Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The Dems just need to get them out of their latent chain-letter superstition mode and into believing that they'll really shoot that puppy. Ka-ching!

Democrats are a natural fit for Mooks.

The vote getting machine needs funds
And if a vote getting machine can't get enough votes to be at least a threat to win
Funds dry up quick

However for the professional campaign community
It is indeed
all about maximum funds

But close races are the best way to lift the handle

Finding can be nicely compared to
Wagering on the ponies

Yes fixing included

But the two parties both of them

need many congressional districts and states where they can win
Or at least make it close

Electric Al
Has often reminded us the dual mission

Get votes and cover the flanks

Van jones is a good specimen of a flank man

Donor class types notice this when funding both parties
Brand loyal but corporate locked in
core center aisle candidates

You know what I've always thought was especially insulting about pitches like this is that after all the cash they rake in from bankers and stock brokerages and oil companies and "defense" contractors, they still have the nerve to pester ordinary citizens for money.

Interesting, too, about how they all have the same writing style even though they appear over the signatures of different Donkeycratic Party poobahs. If that letter really had been written by Nancy Pelosi, it'd probably be full of all kinds of bitchy, whiny, passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping pissed-off needy girlfriend language. That's how I've always thought of Nancy Pelosi -- she's America's Whiny, Needy Girlfriend.

Paine makes a good point about Van Jones, too. What especially irks me about him is that he's supposed to be the "progressive" mouthpiece of the Donkeycrats, except that he's so goddamn' bad at it. I caught him on Joe Scarborough's program last Friday morning -- it was what I was hearing on the TV as I was waking up, and totally set the tone for my day -- plugging his book, Reclaim The Dream or some shit like that (it's always about a goddamn' dream, isn't it), and he didn't have a single new, original thing to say, just the same old beat-assed excuses and apologia and blathering about how we need to "push" Obummer to do The Right Thing. It's like he wasn't even trying, like he didn't really give a shit about anything but selling his goddamn' book, and it totally made me want to punch him in the goddamn' face because of it.

Fadduh Smiff sez:

How do they cope? It must be like having an air-raid siren go off in your ear, over and over again, and believing every time that an air raid is really imminent...

Though I was born ten years too late, my DW is old enough to remember having to do the "duck-and-cover" drills in school, and as far as I can tell -- despite her denials -- she's internalized that to the point where even now, in her early 60s, she still does the equivalent of ducking and covering anytime the Liberal dog whistle goes off over the War On Women™ or other similar contrived "issues".

"Fund-raising used to be something that you did in order to get votes, but I wonder whether the tail hasn't started to wag the dog: fund-raising is what keeps everybody employed, and whether you get elected or not is secondary, as long as the funds keep coming in."

Bingo.

Fund-raising used to be something that you did in order to get votes, but I wonder whether the tail hasn't started to wag the dog: fund-raising is what keeps everybody employed, and whether you get elected or not is secondary, as long as the funds keep coming in.

That sounds reasonable. They don't need, or even want, all that many votes thanks to redistricting. They're much better off with a smallish, reliable, easily managed bloc of voters who ankle bite each other and harangue each other for free. They've got inexpensive, outsourced brand identity maintenance. What they do need is patronage and sinecure money.

...they still have the nerve to pester ordinary citizens for money.

Yeah that's upside-down...

...until you realize that by getting Dave and Donna Donkeyphile to pop for a $20 or $50 contribution, Big Dem gets Dave and Donna to be emotionally and psychologically invested in the success of Team Donkey.

It ain't done for the money. It's done for the psychological benefit Team Donkey gets from having so many blindly partisan "supporters."

Setting aside for a moment the obvious rightness in pointing out that, for liberals, progressive and Democrats, the theocratic-neoconservative GOP is a distraction: the "War on Women" is hardly contrived. It is GOP policy. That doesn't mean it's not also Democrat policy, of course.

Jack Crow sez on 04.11.12 @15:42:

Setting aside for a moment the obvious rightness in pointing out that, for liberals, progressive and Democrats, the theocratic-neoconservative GOP is a distraction: the "War on Women" is hardly contrived. It is GOP policy. That doesn't mean it's not also Democrat policy, of course.

True dat, but, still... in the overall scheme of things, alongside the many more important issues -- extrajudicial assassinations, unilateral war, attacks on civil liberties, etc. -- the whole War On Women™ is a contrived distraction created by the Donkeycrats to divert Pwogs' and Liberals' attention with that beat-assed old abortion chestnut.

I knew it was bullshit when I thought about how the Liberals and Pwogwessives were silent while Obama sold out reproductive rights in order to pass his Historically Historic Healthcare "Reform" program, but as soon as Rush Limbaugh started calling college girls "sluts" and GOP politicians started breaking the Goofy Meter trying to outdo each other with proposals to restruct abortion rights and birth control, every mainstream feminist outfit in the country was shrieking itself hoarse. They didn't care about how the Donkeycrats were selling them out on every issue including abortion rights, but when abortion rights were threatened by Republicans, they were crapping their panties in self-righteous indignation, totally oblivious to the fact that the struggle going on in this country right now isn't just about their goddamn' uteruses (uterii?).

That was how I knew the War On Women™ was a Donkeycratic Party red herring, and that whole sorry-assed episode pretty much confirmed my belief that American Feminism is a used-up, bankrupt institution. These days, they operate under what I call the Carl Perkins Philosophy of activism: You can do anything that you wanna do, but uh-uh, honey, lay offa' my uterus!

Women still have to put up with a lot of crap, but unfortunately there's also a class aspect to the problem, and a significant percentage of college-educated women are not doing badly in the Neoliberal world of careers open to talent.

I'd second Al and Orville. When it comes to rooting for a team, you have your typical fan, and then you have your face painters.

The owners know who will show up at every game and purchase the schlocky merchandise.

There's a war on women...working class women...but since when has the feminist movement given a shit about them? They don't even pay the pathetic lip service they accord to black women but disdain working class white women as "white trash"--scarcely more civilized than the "inbred" "white males" they "breed" with. Wal Mart workers and shoppers are objects of scorn, not concern.

I'm reminded of a feminist friend of mine who told me the story of her feminist colleagues in a women's organization she worked with. At their weekly meeting, she raised the topic of a local prostitute who had been murdered by a John, and the responses she got from every one of the women present were along the lines of "well, she chose to do that job, what did she expect?" as if her murder was somehow her own fault. My friend was shocked that feminists would react this way to the murder of a lower-class woman.

I wasn't.