Post by bounce on Feb 11, 2006 8:38:59 GMT -8
I got this in an e-mail this morning. I have no idea where it originated and I have no proof about Hillary's Hollywood campaign contributors. However, I believe it.
One sorry mess of a party
And for another week, the Democrats managed to hold themselves hostage
to, well, themselves.
Item 1 Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the wunderkind of the Democratic Party
who, we've been told, not only transcends race, partisanship and personal
ambition but actually sails above such concerns like the Winged Victory
of Samothrace, received his first shellacking this week by Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.).
McCain says Obama promised to join in a bipartisan lobbying reform effort
but reneged in favor of backing the Democrats' more partisan effort. So
McCain â?" the dashboard saint of bipartisan reform efforts â?" turned
Obama into epistolary roadkill.
In an archly sarcastic letter, McCain apologized for not realizing that
Obama was more interested in "self-interested partisan posturing," adding
that "I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I
failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical
gloss."
Item 2 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) returned a campaign
contribution from Wal-Mart while gladly pocketing cash from Paul Newman,
Reese Witherspoon and other Hollywood liberals. She even took a wad of
dough from Jerry Springer, who made his fortune proving that nothing is
too vile to broadcast. Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board from 1986 until
1992, and in that time the company was hardly any more "worker-friendly"
â?" to borrow a liberal term â?" than it is today. It's just a bigger
company now, with the same policies she oversaw. When asked if she ever
fought for "progressive" policies when she was a director of the company,
she replied, "Well, you know, I, that was a long time ago, I have to
remember. ..."
Item 3 The New York Times ran a state-of-the-art Democratic
self-recrimination story, highlighting the party's inability to make
political hay from such supposedly obvious Republican vulnerabilities as
Hurricane Katrina and the National Security Agency wiretapping. The
article was festooned like a Christmas tree with baubles of self-doubt
and ornaments of denial hanging from every branch: The Democrats are
frustrated by the party's "tangled" problems and their inability to
exploit this "pivotal moment," etc.
Some Democrats are furious that their party doesn't have its own ideas.
Others say they do have ideas; they're just keeping them secret for now.
That sounds a lot like the high school geek who insists that his
girlfriend is really hot but lives in an undisclosed location in Canada.
Others say agendas aren't that useful anyway. "People said, 'You can't
beat something with nothing,'" House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) told the Times, even though Democrats did exactly that on
Social Security. "I feel very confident about where we are," she assured
the paper.
And all this happened by Wednesday â?" and leaves out Jimmy Carter's
shabby and even mildly ghoulish exploitation of Coretta Scott King's
funeral.
"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but
then fail all the more completely because he drinks," George Orwell once
observed. This seems to capture nicely the dynamic of the Democrats'
shame spiral. Success in politics is measured by winning elections. On
this score, Democrats have been failures for a while now. In response,
they're getting drunk on a brew of partisanship and Bush-hating.
It is amazing how obvious â?" OK, even trite â?" is the Democratic
plight. Democrats need the money and energy of their "progressive,"
blog-addicted base, but in order to get it, they turn off mainstream
voters. In other words, they can't get escape velocity.
Clinton's Wal-Mart refund is a perfect illustration not merely of her
hypocrisy but of the quicksand she is now in. She thinks it's a winning
message to say she's too good for Wal-Mart's money but not Hollywood's.
That's not exactly red-state savvy.
Obama allowed himself to be seduced by the elixir of Democratic
self-righteousness at the expense of making real headway on lobbying
reform and hitching his wagon to the most popular politician in America.
And Pelosi has become enamored with the idea that one needn't be for
anything, as long as one is opposed to Bush. No doubt that's the feedback
she's getting in her echo chamber.
In the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid has infuriated Republican
moderates such as Arlen Specter more than GOP conservatives by
obstructing legislation and hurling partisan insults. This is exactly the
opposite strategy required for clawing out of the hole the Democrats are
in. But anti-Republicanism trumps everything. And that's a road map for
the Democrats to go ever deeper into the wilderness.
