anything do with any antiquated concept like "good" because "we aren't 'good' and we aren't 'evil.'" No, the U.S. is "just the most powerful -- for now." However, "there are certainly acts of evil - 9/11, Abu G, the London Underground bombings."

Ultimately, our Tex rejects "the notion of a priori goodness justifying acts of evil." What the @#$%& does this mean? Who knows? Who could possibly know? Tex, do you really think that people are impressed when you fumble around with Latin?

Rarely have I seem such a potent combination of ignorance, stupdity, and incoherence. I hope your philosophy professors urged you to follow another careerpath, Tex. I'd suggest a career, but I feel like I'd be disrespecting the intelligence of the good -- or, for you, Tex, "good" -- people in that field.

[Seven Machos]

Also, JayZeeDee -- Show me the part where any elected Republicans have tried to abolish Social Security.

Have fun slaying all those bad Republican dragons who want to abolish Social Secuirty, bring back Jim Crow, boil your puppy, force Mexican children to work in sweatshops, make sixth graders memorize Corinthians, and all the rest. Strawmen sure are fun, ain't they?

[AT]

I think I do know what he's saying, but it's a straw man and he knows it. Didn't someone already point out that conservative intellectuals believe American goodness isn't axiomatic but rather merely obvious? Sheesh.

[Paul]

By all means, what kind of fools would want a CHOICE in whether or not we pay into social security as we always have, or invest some fraction of it privately. Of course we are incapable of making such decisions wisely and must have the Nanny State dictate the appropriate behavior.

That's all Bush's SS plan was. A friggin' choice.

No wonder liberals are perpetual losers. Even with the media covering frantically for them.

I think the bottom line with lefty twits like Jay Dee is they hate rich people more than they care about poor people. They're stuck in the by now thoroughly debunked zero sum Marxist economic mindset, and their intractable obtuseness is fixed by their bottomless well of ill will towards the rich. If they really cared about poor people they would accept the basic economic reality that a wealth creating capitalist system, while allowing some to become very rich, brings the highest standard of living to the greatest number of people and actually improves the standing of it's poorest people better than any other system. Their default reflex to punish the wealthy with government sanctioned confiscation always is an economy killer and winds up hurting the poor the most.

But they are not operating by logic and cogent analysis of empirical facts. They operate from an emotional stance, primarily envy and hatred. And rage when they are frustrated in their grab for power. Liberals are haters, first and foremost. Anyone can see it.

[Daddy]

"America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." Haven't got my De Tocqueville near at hand, but it seems to me that when the young Frenchman made that observation some 170 years ago, he pretty much hit the Goddam bulls-eye.

[susan]

All I know is that Democrats want the common American to be equally poor all the time equally crying victim so that Hollywood has a cause to emote feelings. Sure, George Clooney is conflicted having his wild wealth, his big villas, his private jets, his personal security guards but he is a man of the commoner and needs to make more movies to make the commoner feel good about living under Equality of Poverty.

There was a time in my life where I blindly believed Democrats cared about the poor and the middle class then I found out how many uber-rich Democrats there really are who have made all their uber-wealth in a poverty con-game called 'give us the money and we'll take care of you for life'. I was the Democrat's useful idiot feeling good about promoting the Equality of Poverty.

America is great because we commoners have the freedom to attain our own destiny, not the destiny written by uber-rich actors who are under the direction of Tzar Soros.

[JayDee]

No wonder liberals are perpetual losers.... lefty twits like Jay Dee ...and their intractable obtuseness .... Rarely have I seem such a potent combination of ignorance, stupdity, and incoherence.

AND

Liberals are haters, first and foremost. Anyone can see it.

LOL. Whatever, dudes. You might as well have your computers auto generate your Randian blah blah. The fact is the average American doesn't have economic theories, or even political loyalty. They're mostly motivated by nonsense, such as my mother, who voted for Bush because "he has a lovely wife". A lot of men, especially the poor Southern kind, vote Repub because they're satisfying their inadequacies by enjoying vicarious war. Flame me all you want, but we all know this is true. Most voting is done on an emotional level. That's why advertising is so key to elections.

Daddy has it exactly right. This bullshit about a priori goodness (is unnecessary latin also pretentious?) is nothing more than pride and hubris, disgusting human traitts, wrapped in a flag. America is good if it does good, and not if it doesn't. Geez, one would think this would be obvious and indisputable. But such is the nature of hubris.

I'm going to enjoy the howling from parts such as these now that the tide has started its inevitable shift. I'm not even a Dem, rather an Independent, but I'll clue you guys in on a few things that you should accept as givens - Dems aren't Marxists and they don't see America as inherently evil. I'll just leave it at that, because even that much will produce a shitstorm from all you non-haters. Have a good one!

