Letters to the Editor
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Out of the Gutter with US
I can't believe Ms Walsh considers the one who takes the lowest road wins. I know, four decades of nearly unbroken smear campaigns that have been mostly successful is hard to argue with. However, Carter was inevitable in '76 precisely because the US was fed up with dirty tricks and ugly innuendo. I think this cycle is repeating and this time the cleanest candidate who brings the most positive message wins. Of course, I may have to find the vegetarian equivalent of crow to dine on come Nov. '08.
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Gender is not an issue. Gender is not an issue. Gender is not an issue.
Gender is not an issue. Gender is not an issue. Gender is not an issue. We keep saying that.
Except that it is.
While it would be evil, evil, evil, for the Republicans to use the N-word, they can play the B-word for all it is worth. Wonder why it works that way? Just look at the way the trolls get away with beating up the women writers of Broadsheet. That's okay. They are only using gender. If they were using race, some of them would have been banned by now.
What say you, Joan Walsh? You tell me. Why do they get away with it? Will the Republicans get away with it? Will they get away with it because it is okay to characterize a Senator of the United States, a former First Lady, and a respectable candidate for president as a bitch?
This is going to get ugly.
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Not comparable
Kos is a blogger, not a political operative. Rove is a political operative, and so the two are just not comparable — nor, in the context of commentary on political campaigns, are they equal.
Bloggers are news nerds — they do research, collect data points, make value judgments about journalistic and quasi-journalistic pieces, and maybe, at their very best, they do good policy analysis.
Above all else, bloggers function in an essential reactive way. That's their outlook, their training, their entire mode of operation. And in that sense campaign strategists are the exact opposite — they make the news, not react to it. (At least, if they're any good.)
Rove wrote the script for the play in which Kos and the entire Greek chorus of the blogosphere are still performing. For Kos to ever win on Rove's turf will require more than just toughness — he will need to transform how he thinks and writes about politics.
Fortunately for Kos, he has a lot more imagination than Rove, who isn't nearly as bright as he's used to having people tell him he is. But Joan Walsh is right — in a sense the dichotomy between the two is a reflection of the larger dichotomy between Democratic and Republican political cultures. And we know which one has, until very recently, been winning.
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It's been a long time since the taking the lowest road didn't win
I was six years old when Jimmy Carter won the presidency. So what did I know? Nothing, but it felt like a good thing because I knew Watergate was bad. Ms Walsh called this one for Rove not because he took the low road, but because Rove knows how to tweak American sensibilities better than any political strategist since...ever? She called it in Rove's favor because taking the lowest road has led to decades of expanding republican power. That's minus the Clinton years, but Clinton wasn't exactly a victory for the high road. He was victory for charm and centrist, republican-lite politics. But compared to what we've suffered under George W. Bush, a fiscally responsible republican-lite president would be a god send. And maybe that's why Mrs. Clinton is running as exactly that.
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Kos shows why Democrats will lose.
The poor boy's bringing a squirt gun to a knife fight. And that's true of most progressives. They would like things to be different, and they have all kinds of proofs and graphs about why the Republicans are wrong. And they wind up with a Rovian knife in their guts, every time, and wonder why.
If Rove were ever to face Kos face to face on a talk show, the blogger would be in tears within five minutes. And I'm not saying that because I agree with the Republicans. I'm calling the progressives passionless, intellectual wimps who can't kick ass because, for starters, they're too politically correct to use the word "ass."
I say take the column away from Kos and give it to Bartcop. He'd send Rove away, not crying, but at least gritting what's left of his teeth.
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AWOL-for-a-year?
There is no such thing as "AWOL-for-a-year." After 30 days of being AWOL, you're considered a deserter. That's military law.
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Kos has sold out
Kos has always been more Democrat than progressive. In taking this job he chose money over principle. In other words he is a good Democrat.
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Thank god Kos is just a blogger . . .
. . . and isn't actually running a campaign. "Amnesia only happens is soap operas" he says? Is he new to this country? The past 7 years are definitely an advantage, but the Democrats will not win by just running against Bush's failures.
I think the Democrats should take Rove's advice. He says
the Republicans should recast the question, 'who's going to get us out of Iraq quicker,' to 'who will lead America to victory in a vital battleground in the War on Terror?' I think the Democrat should cast it that way too. He or she should get in front of the 'war on terror' issue: "Hell ya, terrorism is an issue, and, so far, the Republicans have made everything worse. We're going to do things smart." It shouldn't just be, "we're going to bring the troops home," (although that should be part of it) it should be, "we're going to fix the problem."
I really think that, even though a majority of Americans want out of Iraq, the Democrats could still get beaten over national security. On the other hand, if the Democrats can take control of the issue, if they can present themselves as bringing a new, smarter approach, as compared to more of the same from the Republicans, they could beat the crap out of them. Thats a big if, though.
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Taking the High Road?
I think the history of elections does prove that more people vote against a candidate than vote for one, thus the effectiveness of negative campaigning. No matter what voters tell poll takers. Negative campaining works when done well and not to explictly. Rove Republicans know this. Democrats ignore this at their own peril and at the expense of lost elections. Democrats had better get down of that cross now and into the gutter if they are ever going to even see who their real opponents are. This is the harsh truth of retail politics, Republican style and Democrats who want to eventually govern are going to have to get in the game.