Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"With only 44 seats in the Senate, Democrats have the ability to carp and grandstand, but they have no real power to defeat a nominee, barring the nomination of an ideological zealot who would rally support for a filibuster. Rather, it is the Republican senators and the right-wing special interests who have the power to defeat the president's nominee."

Indeed. And no doubt some of Bush's normally reliable Republican Senators will bolt -- with a wink from the White House, and an eye on the poor bait-and-switched fetus fans in the gallery. These poor fuddled folk will thus continue to believe that they have paladins ready to break a lance in their behalf within the Republican party.

But Bush will still get Miers through, because the Democrats will help him out. Every Republican who takes his stand in the anti-abortion Alamo will find his place taken by an obliging Democrat, who will be quite prepared to explain to his or her vote for Miers on the grounds of lesser-evillism -- I mean, hey, think what an ogre Georgie might have nominated! So the Dems cover George's ass, and he covers theirs.

In fact there will be no nose-holding on the Democratic side of the Senate floor; Miers absolutely represents the bipartisan consensus. You can count on her to be sedulously sympathetic to large corporations, and in particular to be a downright Robespierre in the intellectual-property Reign of Terror; you can count on her to approve when they take away whatever pathetic shreds of civil liberty we still have, in the name of national security; and you can count on her to leave the abortion business alone. These are matters on which Senate Republicans and Democrats are in complete agreement, and the solons will find a way to slide her skinny rump onto the Supreme Bench and come out of it with every one of 'em smelling like a rose.

Footnote: It's pretty hilarious to see how flummoxed and dead-in-the-water the "progressive" sector of the Democratic Party is on this nomination. Moveon.org has been reduced to putting up a form on their website plaintively asking whether anybody out there knows anything about her.

Let me see if I've got this straight -- the Democrats are ging to get back into office because people are really worked up about stem cell research?

Don't get me wrong -- it all seems like way-cool science and terrifically interesting and promising and all that. But even so... there are quite a few topics much closer to the forefront of people's awareness than stem cell research. How odd that the Democrats can't find anything new or different to say about anything less esoteric.

No need to cancel, guys -- he won't have been sentenced that soon.

Now I'm a modest guy, and I don't like to toot my own horn, but I seem to have touched a nerve over on the Munchkin Democrat site Daily Kos. Used to hang out there a bit, trying to drum up some traffic for the blog, and it was always fun to rile the Aunt Pollies. But the idyll has come to an end. The hammer has dropped. My page there no longer offers me the option of posting an entry or a comment.

Since the Kos thought police didn't bother to write and tell me why they disconnected my phone, so to speak, I can only speculate. Was it the utterly forbidden topic of the Israel lobby and the Democrats' subservience to it? Was it the poll (since deleted from the Kos site) showing that even among Munchkins, 75% believed that if the Democrats won control of the House in '06, it would be by "sheer dumb luck" rather than because they deserved it?

I think that must have been it. Certainly it was the high point of my time there.

Adieu, Kos. I won't miss the obsessive wonkery about which indistinguishable Democrat is more "electable" in some Godforsaken district in Ohio. But I did kind of like the angry responses to my own contributions. Made me feel I was on the right track.

"The modern GOP is a precarious alliance between moderate, sane, conservatives, corporate interests understandably focused on short term profits, and a fundamentalist mob whose social policies poll anywhere between unpopular to repugnant among the majority of Americans.

The moderates are the official face set forth in PR efforts, the corporate interests drive the money, and like in any feudal system, the cultish masses provide the votes and do the grassroots work. But there's a glaring weakness: Expose that extremist base for what it is, flip that rock over to illuminate the ugly squatting trolls hiding underneath, and it's game over folks."

"We need people for the commercial, people who look like the Democratic Party ....."

• workers in hard hats,
• moms with kids,
• men and women in business suits,
• hippies,
• young and old,
• all colors,
• enviro types,
• college professors,
• young women,
• someone in a wheelchair, etc.

It gets better. Consider this not exactly Eisensteinian " concept " --

" there will be a donkey laying on the ground. There will be a long line of people tugging at the donkey with a rope, trying to get it to move. The donkey won't budge. Some dude (they're threatening to make me do it) will walk down the line up to the donkey, give the animal a look, and then give it a swift kick in the ass to get it moving"

(... no, the donkey won't really be kicked.)

