A simple maxim to remember.

[TheWraith]

I'm looking around at the various arguments, many of them bitter and nasty, centering around attacking elected Dems, talk of "disloyalty," "fringe this," "Republican lite" that, etcetera, and I'm thinking that people here desperately need some perspective. It's one thing to back a primary challenge, but the level of infighting and the interest in daggers meeting kidneys here has gotten to an unhealthy level. And at this time, there's a simple statement of fact that I find very helpful in drawing clear lines through the national political arena.

The worst Democrat is better than the best Republican.

This is provable. Go to someplace like Americans for Democratic Action, and you'll find that the worst Democrats--for instance, Lieberman--are rated in the 70 or 80 percent range. The best Republicans, like Hagel and Chafee, are only in the 20s or 30s. You can find the same effect from the other side, from groups like the NRA or American Conservative Union.

So while certain elected Democrats may make you crazy, and you don't agree with their policies (or lack thereof), just remember before you start shouting about "Republican Lite." By the same token, the supposed "good guys" on the other side really aren't.

[GOPBasher]

1. For the most part, I agree. One caveat:

For the most part, I totally agree with you. I used to defend Lieberman until I was blue in the face. However, I stopped defending him when he said he'd run as an independent if he lost the primary. That tells me he's more concerned about himself than the party, and the country as a whole. He may do to us just what Nader did, but from the other direction. He should have accepted his primary loss and gotten in line behind the winner. Unity above self. He didn't do that, and now he'd dead to me.

Also, are you sure Chafee is only like 20 or 30 percent. I thought he was better than that.

Other than those two things, I agree with you.

[jwirr]

4. I understand Dems who do not seem to toe the line when they

come from VERY conservative states and are just lucky to be elected. What I cannot understand is Dems like Lieberman who did not have to bow down to the *ss in order to get elected.

[kentuck]

16. What about Repubs running from liberal states?

Are they "lucky" just to get elected also??

[jwirr]

17. Since I live in Minnesota I can confidently answer, "Yes".

If a pug campaigned here in Minnesota on some of *ss's stands he would be laughed out of the state. We tend to expect candidates from both parties to support certain issues even if their party does not. This is what people in more conservative states do, they also expect issues of local importance to come first. So Coleman from Minnesota cow tows to the pug party but on some issues he is very silent. By the way he only got elected because Wellstone died.

[TheWraith]

9. You're correct, I was mistaken.

Chafee is actually in the 50s--I thought he was lower than that. Still, not great.

I agree on the subject of Lieberman, and I'm none too happy that some people around here have taken some of my commentary as being supportive of him. Fact is, I've detested Lieberman going back to the mid-90s, before most people here probably even cared. But if you start down the road of bending reality to suit your views, that way lies danger. And the reality is that no matter how much of an obnoxious, self-important egotistical gasbag the man is, he IS still better than pretty much any Republican you could name.

[patrice]

2. Re those daggers:

I'm sure you know that not everyone on this board honestly cares about the issues, nor the Democratic Party.

It is common for people to put personal vendettas, and power struggles, ahead of everything else. This can be done so subconsciously that they aren't even aware of it and would sincerely swear their complete commitment to altruism if put on the spot.

[theanarch]

3. so what you're saying is...

...a pro-choice, moderately anti-war, reasonably centrist Republican like Lincoln Chafee is worse than a no-choice, pro-war, loony right-wing Democrat like Zell Miller? Sorry, does not compute.

[The Magistrate]

5. There Are No Good Republicans, Sir

If they were any good, they would break with that party and become Democrats. Creatures like Chafee act to empower the very worst of the Republican leadership, by adding to their total for majority status. It is, in fact, precisely these "moderate" Republicans who should be the leading target of Democratic Party endeavors: we should make the northeastern Republican as rare and endangered as the southern Democrat --- they can be picked off, and they should be.

[theanarch]

6. with all due respect, i disagree...

