Category: Politics (2005-2006)

The Roots Come Alive.

After the general post-election gloominess began to wear off near the end of last year (of course, it hasn’t completely subsided — at times, I think you can still see the cynicism emanating off me like little cartoon lines), I made it a resolution of sorts to start getting more involved in Dem organizing for this upcoming political cycle. So when some friends of mine (and founders of Concerts for Change) alerted me to their forum this evening on “Net Roots and the DNC,” which included A-list lefty bloggers Atrios and Afro-Netizen, former Dean director Zephyr Teachout, Personal Democracy Forum editor Micah Sifry, and NY Dem Party higher-ups Judith Hope and Mark Green, I very quickly decided to go check it out.

All in all, it made for a partial yet intriguing glimpse into the State of the Party 2005, and one I found at turns dispiriting and encouraging (and far more often the latter.) The panel itself was decently engaging, with most of the discussion centered around the imminent battle for DNC chair. (While there were a number of Simon Rosenberg buttons among the attendees, the panel seemed to split between Dean enthusiasts and DNC agnostics, who felt the upcoming election wasn’t of much import regardless of who wins.) There was also some discussion of the role left-leaning bloggers might play in helping to keep the media more attuned to right-wing spin jobs, but, alas, no one figured out how to square that circle just yet.

Former mayoral candidate and Nader Raider Mark Green, charismatic enough in that politico way, closed out the forum part of the evening with some clever but clearly canned remarks for the Young People into that Newfangled Technology stuff. (For example, he advised the crowd to “choose your mentors well,” which, c’mon now, is the same hoary advice Strom Thurmond gave 1000 of us at Boys’ State when I was 17 years old.) He also regaled us with a short US history lesson, which I’ll give him a B+ on — he was spot-on with George Washington plying his constituents-to-be with rum and George McGovern and direct mail, less so with the Lincoln the “real Log Cabin Republican” quip.)

As I said, I found some elements of the evening somewhat discouraging (and not just because I soon realized that my limited socializing skills at these sorts of things had further atrophied since entering academia.) For one, at times I felt the discussion seemed on the verge of degenerating into the worst kind of New Left-era identity politics, whereby the gender and ethnicity of the new DNC chair was somehow more important than his or her vision for the party. [This was driven home by a (white) fellow in the back hijacking the conversation at one point (does this sort of thing happen at GOP events? I always wonder) and loudly enumerating the few minorities in the room (By which he meant black people — Latinos and South Asians went under the radar), all to suggest that the event was somehow a charade and a farce for its lack of proportional representation.]

This is not to say that issues of gender and ethnicity aren’t central to our party’s core principles, or that the all-white-male slate for DNC chair isn’t a disappointment — to suggest otherwise would be imbecilic…even, dare I say it, Summers-esque. But, to my mind, it’s a question of focus. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay, or bisexual…we Dems just got our asses handed to us by the predominantly white male GOP. At a certain point — hopefully soon — we’re going to have to learn to deemphasize these differences among us and reemphasize our commonality as left-leaning citizens of the republic, rising up together against the corporate-sponsored avarice, imperial ambitions, and narrow-minded bigotry of today’s Republican Party. In other words and IMHO, rhetorically we need to start thinking 1933, and at times I heard way too much 1972 tonight.

(Also, and I know this is a goofy history-geek semantic distinction that I’ll just have to get over, but people kept throwing around ‘progressive’ when they meant ‘liberal.’ Not the same, y’all.)

All that being said, however, my general impression of the evening was quite favorable, mostly because of the energy, exuberance, and organizational acumen on display from the attendees. We may have lost the recent battle in 2004, but much of the online community-building infrastructure seems intact…and, indeed, seems to be here for the duration. I was reminded of the recent scholarship on the rise of the New Right (by Lisa McGirr, Rick Perlstein, and Matthew Dallek, among others), which ably demonstrates how conservatives, soundly defeated in 1964, managed to capture the California governorship only two years later, once Reagan had replaced Goldwater at the top of the movement. For now, the wheels are definitely churning at the grass-roots level…if we can just get the party machinery in order, find a standard-bearer willing to abandon the protective camouflage, and, most importantly, work on a way to articulate our democratic values against the corporate ministrations of the GOP, we might actually get somewhere.

If nothing else, it speaks volumes that conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie is worried about what he sees from the online left — he’s a guy who knows a thing or two about political organizing, and how quickly the worm can turn. Matt Drudge and GWB, we’re coming for you.

Wardrobe Malfunction.

“Auschwitz, great…are the Packers playing?” By all that is good and holy, what was Dick Cheney thinking? It’s the 60th anniversary of liberation from that Hell on Earth, and our veep, as the Post wryly put it, “was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.” Even at occasions where it seems well nigh impossible to make the US role in world affairs look bad, this administration plays the Ugly American to the hilt. For shame.

Payola II.

As Howard Kurtz outs another commentator on the administration payroll — this time, Maggie Gallagher and HHS — Dubya declares the gravy train for right-wingers has stopped. Aw, man, don’t y’all want to hear my price first? GitM sells out cheap. Did I mention lately how splendiferous I think the war in Iraq is going?

Cooking Rice.

“‘I really don’t like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly,’ Mr. Dayton said.” In a display of dissent that bodes well for the Dems’ outlook in the coming term, several Senate Dems — most notably Ted Kennedy, Mark Dayton, Carl Levin, Evan Bayh, Robert Byrd, and Barbara Boxer — use the Condi hearings to call out the administration on Iraq. (Newcomer Ken Salazar and Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, rolled over immediately.) Update: She’s through, but not before racking up the most No votes (13) in 180 years (since the “Corrupt Bargain” backlash against Henry Clay in 1825.)