Now that the Senate Democrats have (as predicted! As predicted!) rolled over on the Patriot Act, I recall that I was generous enough to share this augury with the bien-pensants over on Daily Kos. Now that it has come to pass as it was written, I couldn't resist revisiting some of the mama-knows-best responses the Kosniks gave:

Democrats suck democrats suck (3.60 / 5)
rinse repeat....
when is the glorious third party revolution going to take place?
Gore2008 , My PoliticalTheaterBlog
by TeresaInPa on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 11:57:52 AM PDT

There is a party for you (none / 1)
its called the Green Party. Oh yeah, and they always lose.
Democratic Nomination Competition: Vote Now!
by FleetAdmiralJ on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 01:19:15 PM PDT

Dems and republicans (none / 0)
aren't "spouting" the same ideas, unless you're too far from the political center to tell the difference.
Democratic Nomination Competition: Vote Now!
by FleetAdmiralJ on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 01:23:25 PM PDT

Wow, how insightful! (none / 1)
Just got an email from MoveOn. Here's a quote you might appreciate:
"That's why a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans Larry Craig, John Sununu, Lisa Murkowski and Democrats Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin and Ken Salazar, have been working to fix the Patriot Act. They have vowed to fight the most egregious provisions and filibuster reauthorization if necessary. We need to show them that we have their backs" (emphasis mine).
by Terps Fan on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 12:00:57 PM PDT

Hey, here's an idea... (none / 1)
How about we wait for things to actually happen before we start bashing people for them?
by Angry White Democrat on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 12:22:03 PM PDT

interesting idea (none / 0)
but how would that help the glorious third party revolution? People must be convinced that democrats suck now before they have a chance to prove they don't and it's too late.
Gore2008 , My PoliticalTheaterBlog
by TeresaInPa on Tue Dec 13, 2005 at 03:20:48 PM PDT

Oh, well, Kosniks, let's not live in the past. Onward to the next abject surrender!

I. Kosniks think they are smarter than other people.

It was proto-liberal John Stuart Mill, of course, who first said that the Tories were "the stupid party," and it remains an article of faith for Kosniks that stupidity -- other people's stupidity -- explains a great deal. A few examples of Kosnik thinking on this subject:

There should be a test
to prove that you are not an idiot, and until that point you should be assumed to be one.

One aspect of the test needs to include a complete education in science, specifically biology.

Obviously, this idiot would fail the test.

ridiculous to you, perhaps,
and to other typically small minded and ignorant Americans . . .

Sadly, it's the loons at those other
sites you mention, as well as a good chunk of the American public at large, that needs this information the most.

The next comment responds to a post critical of the Senate Democrats' timidity about the Patriot Act:

maybe if you write enough "democrats suck" diaries the glorious third party revolution really will happen. <obligatory eyes rolling smilie here>

And "eyes rolling" is good, isn't it? No need to explain why third parties are a bad or impossible idea. Smart people understand that already.

To be continued...

Well, yeah, it's a great story -- and the coverup is making it much better. But I have to think that one reason the Kosniks are enjoying it so much is that this is the first Republican crime that no Democrat helped facilitate.

Whale away, Kosniks. Your heroes are in the clear on this one.

II. Kosniks believe in magic

A great many Kosnik posts begin with phrases like "We need to make them..." or "We need to demand..." or "Write your Congressman and tell him you want...."

There's something rather childlike and endearing about this; as if one had but to ask, or demand. Perhaps this is the outlook of the much-cherished children of the Spock generation. What will happen when the demand is ignored? Will they hold their breath? Will they fling themselves on the floor and kick and scream? Will they break a beloved toy? Throw food?

Alas, probably not. Kosnikss are too grown up for any such authentic display of feeling, but not grown up enough to disbelieve in magic, or in the omnipotence of their own desires, or to dispense with the projection of a virtual parent-figure onto some institution -- in their case, the Democratic Party. Caught in this contradiction, the symptom we see is neurotic perseveration -- a pathological, mechanical repetition of behavior that achieves nothing.

To be continued...

I didn't really expect Hackett to fold quite so easily, though. If only Marines in Iraq were as unwilling to fight as Marines in Ohio.