...and was framing my previous post in the context of practical constituant-elected politican considerations: if the choice was between having Zell or Linc as my senator, i'd take Linc (as the lesser evil) any day...as distinct from, say, PA, where given the choice between pRick and Bobby Jr., i'd vote Green (no matter how nauseated i am by their candidate). I'd also suggest moderate GOP politicians would do better to become independent (like Jeffords); as D's, they'd just caucus with the DLC crowd.

As for "empowering" (and i'd add "enabling") the corporate/neo-con/christo-fascism agenda, almost every D in congress has to some degree...some just more open and enthusiastic about it than others...the exceptions might fill a large closet. The key for D electoral resurrection is winning back Reagan Democrats and winning over moderate Republican voters with the proper calibration of economic populism and social libertarianism, which isn't the same as the DLC's "give the middle class a tax credit" schemes and GOP-like cultural conservativism.

[The Magistrate]

7. You May Disagree, Sir, But You Are Mistaken To Do So

The obstacle to winning back the so-called "Reagan Democrat" bloc are the popular perceptions that the left is naive to the point of other-worldliness where matters of military force and national security are concerned, and that the left is far more concerned with matters of "personal liberation" than with anything else. This is backed in turn by the identification by the great mass of voters of the Democratic Party as the political expression fo the left in thus country. Many of the discussions and arguments we routinely have here would strike the average voter as nonesense akin to debates over the number of angels accomodated by the point of pin.

Anything that ahs to carry to a mass of people must be kept very, very simple. Mr Casey is infinitely better than Santorum: he is infinitely better because he is a Democrat, and Santorum is a Republican. Anyone can remember and understand that, and be moved to act on it.

[theanarch]

8. Oh, please, let us not be so condesceding towards the...

...intelligence of Reagan D's and mod-R's: time was when racist rednecks and MCP blue collars and faggot-fearing/Jew-hating white trash were the voter base of a DP, who elected D's who were far more left-wing as mainstsream "liberals" then than the most radical left-wing of milktoasts are now. Why, because the DP insured their economic well-being, by supporting unions. By making it possible for a high-school drop-out pushing a broom on a factory floor to buy a house, a new car, send their kids to college and retire without financial anxiety. Ever since Clinton shoved the WTO, NAFTA, GATT, FTA, FTAA and that whole alphabet soup of globalized trade down our thoats, the voting allegience of these constituancies switched to the GOP, job by out-sourced job. Which is to say, once the working class figured out the new DP wanted them to be just as underpaid and unemployed as the GOP, they gave up on participating in the electoral system for economic reasons, and voted simply to express their rage/anger/insecurity...and hold on to their more cherished beliefs--like owning an arsonel, keeping minorities and women in their place, and making America safe for white males. Democrats will never win back/over these voters until they start addressing their economic insecurities and needs...and that puts them (D's) at odds with the ruling/owning classes (and their lackies in the M$M, etc), in a little game called class warfare. The DLC strategy has been to pursue GOP economics, while trying to displace the GOP as the vessel into which the 'lower classes' poured their emotions/votes...too late, as the GOP had already claimed and colonized that issue decades earlier. Why any FDR-revering Democrat/Liberal would want the DP to thus displace the GOP is beyond me, as it is as anthitical to the ideals (and purpose) of the New Deal as one can get.

I do take your point about the (white) male fantasy-identification with militarism, and would only comment that this is a fairly recent socio-cultural trend, certainly not evident in the Greatest (WWII) Generation or getting-ready-to-retire Baby Boomers.

[TheWraith]

11. You seem to be rewriting history.

Clinton didn't singlehandedly lose the working class, as you seem to suggest. The ones that have slipped did so decades ago. Southern strategy anyone? As long as people are willing to vote out of fear of the brown people or the queers, instead of their own interests, then those people are lost.

And the security fixation isn't all that new, either, it runs back all the way through the Cold War.

[theanarch]

13. history isn't a mathmatical equation...

