When They Were Democrats

Via Driftglass, Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic National Convention keynote speech:

It's hard to add to that, but Drifty did it masterfully:

For all the good it will do, this is a reminder that some of us know damn -- and will never stop Saying Out Loud -- the ugly truth that you dare not ever admit in public: that the Movement you spent so many years helping to build was born corrupt and raised by monsters.

That you were warned at every step along the way that teetering on the edge of a fascist abyss with giggling, Bible-thumping sociopaths trying to shove us over the edge is exactly where your grotesque cult of Thatcher and Reagan would land us.

And now that we are all squatting in the ruins of the culture your Movement destroyed, how will you atone?

Are we at a tipping point?

A stimulus that seems to finally be showing signs of breaking up the job drought logjam just a wee, tiny bit. A health care reform bill that isn't great, but ought to be a start towards more affordable health care for all. These are things that were labeled "liberal overreach" by conservatives and other reactionaries, and the media.

So what, then, do you say about investigating women who have miscarriages, or forcing them to listen to rants by Christofascist zombies before they can get an abortion, or about threatening to strip opposition state Senators of their seats so you can stack it with members of your own party and elmininate even the ILLUSION of choice that we currently have? What do you say about the gutting of education, or health care programs for the poor, of cuts in funding for meals for housebound seniors? If what we're seeing from the Republicans isn't overreach, what is?

In Wisconsin, it seems to be regarded as overreach, because there is the biggest case of buyer's remorse up there since the first unfortunate sap in the late 1960's bought the first Chevy Vega off the assembly line:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to strip public employee unions of most of their collective bargaining rights appears to be so unpopular, that a Rasmussen poll now finds that almost 60% of likely Wisconsin voters disapprove of his job performance.

That finding shows just how quickly Walker -- who was elected to his first term last November with 52% of the vote -- has sunk just in his first two months in office. And it comes one day after Rasmussen released results from the same poll, all of which showed public opinion firmly on the side of the unions in the labor rights battle that has deadlocked the state capitol for the past few weeks.

In the poll, 57% of respondents said they disapprove of Walker's job performance -- including 48% who say they strongly disapprove. Meanwhile, only 43% said they approve of the job Walker is doing.

Not surprisingly, respondents who said they belong to a public union sided heavily against Walker, with roughly eight in ten giving him negative marks on job performance. Yet not only were public sector union members opposed to Walker, but a majority of private sector union members also disapproved of the governor by a 53% to 43% margin.

Also interesting to note -- the overwhelming opposition from people with children in Wisconsin public schools. Sixty-seven percent of people in that demographic disapprove of Walker, including 54% who strongly disapprove.

Could it possibly that people are looking up from beating people just like themselves to a pulp and are stopping to look up the ladder at the guy lifting the twenties out of their back pockets? Ratings for cable news indicate that this just might be so:

Yesterday, another milestone was reached. The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC drew 39,000 more viewers in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. Beck did manage to draw more total viewers, but even that statistic is revealing. It shows that Beck’s audience is comprised of only 21% of the young demo. That compares to Maddow’s 31%.

This is further evidence of Beck’s accelerating collapse. Last week it was reported that Beck declined 32% (25-54) and 26% (total viewers) year-to-year for the month of February. And that’s on top of a January year-to-year drop of 50% (25-54) and 40% (total viewers).

The public is obviously tiring of this manic-paranoid’s freak show. As a result, many staunch conservatives are becoming bolder with regard to their criticisms of Beck. And some are even recognizing that Beck may be just the tip of the iceberg and that anyone who hitches their wagon to Beck is equally deserving of ridicule and revulsion. That applies particularly to Beck’s primary benefactors, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, but also to those who work with and/or defend Beck. They will all learn that this stench is unremitting.

As for Maddow, this is just one day, so it will take some time to see if her strength continues. Pessimists will whine that Maddow’s primetime scheduling gives her an advantage, but the fact is that this is the first time she has outdrawn Beck and that makes it significant. For now she deserves to celebrate and I congratulate her.

Me too.

Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

I can't believe I'm going to link to Joan Walsh here. After all, Walsh was one of the chief mainstream spokespeople for the Oh Poor Hillary movement (as opposed to the PUMAs, which were utterly batshit crazy) and is usually the poster child for ineffectual liberals on cable news. But in this piece about the Limbaugh foofarah, she's spot on.

Money quote:

The GOP is in free fall, and it just keeps eating its young. Sarah Palin was the first sacrificial lamb, nominated for vice-president before she was ready (if she'll ever be) and then slaughtered (for the time being, at least) by McCain campaign leaders. Bobby Jindal was trotted out to almost certain failure after Obama's speech last weekend. Now Limbaugh has emasculated the brand-new RNC chair, Michael Steele. I'm sure it's an accident all three represented a possible future of the party that wasn't white and male.