I did a little scanning of Daily Kos and its various imitators around the Net afterwards. Very entertaining. What are those stages of grief -- denial, anger, something, something, acceptance? The Kosniks and their ilk get to acceptance very quickly. They've had a lot of practice, I guess.

III. Kosniks can't imagine change

Here's another Kosnik exculpation on the Democrats' failure to kill the most obnoxious parts of the Patriot Act:

You clearly don't want the Patriot Act
renewed in any way, shape, or form. However, it is already law. There is no going back on it. Repealing it would be very unpopular and would fail.

I don't feel guilty
I get the point of all this, and yes it's too bad that politicians play these games, but..what..am I gonna vote Republican against Hilary? Can she possibly be worse than any Republican? Can she do more harm to this country than George has done?
I don't want Hillary to run. I hope she gets soundly defeated, mainly b/c there is no hope of her winning the general election. Nevertheless, unless the Republican party somehow changed itself overnight into something I could support (fat chance, I'd vote for her over any Repub.

C. Wright Mills anatomized this kind of realism: "Crackpot realists are so rigidly focused on the next step that they become creatures of whatever the main drift -- the opportunist actions of innumerable men -- brings. In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands."

To be continued...

IV. Kosniks can't think about Israel

Characteristic Kosnik responses to to a post about the Israel lobby's role in pushing the Iraq war:

this diary is a vile piece of crap
and that's exactly that I'd expect from you.

Here we go again...
For the thousandth time, Israel never wanted or needed the Iraq war....The Iraq War is a major political liability for Israel because it fuels anti-semitism at a time when Israel is working very hard to combat anti-semitism. Israeli papers were hardly supportive of the Iraq War before and after, basically calling it a wash - any positive benefits would likely be weighed down by negatives....
I think the whole "JEWS ARE BEHIND ALL WARS!" nonsense is absurd but there seems to be no end to it.

In more recent years, things have opened up a lot. You can now take a whack at Israel or the Israel lobby without getting tagged for life as an anti-Semite or a lunatic or a terrorist – everywhere except in the Democratic Party.

As other constituencies and sources of funding have dried up or switched to the Republicans, largesse from the Israel lobby has become crucial to the Democrats. You might even say it's their lifeline; without the lobby's support, the Democratic party would undergo a sudden shrinkage, like one of those bloated red-giant stars collapsing into a white dwarf.

Yeah, the Republicans get Israel money too, and yeah, they've signed up for whatever the loby wants, too. But the difference is that the Republicans have other resources. The money pipeline from the Israel lobby is welcome and important to the Republicans, but it's not life-or-death as it is for the Democrats. Thus a Pat Buchanan has far more scope to speak his mind than anybody in the Democratic party has.

This censorship – or self-censorship, really – extends right down into the Kosnik basement of the party. Now many of the Kosniks are quite intelligent and well-informed people, and there must be a considerable cognitive dissonance between what they know privately and the party line they have to toe publicly. Perhaps this helps explain my next observation.

To be continued...

V. Kosniks are bad-tempered

The "vile piece of crap" comment quoted earlier is far from atypical. Here's another:

I'm an engineer,
and find your anti-science attitude profoundly offensive. Furthermore, you are an idiot. Evidently, you don't understand the meaning of the word "theory", as in Newton's Gravitational THEORY....
Has anyone ever mentioned to you that in the world of science and technology, we practice meritocracy? So don't even think of accusing me of being uncivil. Here's the deal -- if you step unto this turf, and cling to your ignorance, you're going to be called out, idiot....
Have a nice day, moron.

Alongside them are the almost equally maddening, easy-mannered, well-spoken, empty-headed scions of hereditary wealth. These parasites could never have gone to Harvard if they weren't "legacies". And yet such undeserving drones end up running the Foreign Service. What ever happened to that meritocracy thing? What is a cultured, hard-working, conscientious, well-read striver like me doing in this beastly... cubicle? Que fais-je dans cette galère?