...with fixed variables and one-answer-only products; it's a narrative of different, and often competing, opinions; i'm just offering mine. Nixon's Southern Strategy was George Wallace, who articulated a "populist", anti-corporate, anti-establishment rhetoric far more genuinely than Tricky ever could--the point was to have a third party loser draw off enough southern votes from Democrats (or at least HHH) to split the DP and elect Republicans/Nixon. 12 years later, with the collapse of the AIP, and the GOP having inherited Wallace's Dixiecrats as (anti-) social issue voters, they repeated the trick, by having the 'moderate' John Anderson siphon off enough mod-lib votes from Carter to elect Reagan. 12 years later, Clinton returned the favor bestowed by Perot to beat Bush I and Dole. And four years after that...

As for the Cold War, national security in a geo-political/strategic sense was a concern, but the military--as an institution--was not held in particularly high regard; today, no one takes the WOT seriously, but America's GI Joe's and Jane's, and "military service", are worshipped with an almost religious intensity. Again, this is an evolutionary (which is to say, devolutionary) change for the worse...we no longer think about security in rational terms, but emote over the mythic heroism of those who wear uniforms, carry guns and shoot 'the brown people'...without having to inconvenience ourselves with history, politics, culture, religious differences, economics, etc.

[The Magistrate]

12. It Was My Impression, Sir, Reagan Came Before President Clinton

And yet you seem to be claiming that the defection of this bloc to the Republicans owes to President Clinton's pressing the matter of the World Trade Organization. It is very hard for something that happened on Thursday to be the cause of something that happened on Monday previous. Reagan's actual union-busting did not cost him working-class votes, nor turn these voters against Republicans. You seem to be under-rating several things in this matter, but most importantly the emotional nature of identification with a candidate and established political image.

In your comments on the earlier success of the left with culturally traditionalist voters, you neglect the metamorphisis the left in this country itself underwent in the late sixties and early seventies, transforming from a movement concentrating on economic issues and emphasizing its patriotism and opposition to totalitarianism on questions of national security and foreign policy to one concentrating on personal liberation, routinely assailing the symbols of patriotism, and declaring the United States different in no important particular from totalitarian regimes opposed to it. All of these items, even if granted as truely most important, and factually true in the last instance, were not popular with, and indeed guaranteed to affront, persons of traditionalist outlook. They remain the face of the left in wide-spread popular perception.

[theanarch]

14. not at all...if you read my previous post...

...i try to explain the roots of the DP current troubles of cascading debacles...before Clinton came along, Democrats were still (with few exceptions) the majority party in congress, and that majority was maintained by working class/blue collar/union member white men (yes, the GOP was successful in wedging away single issue voters on social issues like abortion, the flag, etc) who put their economic/pocketbook concerns ahead of their social/cultural biases (at least in sufficient numbers to keep D's in control of congress). My point is, that ended with WTO, Clinton's (and the DLC's) one signature issue and legacy, when jobs started getting exported, and unions representing the workers in those jobs collapsed. The end result of this, i submit, is 300,000 registered democrats in florida voting for Bush in 2000.

As for the characature of the left you present, it is an invented perception sold, with great success, to a gullible public by an elite-representing media: the price of dissent from orthodoxy is vilification and demonization. In the sixties, the anti-capitalism of the young revolutionaries scared more shit out of the ruling/governing/managing classes than the tribalism of hippies scared out of "traditionalists"; the liberal media bashed the former, while the pulpit and right-wing pol's trashed the latter. Today, even the most inside-the-establishment disagreement with the neo-con agenda is considered so intolerable as to be accorded the same treatment, from the frothing, know-nothing likes of Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, etc. Like Pavlov's dogs, the american public has been conditioned to salivate at the proper sounds (tax and spend, cut and run, retreat and defeat, welfare queens and radical college professors burning flags at gay weddings in SF covered live by al-Jazeera and the NYT, etc)--yet, for all that, the public (as measured by polls) supports an explicitely left agenda: UHC, out of Iraq now, higher taxes on and more regulation of corporations, getting serious about global warming, etc. The trick here is to get progressive politicians to articulate these issues to voters in terms voters can understand, while dispelling decades of lib-left-prog hating propadanda. Any suggestions?