Gunning for the Doctor.

“If you think you have seen this movie before — ‘Dean Against the Machine’, you have…Then, as now, Dean inspired an outside-the-Beltway, Net-based crusade whose shock troops adored his social progressivism and his fearless opposition to war in Iraq. Then, as now, a party establishment — based in Congress, governors’ mansions and Georgetown salons — viewed him as a loudmouthed lefty whose visibility would ruin the Democratic brand in Red States.” Writing in breathless hyperbole mode as usual, Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman surveys the consensus anti-Dean reaction among DNC poobahs (purportedly being led by the 2008-conscious Clintons.)

I remained pretty agnostic about Dean’s candidacy last winter – when he seemed he had the big mo, I was all for the party getting behind him. But, I can’t say I was heartbroken by any means after the Iowa collapse. (In retrospect, of course, it’s hard to think of a single state that Kerry won that Dean also wouldn’t have carried.) That being said, to my mind Dean as DNC chair makes for a much better fit. The job of DNC chair is to fire up the grass roots and get Dems elected, and Dean has already shown a marked ability to achieve the former. Plus, it was the protective-camouflage, middle-of-the-road DNC’ers that foisted Terry McAuliffe on us, and he was an out-and-out embarrassment from start to finish. (Don’t agree? Go look at the November results again.)

As many others have noted, Dean isn’t nearly as lefty as he’s being made out to be — He’s a fiscally conservative governor. As such, the reaction he has fostered among the insider crowd has very little to do with governing ideology and a lot to do with one faction desperate to maintain controlling power over the party. Dean or no, if the DNC chairmanship is filled by another unenterprising flunky along the lines of McAuliffe, we’ve already started down the road to more of the same in 2008, right down to the losing.

Snowe drifts.

With the Congressional battle lines forming over Dubya’s coming Social Security overhaul, Senate Finance Committee member and GOP moderate Olympia Snowe voices her doubts on CNN, which could greatly benefit Dems in defeating the plan (if we get our act together.) “Raising broad objections to the substance and presentation of the White House case, Snowe made it clear she is not convinced that a Social Security crisis has arrived, as Bush maintains…And Snowe said she is ‘certainly not going to support diverting $2 trillion from Social Security into creating personal savings accounts'” (although she is not averse to the principle of PSAs in general).

Bush II, Powells 0.

In something of a surprise move (at least in regards to timing), Michael Powell announces his resignation as FCC Chairman. From the media ownership fiasco to Powell’s knee-jerk overreliance on deregulation as a general fix-all, Powell’s brief tenure probably isn’t going to go down as much other than an experiment gone awry, and further testament to the fact that deregulating markets doesn’t necessarily lead to increased competition — in fact, sometimes quite the opposite. Update: Stephen Labaton previews the post-Powell FCC.

Freedom, Yeah!

“America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” Really? Well, dang, that was easy. But who’s going to break the news to China, Russia, and the Saudis, for starters? As per many of Michael Gerson’s Big-Moment speeches, Dubya’s Second Inaugural was a well-crafted piece of prose with some nice rhetorical flourishes and an eye to history. But, stylistic flair aside, Dubya might as well have been declaring himself the President of Mars, for all the grounding this speech had in contemporary reality.

“The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Freedom…I can dig it. Reminds me of the end of Braveheart. But, as Slate‘s Fred Kaplan already aptly questioned, “What is this thing called ‘freedom’?…Does ‘freedom’ always mean a Western-style, or pro-American, democracy? Whatever freedom is, how do we go about spreading it?” And, for that matter, isn’t this the guy who once told us there “ought to be limits to freedom?”

I know we shouldn’t expect nuance from this president, but today’s speech was even worse than usual (as well as being somewhat distasteful, given the very real problems with “freedom” Iraq is facing right now.) The only things I learned from Dubya’s speech are that freedom rains down like a benediction (in fact, exactly like a benediction) on the peoples of the world, and, whatsmore, that evildoers hate them some freedom. And that was about it. Seriously, he sounded like he was kicking off that goofy rave in the second Matrix.

On the domestic side, I was somewhat surprised that Bush didn’t push the Ownership Society meme a little harder — he only mentioned it once — but I guess that’ll probably get more run in the upcoming State of the Union. (Perhaps he didn’t want anyone reminded of Colin Powell’s “You Break it, You Own it” Pottery Barn rule when they were supposed to be drinking in the sweet, sweet freedom.) That being said, Bush did manage to squeeze in some Grade-A chum for the pro-lifers — “always remember that even the unwanted have worth” — which he then half-heartedly tried to mask with a plea to end racism. (Freedom, yeah! Bigotry, no! Serenity now! I think I got it.)

All in all, the inaugural wasn’t an embarrassing speech as delivered — Gerson’s too good at his job for that. But, like too much in this administration, it was all style and no substance, offering false simplicity and sanctimony in the place of good ideas or hard-won truths. In short, it was just like Dubya.

So Help Me God.

As the Bushies warm up the teleprompter, the Washington Post attempts to explain why most inaugural addresses are boring, Chris Suellentrop surveys some of the lousier efforts over the years (with help from this Library of Congress exhibit), and David Greenberg looks back at the last great one (Kennedy, 1961). Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dubya’s evocation tomorrow of “The Ownership Society” isn’t going to make the A-list.