Letters to the Editor
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Can't agree more
Why is it so obvious for us to see, and they do not? Bush and his co-horts has given the Dems all they need to ouster the Republicans in November, and yet they seem totally oblivious. If roles were reversed, the Republicans would be crushing their throats with their heels until November, never allowing them a chance to catch their breath. You have to fight fire with fire.
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Who Is Moses?
Maybe Al Gore can lead us out of GOPgypt. If he runs again, he will not be facing W.Bush again. So it will not be just a re-run. Gore was an inept candidate six years ago, but he has learned. And why did he give up so meakly after the 2000 election? I always have thought Bush/Cheney/Rove must have naughty pictures of him.
Be that as it may, if Al comes out with guns blazing this time, he is our best candidate. And if he confesses the naughty pictures, we will forgive him and vote for him.
Senator Clinton has deep, unrecognized strength among American women, but just that name Clinton would mobilize legions of Irrationals, and would doom her. She might be a great Vice Presidebtial candidate, though.
Senator Obama is too new. However, he might be a wonderful Democratic/Smart version of Dan Quayle.
Where the heck is General Clark? Does anybody besides Timbuktom take him seriously?
Finally, could Senator McCain turn out to be Moses???? ???????
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The only 'lumping' going on around here joanna is the lump between your ears
Democracy Now! is not "marginalized" by anybody but the marketplace of ideas. Amy Goodman is a self-righteous bore. She is a humorless idealogue of the whacked out left fringe. You can't name a single interview she's ever done, nor a story she has produced, that didn't have a left tilt to it.
I didn't lump DN and Fox, I offered them as examples of the extremes. You nitpick one sentence out of my post to "take issue" with. Well, you've got some "issues" all right if you think Amy Goodman is any more "fair and balanced" than Sean Hannity.
Bah!
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You Must Be Kidding, Gary, Right?
I have read silly pieces of journalism on this site, Gary, but this article takes the cake.
Where does one begin? With your ceaseless, broad based bashing of the Democrats? With political analysis that is so poor, it's astonishing?
You're so right, Gary, if only the Democrats would come up with a platform like you've espoused, they would win.
Kamiya: They should acknowledge that we grossly overestimated al-Qaeda's strength from the beginning, and that, as James Fallows argues in the Atlantic, they are far weaker now. They should point out what every expert on terrorism knows: that no country can ever be completely free of terrorism, and so any "war on terrorism" is doomed both to be endless and to fail.
I mean, really, how foolish of the Democrats not to downgrade the threat of al-Qaeda. How short-sighted of them not to point out to Americans that some of them are simply going to die at the hands of terrorists because, hey, no country can be totally free of terrorism. What nitwits they are for not implementing a vision for this country which states that the guys who killed three thousand Americans are really not that important and that if you do happen to get killed by them, well, tough luck.
Brilliant, Gary. Simply brilliant.
As for your statement that, "the Democrats are not saying any of this," well, I say thank God. There would be about four of them left in the entire Congress if they did do that.
No one will deny that there needs to be substantive discussions of policy, Gary, but reading pieces such as this, which are full of astonishingly naive proposals and the usual, knee-jerk Dem basing, don't add a damn thing to the debate.
The analysis is ridiculous and the way you toss every Democrat onto your pyre of self-righteousness is just plain wrong. As I've done before I could point out plenty of Democrats who have done good work on many of the issues that surround this debate.
But you wouldn't want to write about that, would you? Of course not. That would actually involve thinking about complex political issues.
The very thing you seem to deride the Democrats for not doing.
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It's Not Lack of Message by Lack of a Megaphone
This article continues the pattern I've seen at many other places that the Democrats "lack a plan" to get us out of Iraq. It's been repeated so often that it's becoming the "common wisdom." But, like so much of what is accepted as common wisdom, it's wrong. I have heard plenty of Democrats suggest plans to get us out of Iraq. Some are toward the simple plan while others more elaborate. (On the side of the more elaborate, see "The Way Out of War" by George McGovern and William Polk in the October edition of Harper's.)
The problem isn't lack of a plan it's that they lack one voice that has a big megaphone. The presidency isn't called a "Bully Pulpit" for nothing. One of the advantages of the British system is that the opposition party has a PM in waiting in its party leader and there are shadow ministers for every department of government. Unfortunately, in America the losing candidate for President not only has lost but seems to be treated by everyone after it as some kind of pariah whose opinion is irrelevant to anything. I'm not sure that there is anything that the Democrats can do in the short run to cure this problem but Salon should really recognize what the problem really is. It's not lack of a plan but lack of a single messenger with a megaphone.
Hopefully, after the November elections, the problem will be partially cured. With a Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate and a Democratic Speaker of the House, the Democrats will have some big magaphones of their own.
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More Dem Bashing, Just What We Need
Gary: Beating Dems up by progressives was proven a loser in '04. The problem is with thinly disquised "third party" messages like yours that do not take into account that the Republican party is being held hostage by 30 million evangelists WHO VOTE AS A UNIT.
If during the next two years efforts are not made to solidify moderates, particulary in the Democratic Party, and reach out to those who are still sane enough not allow themselves to be swept away by third party "sentiments, you aren't doing the rest us who are sick and tired of right wing domination any favors.
I fear you are another fantasist at a time when it is necessary to get real, but would love to be wrong.