[The Magistrate]

15. The Congressional Majority, Sir

Was maintained by politicians who would, in large part, be denounced roundly here as "DINOs" and "DLC sell-outs" and the like, were they in office today. Reagan never had trouble securing passage of matters of highest importance to him, with the possible exception of some elements in support of the contras in Nicaragua. What scuttled this at last was mostly the scandals of the House Post office, rage in the right over the prominence of gun and gay issues in the early stages of President Clinton's rule, and complacency on the part of Democrats who did not take seriously that backlash to the '92 results.

You say charicature like that were a bad thing, but charicature is the exaggeration of real elements into a striking and instantly recognizeable image. Charicature is about all that penetrates the mass mind: all political action aimed at moving great numbers of people comes down to charicature. The left has lost the knack of effectively charicaturing the right, while the right retains a deadly efficiency at charicaturing the left, aided by the seeming eagerness of some on the left to toss them fresh ammunition routinely.

The issue by issue polls are meaningless, because people do not vote on issues out of rational consideration. Voting is an emotional act, in which people range themselves against something they do not like in identification with something they want to feel a part of.

[theanarch]

18. i respectfully disagree with the characterization...

...of the Democrats who comprised the congressional majorities thoughout the New Deal and into the early 70's as "DINOs" or DLC sell-outs...granted, liberalism should never be confused or otherwise identified with 60's left-wing activism or even Robert LaFolette-type progressivism; but at least they were FIGHTING liberals who weren't afraid of their beliefs or legacy, so unlike the wimps, wusses and cowards we have now. As for Reagan, his coat-tails gave him functional control of congress (GOPs+Dixiecrats), which he soon lost in the next mid-term elections (esp. the senate)...and his success rate in passing legislation dropped off accordingly, not only in terms of outright rejections of proposals, but how much compromising he had to swallow (riders, language changes, oversight, etc) to get anything he wanted through.

As for charicature, it is a deliberate (and deliberately pejorative) representation based on the shallowest of superficial traits; the point of a charicature is not to tell the truth about some one or group, but to tell lies about them. The charicature of the Left that most people accept without question or doubt is an ideological invention designed to denigrate, insult, vilify, deomonize and marginalize not just leftists, but anyone so much as one millimeter to the left of WSJ editorial board. Because the Right owns the media, they enjoy the advantage of editing or limiting "the news" (and especially "opinion") to that which favors them, and without access to television, it is simply impossible for the left to respond in kind. It's not that the left lacks its own charicaturists--the cartoons of Matt Wurker and Tom Tomorrow; the writings of Mollie Ivins and Mark Morford, the speeches of Jim Hightower and Michael Moore--all of them (and others) are very good at distilling complicated issues and arguements into easy-to-explain/simple to understand POV's, and can be every bit as defining of the right, and persuasive in their effect, if only the M$M would afford them an equal opportunity to the soapbox in public discussion.

My fear is that, given America's addiction to television, and television's addiction to greed, mindless consumption/materialism, violence, confrontation, sensationalism, etc., the national psyche has been perverted and warped beyond reason, much less redemption. We are what we watch, and what we watch is selfish, ignorent, arrogant, bigoted and uncaring. As Gore Vidal recently observed, "We are beyond law. This is not unusual for empires. Unfortunately, we are also beyond common sense." Which is why the GOP, after they finish slime-boating Democrats, will be retaining its control of Congress after this election.

[TheWraith]

10. To paraphrase an old saying...

If there are good Republicans, it's that before they are good, and afterwards, they are Republicans.

The Magistrate makes the point eloquently as ever: by being Republicans, they explicitly and implicitly support Bush and his ilk.

As for Zell Miller, besides pointing out that the man appeared to be suffering from some kind of clinical insanity during his last few years in office, I'll also note that when he spun to the right, he pulled out of the Dem caucus and effectively joined the senate Republicans in all but registration.