VI. Kosniks are deferential to authority Alongside ferocious contempt for the "ignorant" and the "idiots," Kosniks exhibit a grovelling obseqiousness to important people. Every so often a Democratic politican, like John Kerry or Barack Obama, will favor the Kosniks with a recycled chamber-of-commerce speech. The Kosniks quickly swamp the site with hundreds of fawning "comments" like this:

Senator, thanks for posting here. I am flattered that you chose to come to this forum and explain your position on the Roberts nomination, and I hope your comments are taken very seriously.

To be continued...

VII. Kosniks fear enemies in their midst

Most Internet mailing lists, newsgroups, chat rooms and so on get a certain number of insincere participants -- people who don't share the virtual community's values and are there just to make trouble. Most groups accept these "trolls" with a weary resignation -- the way picnickers think about ants. Experienced participants ignore them.

Not the Kosniks. The Kosniks are hypervigilant about intruders, wreckers, saboteurs, spies, provocateurs -- it's like the old days, back in some really paranoid ultra-Left cell worried about the FBI. Except this is the Democratic Party, for heaven's sake. Not exactly a subversive organization (not even an opposition, in fact; but that's another essay).

The Kosniks are really good at sussing trolls out -- as efficient and obsessive as Inspector Javert. If somebody makes 'em suspicious, they'll check the guy's IP address, his email address, his posting and comment history. They'll scrutinize his choice of words. (I wanted to quote here some of the very astute comments that unmasked one recent troll, within seconds of its appearance, but I find it has been removed without a trace from the site, like Bukharin from a Soviet Encyclopedia photograph.)

It's impressive, in one way, and sad in another. Impressive because it shows some very valuable talents -- a quick and accurate ear for the false note, a considerable technical sophistication, an eagle-eyed attentiveness. Some of these Kosniks would have made good textual critics.

The reason it's sad is that it's so pointless. They're manning the walls of a fort that already fell to the enemy. They're like one of those fabled Japanese soldiers on a South Pacific island, thirty years after 1945. He's lurking in a carefully camouflaged foxhole, eyeing jet airliners through ancient binoculars, wishing one of them would fly low enough for him to take a shot at it. He's set up booby-traps and punji-stick pits on the beach. They won't take him without a fight.

But of course no one wants to take him. He's defending an illusion. He's living in a carefully preserved dream about a war that was over a long time ago -- and his side lost.

This is why the trolls have to be exorcised so relentlessly. The Kosniks fight ferociously among themselves, but on a deeper level, they are collaborators in maintaining a necessary illusion. My Japanese soldier analogy wasn't quite right. The Japanese soldier is alone, but he is still free, and could put up some kind of fight if anybody ever noticed him. The Kosniks, by contrast, have lots of company, but they've already been rounded up and put in Stalag 13 – or rather, they've put themselves there. They tell each other they're still fighting the war, but they're just going through the motions, drilling ragged, weaponless troops in the prison yard, while their captors look on, laughing, from the guard towers.

The illustrations aren't quite so strange as the Web reproductions make them appear, although there is something funny about the little squirrels' eyes. Ritalin, perhaps. But the text more than makes up for it. It lists twelve reasons why Mommy is a Democrat. Among these, Democrats are said to "make sure"

• ... everyone always has enough to eat
• ... everyone is treated fairly
• ... everyone plays by the rules
• ... no one fights
• ... we all share our toys
• ... we are nice to people who are different
• ... sick people are able to see a doctor
• ... we are always safe
• ... we clean up our messes
• ... children can go to school
• ... everyone has a warm bed to sleep in

But the truly extraordinary thing is that each and every one of these statements, as applied to the Democrats, is a glaring, obvious, flat-out falsehood. Democrats don't do any of these things, and indeed do the very opposite of many of them, con brio. (I'm thinking particularly of "make sure nobody fights.") What world do these folks live in, where such whoppers can -- and should! -- be told to innocent children?

I know you're all thinking, right about now, poor Smith, his OCD has finally gotten the better of him. But I am convinced this little text is a kind of Philosopher's Stone, and that it will reveal the mysterious inner workings of the Democratic mind if I just study it deeply enough. More exegesis to follow.

As a governor -- better still, an ex-governor -- unlike the senatorial horde, Warner has what will read at a distance to be "clean policy hands " -- like Dean in 04, Clinton in 02, the Duke in 88, or Jimmy in 76. He hardly has a record the electorate will give a shit about anyway.