[kim]

We should have some polysci guy wander in to point out to JD that Red State poor are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican.
=============================================

[kim]

Look we know you don't think Amerika is evil, it's just the corporations(Capitalism...shh). Well, why don't you look upon corporations as a huge instrument for peace?
======================================================

[kim]

de T recognized a moral force that still pertains, though disbelieved by the left. Purple fingers would understand Alexis.
============================================

[kim]

JD, Joe Hill voted for Bush in '04, Gore before.
==================================================

[kim]

I hate to have to be explicit, it's so efficient.

Today's Liberal Hero: Joe Wilson.

Your Grandmother's Liberal Hero: Joe Hill.

That's says a lot right there. Too many modern liberals and Democrats are about as populist as, well, say, John Kerry.
===========================================

[Syl]

I'd just like some liberal to explain the 'values we're trying to shove down other peoples throats'.

[Paul]

"A lot of men, especially the poor Southern kind, vote Repub because they're satisfying their inadequacies by enjoying vicarious war. Flame me all you want, but we all know this is true."

Wow. I knew you were an ignorant bigot but this statement is a real jawdropper.

"The fact is the average American doesn't have economic theories, or even political loyalty."

The average American is more likely to vote Repub than Dem (see recent election results) and what we're calling "liberals" these days are WAY to the left of average. And yes these liberals have absorbed Marxist principals like exploitation of the common man (such as those white southern men with their "inadequacies" you mentioned), by the capitalist class and zero sum economics, as well as a loathing for capitalism in general and corporations in particular. Whether or not they are aware of the genesis of their beliefs is open to question, but no one can deny Gramsci has been successful.

"I'm going to enjoy the howling from parts such as these now that the tide has started its inevitable shift."

Uhmm...As disgusted as people are with the spineless Republicans and their profligate spending they are even more revolted by the Dems, who are clearly insane. In other words the Repubs are losing ground, but nowhere near as rapidly as the Dems, and the tide you're perceiving is simply the reenforcement of the wishful thinking you people indulge in in your lefty echo chambers.

Like it or not the Dems have been the "blame America first" party since the 70's, and that's a lose lose position. Since most Americans can't buy the idea that we're the main source of the world's ills the Dem's support is in a constant downward spiral. If somehow the left convinces the majority of the electorate of America's corruptness and perfidy the ensuing national self loathing will destroy the country from the inside. Of course that has been the goal of the international left all along, and the Jay Dees of America truly are Lenin's useful idiots.

[JayDee]

Yo, Paul, thanks for not letting all the eeeeeeeeeevil libs hoard all the hate! Careful with all those stereotypes, though, your brain might be getting calcified. You do realize the McCarthy era ended about 50 years ago, right? It must suck to have to know what's best for every man woman and child, and have the word from God on high that America is infallible and morally perfect for all the rest of recorded time...yet have to live in this free society where people, like, get to think for themselves. Sorry for your pain, man. It ain't going away any time soon.

[kim]

Commerce is pacific.
=====================

[Paul]

" Careful with all those stereotypes, though, your brain might be getting calcified. "

Pot meet kettle.

FYI I'm an atheist who has an interracial marriage, and is a professional musician who works mostly in black bands. I don't care if you're gay, would like to see drugs decriminalized and want the government out of our bedrooms AND pockets. Not YOUR stereotype of a right wing knuckle dragger, eh?

As for knowing what's best for everyone of course that's the socialist elitist's mantra, not the free market small l libertarian freedomist's like myself, so once again you're projecting.

You're a typical myopic and incoherent lefty. Nothing you say addresses any of my points, and your own anti-corporate capitalist rhetoric's Marxist pedigree is obvious to anyone who has studied any political history and theory, so that silly McCarthy bullshit doesn't wash.

Where did I say "America is infallible and morally perfect for all the rest of recorded time"? Nowhere. Once again your hypocritical stereotyping at work.

You're about as much of a freethinker as any other brain dead moonbat memebot, so keep your self congratulations to yourself. It's embarassing, as it would appear you've never been burdened with an original thought in your life.

As to my "pain", once again you must be projecting as I live the life I love, and love the life I live. Nothing compares to making music for nourishing the soul, IMO, and I get PAID to do it. How cool is that?

Not only that, I'm still giddy from watching your boy the war-traitor Johnny Fraud go down in defeat, and I'm looking forward to you and yours finding your rightful place in the dustbin of history, which is inevitable.

[kim]

Hey Johnny Came Swimming Home: Show us the records.
=========================================