So for now the future of the party is an admitted Oxycontin addict who plea-bargained his way out of a drug conviction, who mocks children and Parkinson's sufferers, who exhibits strange sexual fears about our first black president (why is he worried about "grabbing his ankles?"), who was famously detained on a Dominican Republic vacation for carrying Viagra without a prescription? I wouldn't mention that last little issue, except it helps me agree with Tom DeLay that he's a role model for Republicans: Clearly a party that is afraid to stand up to a bully like Limbaugh needs some kind of political Viagra, immediately. It would be nice to see a Republican whose bouts of integrity and courage lasted more than four hours.

Not trying to rain on our parade, but something to think about

Now that Rahm Emanuel has succeeded in driving Howard Dean not just out of the DNC and the Administration, but also out of public life altogether, and Tim Kaine is alluding to some sort of return to the Emanuel doctrine of "Can't Win, Don't Try" where red states are concerned (because the Emanuel doctrine worked so well for us in the past, right? See also: Tammy Duckworth, who is NOT in Congress despite being Rahmmy's "sure win" candidate in 2006).

But it occurred to me yesterday while watching the extraordinary crowd reaction to the new president-to-be that the only way Democrats have won the White House in the last twenty-eight years is to run extraordinarily charismatic candidates -- the kind that don't come marching into politics every day. When we don't have candidates as with the kind of force of personality that Barack Obama has, and that Bill Clinton had, we lose. And I'm sorry, folks, but that means that we still aren't getting the message out. Republicans voted for their messenger even though he was a doddering, incoherent old man and his lunatic Mooselini. When presented with less-than-movie-star Democratic candidates, independents tend to either stay home or vote Republican and sometimes enough Democrats will vote for Ralph Nader to make the difference.

We have a lot of work to do over the next four years to continue to repair the Democratic brand. I loved hearing Pete Seeger restore Woody Guthrie's old outrage anthem, but that doesn't change the fact that the Disciples of Robert Rubin are going to be running Treasury and Bob Gates is still going to be running Defense. We have to keep Barack Obama's feet to the fire, and we have to find a way to remind people that most of the programs for which they have a new appreciation now that the economy is tanking, were implemented by Democrats and liberals; and that Republicans would dismantle that if they could. We have to do this without the help of the Party apparatchiks, because Obama's nature is to try to placate the other side, and Tim Kaine's leanings are strictly DLC.

In which I right a long-standing wrong

I really should have added John Cole to the blogroll a long time ago. I'm not sure John even qualifies as a conservative any longer, now that "conservatism" involves stuffing billions of dollars in taxpayer cash into the pockets of crony corporations, and when "privatization" involves replacing the accountable military with mercenaries who fire indiscriminately at civilians, and when "freedom" means agree with the president or we will destroy you.

The right's attempts to destroy the Frost family for their "crime" of pointing out that sometimes even families who play by the rules and aren't "welfare queens" cannot get health insurance on their own seem to be, for John, the last straw:

[The Frosts] are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter.

They are, however, not without fault. They are unable to afford insurance through normal means (and now that they have pre-existing conditions, probably couldn’t get traditional insurance anyway), and managed to get several of their family members injured in a traumatic accident. And, it appears, those are the big blind spots for compassionate conservatism. That, and the real big sin- allowing themselves to advocate for a policy that the Decider was going to veto.

[snip]

I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.

Jump on over to see some of the comments that some of these bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs posted at Michelle Malkin's blog. John's right. This is what the Republican Party has become. Where I differ from John is in the notion that this is somehow something new; something that's just come about in the aftermath of 9/11; that it's a reptilian brain response to a genuine threat that is oozing over every other aspect of American life. One could argue that it goes back to Barry Goldwater, but I'd say it has its birth from the loins of Ronald Reagan, who voiced his "hate the poor and the different" rhetoric with a kindly,, smiling face. It was honed by Lee Atwater, who perfected the art of destroying the opposition through half-truths, innuendo, outright lies, and playing on fear. In the infamous Willie Horton ad of 1988, we saw the kind of campaign tactics that would eventually become the equivocation of a Vietnam veteran who left three limbs there with Osama Bin Laden and the Swiftboat Veterans for Lies smearing a presidential candidate based on nothing but their own bitterness.

There IS a difference between Republicans and Democrats, at least in terms of how they think. Republicans are about greed, fear, xenophobia, white supremacy, and male power. The Republican Party creed really IS "I got mine and fuck you." Democrats think about what the world could be. They believe in the essential decency of humans in general and Americans in particular. That's why it's so sad to see Democrats in Washington cave in again and again to the Republican doctrine of fear and hatred -- out of their own cowardice. The Democratic heritage IS of a better way, of a way that has for the most part had Americans living a better life with less anxiety and less rage. Republican rule seems only to result in an angry, vengeful populace. One wonders, then, why anyone wants these vile people to rule anything -- and why Democrats have allowed them to do it.

UPDATE: Unrelated, but relevant. Brandon Friedman isn't a 12-year-old, but he is an Iraq war veteran. If you think that what Rush Limbaugh says doesn't matter, check out some of the hate mail that VoteVets has received.

This is Republican America, folks -- where it's not just acceptable, but mandatory, to harass and threaten a 12-year-old and where war veterans are branded as pussies by guys too chickenshit to enlist to fight the very wars they love.