One sorry mess of a party
And for another week, the Democrats managed to hold themselves hostage
to, well, themselves.
Item 1 Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the wunderkind of the Democratic Party
who, we've been told, not only transcends race, partisanship and personal
ambition but actually sails above such concerns like the Winged Victory
of Samothrace, received his first shellacking this week by Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.).
McCain says Obama promised to join in a bipartisan lobbying reform effort
but reneged in favor of backing the Democrats' more partisan effort. So
McCain â?" the dashboard saint of bipartisan reform efforts â?" turned
Obama into epistolary roadkill.
In an archly sarcastic letter, McCain apologized for not realizing that
Obama was more interested in "self-interested partisan posturing," adding
that "I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I
failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical
gloss."
Item 2 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) returned a campaign
contribution from Wal-Mart while gladly pocketing cash from Paul Newman,
Reese Witherspoon and other Hollywood liberals. She even took a wad of
dough from Jerry Springer, who made his fortune proving that nothing is
too vile to broadcast. Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board from 1986 until
1992, and in that time the company was hardly any more "worker-friendly"
â?" to borrow a liberal term â?" than it is today. It's just a bigger
company now, with the same policies she oversaw. When asked if she ever
fought for "progressive" policies when she was a director of the company,
she replied, "Well, you know, I, that was a long time ago, I have to
remember. ..."
Item 3 The New York Times ran a state-of-the-art Democratic
self-recrimination story, highlighting the party's inability to make
political hay from such supposedly obvious Republican vulnerabilities as
Hurricane Katrina and the National Security Agency wiretapping. The
article was festooned like a Christmas tree with baubles of self-doubt
and ornaments of denial hanging from every branch: The Democrats are
frustrated by the party's "tangled" problems and their inability to
exploit this "pivotal moment," etc.
Some Democrats are furious that their party doesn't have its own ideas.
Others say they do have ideas; they're just keeping them secret for now.
That sounds a lot like the high school geek who insists that his
girlfriend is really hot but lives in an undisclosed location in Canada.
Others say agendas aren't that useful anyway. "People said, 'You can't
beat something with nothing,'" House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) told the Times, even though Democrats did exactly that on
Social Security. "I feel very confident about where we are," she assured
the paper.
And all this happened by Wednesday â?" and leaves out Jimmy Carter's
shabby and even mildly ghoulish exploitation of Coretta Scott King's
funeral.
"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but
then fail all the more completely because he drinks," George Orwell once
observed. This seems to capture nicely the dynamic of the Democrats'
shame spiral. Success in politics is measured by winning elections. On
this score, Democrats have been failures for a while now. In response,
they're getting drunk on a brew of partisanship and Bush-hating.
It is amazing how obvious â?" OK, even trite â?" is the Democratic
plight. Democrats need the money and energy of their "progressive,"
blog-addicted base, but in order to get it, they turn off mainstream
voters. In other words, they can't get escape velocity.
Clinton's Wal-Mart refund is a perfect illustration not merely of her
hypocrisy but of the quicksand she is now in. She thinks it's a winning
message to say she's too good for Wal-Mart's money but not Hollywood's.
That's not exactly red-state savvy.
Obama allowed himself to be seduced by the elixir of Democratic
self-righteousness at the expense of making real headway on lobbying
reform and hitching his wagon to the most popular politician in America.
And Pelosi has become enamored with the idea that one needn't be for
anything, as long as one is opposed to Bush. No doubt that's the feedback
she's getting in her echo chamber.
In the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid has infuriated Republican
moderates such as Arlen Specter more than GOP conservatives by
obstructing legislation and hurling partisan insults. This is exactly the
opposite strategy required for clawing out of the hole the Democrats are
in. But anti-Republicanism trumps everything. And that's a road map for
the Democrats to go ever deeper into the wilderness.