For a governor running for prez is a real come to life American dream -- a chance to effectively reinvent yourself, without the danger than anybody will actually remember who and what you are. Thus we see Warner, a certified dead center swing vote receptacle, is now, according to the Globe, "asking for support from the Web-based liberal voters that Dean first inspired, and has hired MyDD's Armstrong to build his Internet operation."

This is not the moonwalking Armstrong -- this Armstrong is the one who "co-wrote a book with [Markos] Zuniga [of Daily Kos fame] that assails the Democratic Party establishment."

Hearken to the fire-breathing sansculotterie of this establishment-assailer: Asked why Warner "does so well with the netroots," Armstrong sagely replied: ''Because he wins."

The review is adorned by a very odd cartoon of Kos himself as a whey-faced, snaggle-toothed mini-ogre, riding a creature with donkey's ears and an elephant's trunk. Apparently David Levine thinks politics ought to be about something more than heads or tails (or, for us Lefties, heads they win, tails you lose).

McKibben, however, treats Kos with great respect. Of Kos' sleepytime site, he remarks:

In my view, nothing more interesting has happened in American politics for many years.

I haven't read Kos' book, and won't until I see it on a remainder table, but McKibben quotes from it a bit. There's a little lame stab at oratory-porn in an account of a Howard Dean speech to a gathering of Party cultists:

The crowd, a few thousand of the party diehards, was getting a close look at the men seeking the Democratic nod, and not liking what it saw.

And then Howard Dean walked on stage.

"What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?"

That brought loud cheers from the delegates.

"What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States?"

Soon the crowd was chanting "Dean, Dean," and that was before he unleashed his signature line: "I want my country back! We want our country back! I'm tired of being divided! I don't want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore! I want America to look like America, where we are all included....We have a dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together— black and white, gay and straight, man and woman. America! The Democratic Party!"

Kos continues, per McKibben:

The crowd, they write, "was on its feet, the convention hall shaking from audience pandemonium, the speech serving as a liberation of sorts." Party activists "weren't alone in the fight. Not anymore. They had a champion and his name was Howard Dean. The call to arms by Dean was ideologically agnostic, purely partisan."

... most of [Dean's]supporters didn't desert the Democratic Party after his defeat. Instead, when the Dean campaign Web site went dark a great many shifted over to Daily Kos and they started to volunteer for John Kerry— not with the same affection they'd felt for Dean, but with much dedication. I spent the week before the general election in Columbus, Ohio, and virtually everyone I talked to who was out knocking on doors for Kerry had begun the year supporting either Dean or the other Internet favorite, General Wesley Clark.

And many of them didn't drop out when Kerry lost the election, either. Instead, they concentrated on Dean's race for chairman of the Democratic Party...

I'm sort of surprised that McKibben takes all this silliness so seriously. I have a feeling that maybe it's the techno-dazzle that's charmed him -- he's probably spent more time on the trail than surfing the Web. Otherwise, he would surely have noticed that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is just Hubert Humphrey without the necktie.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/28/122722/94

How long, you reckon, before he's banned?

Is DailyKos a rightwing website?
by Jerome a Paris
Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 09:27:22 AM PDT

Whenever I write about possible policy options that would be (partial) solutions to our looming crisis, there is always a noisy proportion of kossacks that complains that my proposal would unfairly hurt them, and that I don't understand about the USA, how big it is, or how necessary a car is for their job, or their shopping, or how wind would spoil their view, etc, ad nauseam.

Yes. What do you think 100000+ lefties are (21+ / 0-)

gonna do once they've regained Congress and the Senate? Twiddle their thumbs? Right now we have a laser-like focus on one issue really - the upcoming elections. Once chimpy etal. are out of power, I can envision an explosion of activity in 'liberal' concerns.

And it's ALL good. :)

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. - Thucydides

by Clive all hat no horse Rodeo on Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 11:24:47 AM PDT

agreed.....one focus, win...then everything else. (3+ / 0-)

Frames not Names!!!!

by bikko100 on Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 11:56:40 AM PDT

Clive's careful "I can envision" must surely reflect an understanding that can't quite be acknowledged. Yeah, Clive, I can "envision" it too, just like I can envision time travel or space aliens coming to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but I'm not counting on it. Are you, really?