Letters to the Editor
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Gosh, ya think?
See my past letters for more on this completely obvious necessity for democrats.
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From your mouth to Hilary's ear
"I think the major problem in them so far has been a way that sometimes she talks like she's speaking into a megaphone. That amplifies the story that's already out there about her, that she's cold and -- I guess "shrill" would be the closest to what the story is."
I have said over and over that she needs to adopt a more conversational tone and get over the Ted Kennedy bellow every time she talks. I hope someone in her campaign is listening!
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Wow...so much to agree with
Let's start with this little gem:
Elections are won and lost on associations, and right now, unless there's another terrorist attack on our soil in the next 18 months, the connection to George Bush is going to be a tremendous liability for any candidate ...
What a sad state America has reached, when it's even conceivable that our government could do such a thing - create such an attack intentionally. But the trust is lost, for me at least, and it will be a long time coming back if ever. Thus I can't say with certainty that there's no way this could happen - and neither can any of you.
I have said for years that the reason, in a nutshell, that Dems keep losing is that they are too polite. It's a broad generalization, but I believe it's apt. We have for so long - I'm talking 40 years or more - tried not to stoop to the level of the Reps' nastiness, and in so doing have allowed the nastiness to go unanswered and thus to become part of the national meme. It's as if we thought that if we just ignored the ill-bred, rude little bastards long enough, that they would go away.
I think we see now, and have been seeing for at least as long as the Karl Rove era, how well that belief structure works.
Westen mentions Al Gore and the 2000 debates - specifically, I remember Bush trotting out that old "Gore claims to have invented the Internet" crapola, and Gore did not respond to it, except possibly with an audible sigh. Surely, said most Americans who saw it or heard about it, if it were untrue Gore wouldn't have allowed Bush to get away with saying it, right? And thus, due to lack of response, that story became part of the national mythos, and for a fair whack of Americans, remains so to this day.
Westen offers a scenario for Obama in which he might get the Coulter beast off his back, and perhaps shame her into stopping the schoolyard mocking of his middle name - let me take it a step further, and posit that what *I* want, and what I sense quite a number of my leftish colleagues want, is a general sense of the Dem candidates and Members of both Houses of Congress to start standing up to the Rep slime machine, to start, in essence, saying "STFU" to quite a lot of the crap the R's are putting out. But they won't, except at a very low level and very VERY occasionally.
And THAT is what I'm sick of, THAT is why Congress's approval rating is lower even than Bush's - I am overweeningly weary of seeing my party's leaders TAKING THE SHIT LYING DOWN YET AGAIN.
In addition to the current batch of freshman Dems mentioned in this story, see also the actions of Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY). He's not my congressman - I'm one district over and am stuck with Ron Lewis (R-Wingnuttia)- but I wish he were.
OK, to avoid going to book length, here's the story, Dems: good manners ain't gonna feed the bulldog.
I know it's arguable that the very qualities that caused you to choose to be a Dem to begin with might also be the very reasons that being tough in public discourse is so distasteful to you (and conversely, those qualities that make a person a Rep are exactly the ones that allow them to use such disgusting rhetoric etc. with no apparent pangs of conscience.)
But listen: if you get nothing else from this article, and my comment, and that of the others who are before and after me, get this:
You MUST learn to be sonsabitches when dealing with the Reps, or you will cease to exist as a political entity.
And so might America as a nation. Or at least as the nation we've thought we were for 200+ years.
We, the voters who put you there, have already given you permission to be SOB's. We can always fire you, as easily as we hired you, if you won't. November 08 ain't that far away.
And you know I ain't kiddin'.
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A number of the author's criticisms...
...are better suited for general election ads. While it is obviously true that Republicans and Independents will see these ads, what matters most at this stage is that the candidates appeal to Democratic voters. And not just any Democratic voters, but those Democratic voters who actually vote in primaries, or even more extreme, go out on a cold Monday night in January in Dubuque or Des Moines to stand up for three hours at a caucus.
I thought Barack Obama's ad showing testimonials from Republicans was particularly inappropriate. Republicans have demonized us liberals (again, that part of the Democratic coalition that show up for primaries) and called us traitors. We have no use for their approval, none. (By the way, I'm sure that the Republicans featured on that ad are probably decent and moderate and have no use for Ann Coulter, but who the hell cares? I see (R) and I see red!) Break out that ad in October 2008, Senator Obama, if you get that far.
Maybe a few snippets from Republicans' ads, when juxtaposed with these ads, might be illustrative. I would guess that a lot more "red meat" gets tossed out over their side. Are they worried about seeming too extreme at 15 months before the general election? I don't think so.
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Westen world
"The strategists for the Democrats in Congress seem to think that it's their words that matter, when in fact it's their deeds that matter, and the muddled messages that they convey when they back down in the face of an aggressive attack speak volumes to the American people about who the Democrats are. If they're trying to change the perception that the Democrats are weak in the face of aggression, the first way to do that is to stop being weak in the face of aggression at home and to stop being fearful every time the Republicans rattle their sabers."
There is both right and wrong in Westen's message-- on one hand he points to Jim Webb as an exemplar of how democratss should comport themselves, referring, mainly to his State of the Union response while neglecting to address Webb being among the dems who buckled on crossing over to vote with the GOP on this summer's FISA legislation. Likewise, I absolutely agree with him regarding Kerry's failure to defend himself. To me (and I imagine many others) he seemed more concerned about demonstrating his patrician aloofness and unwillingness to break into a sweat in response, only reinforcing a certain GOP narrative.
Unfortunately, our mediocre-- or worse-- big time national news outlets tend to take their cues from the opposition candidates during election cycles when it comes to critiquing administration policy, and during the week leading to the FISA vote, HRC and Obama absorbed a lot of the time the tv news devotes to politics in slinging sound bites back and forth regarding whether or not Obama was sufficiently tough or sufficiently experienced, when they could have been educating the public about what was at stake in the FISA vote and attacking Bush,jr.
One may object thusly, "yes, but isn't that the media's job to explain what's at stake? Shouldn't the candidates hash out their differences?"
Sure-- but the so-called "MSM" generally don't do their jobs, but just regurgitate sundry talking points. And the only "analysis" that occurs is disproportionately offered by right-wing blowhards who have their own axe to grind. And in the case of the FISA debate, one of the reasons the dems look weak is they generally don't allow for the big-time news organization not doing their jobs, and here the two leading candidates helped allow this to happen, even if they did so unwittingly.
Westen, at least in this interview, doesn't seem to be taking this disadvantage that dems face into account. Their "meta-message," the cumulative impression voters get about any given candidate, is only shaped by TV ads to a comparatively small extent. Westen talks about how the democrats are seen as wafflers, but doesn't touch upon how the recent utterances by at least four of the six candidates seeming to backtrack on getting us out of Iraq will hurt them. And unless they address this squarely, it will.