"Some Democrats" offer false choices.
Via Shakespeare's Sister, it seems that "some Democrats" (as in "Some Democrats tell Adam Nagourney their party is doooooomed!") are back. Amid the large amount of navel gazing and fluffy editorializing going on in Nagourney & Stolberg's piece, this bit stands out:
Since Mr. Bush's re-election, Democrats have been divided over whether to take on the Republicans in a more confrontational manner, ideologically and politically, or to move more forcefully to stake out the center on social and national security issues.
Um, so where exactly is the contradition here?
Also, credit where credit is due: John Kerry gets something quite right:
Mr. Kerry said the party's authority had been diluted because of the absence of one or two obvious leaders, though he expressed confidence that would change.
Leaderless parties suck. And for better or worse, the public face of the party will be those people who stand up and do things worth covering. So to navel-gazers complaining about not being emailed the right talking points by the party brass (!): if it's true that:
among more establishment Democrats, there is concern that many of the party's most visible leaders — among them, Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman; Senator John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential candidate; Mr. Kennedy; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader; and Al Gore, who has assumed a higher profile as the party heads toward the 2008 presidential primaries — may be flawed messengers,
then stop sitting around waiting for them to do and say things. Because they will (and, in the absense of alternatives, should). It's not rocket science to understand that Howard Dean saying that Tom Delay should be in jail makes better copy than Evan Bayh droning on about how "I think the Republicans are ripe for the taking on this issue, but not until we rehabilitate our own image. I think there's a certain element of denial about how we are viewed, perhaps incorrectly but viewed nonetheless, by many Americans as being deficient on national securi...zzzzzzzzz."
I'd love to see some new leadership, some bold headline-grabbing, heading into the midterms. But most rank and file Dems will take leadership and headline-grabbing where they can find it. Complaining about flawed messengers and the need for rehabilitation isn't going to do a damn thing to fix the party's problems. And Dems would help themselves by worrying less about the party's problems and more about the country's problems -- which are being caused not by Howard Dean or John Kerry but by George Bush and Alberto Gonzales and John Boehner.
Update: Or, as Josh Marshall puts it to the Dems who participated in the article: "Just shut up".
Since Mr. Bush's re-election, Democrats have been divided over whether to take on the Republicans in a more confrontational manner, ideologically and politically, or to move more forcefully to stake out the center on social and national security issues.
Um, so where exactly is the contradition here?
Also, credit where credit is due: John Kerry gets something quite right:
Mr. Kerry said the party's authority had been diluted because of the absence of one or two obvious leaders, though he expressed confidence that would change.
Leaderless parties suck. And for better or worse, the public face of the party will be those people who stand up and do things worth covering. So to navel-gazers complaining about not being emailed the right talking points by the party brass (!): if it's true that:
among more establishment Democrats, there is concern that many of the party's most visible leaders — among them, Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman; Senator John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential candidate; Mr. Kennedy; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader; and Al Gore, who has assumed a higher profile as the party heads toward the 2008 presidential primaries — may be flawed messengers,
then stop sitting around waiting for them to do and say things. Because they will (and, in the absense of alternatives, should). It's not rocket science to understand that Howard Dean saying that Tom Delay should be in jail makes better copy than Evan Bayh droning on about how "I think the Republicans are ripe for the taking on this issue, but not until we rehabilitate our own image. I think there's a certain element of denial about how we are viewed, perhaps incorrectly but viewed nonetheless, by many Americans as being deficient on national securi...zzzzzzzzz."
I'd love to see some new leadership, some bold headline-grabbing, heading into the midterms. But most rank and file Dems will take leadership and headline-grabbing where they can find it. Complaining about flawed messengers and the need for rehabilitation isn't going to do a damn thing to fix the party's problems. And Dems would help themselves by worrying less about the party's problems and more about the country's problems -- which are being caused not by Howard Dean or John Kerry but by George Bush and Alberto Gonzales and John Boehner.
Update: Or, as Josh Marshall puts it to the Dems who participated in the article: "Just shut up".
3 Comments:
One thing that seems to be missing from this debate is that the new breed of Democrats are more pragmatic and professional, and less ideological. This is why Tim Kaine and Antonio Villaraigosa were chosen to respond to the SOTU speech. We're not going to win this one by screaming at Republicans, much as that may be fun. We're going to win this one by beating them at their own game, i.e. being more competent at actually governing. Many people still don't realize that this is one of Clinton's legacies - he raised the level of professionalism in the party and the government (James Lee Witt, Robert Rubin). This won't be obvious until either closer to the elections or after them, because there will be lots of candidates for Congress, particularly the House, running on their records of accomplishment, in addition to (not in place of) their ideological differences with Bush et. al., but those races don't get lots of notice.
I don't think the party's authority has been diluted -- Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are more or less our leaders. They don't put forward much of a public face, unfortunately, but the control is there.
Yeah, you're right, Neil. I originally meant to write something in defence of Pelosi of whom I'm a big fan (Reid too). But the article is more about the public face of the party -- that's what people are whining about: the politicking, speech-makiing, headline-grabbing sort of politics. When people and I say "leaderless parties suck", I don't mean the leadership on the whip-count is bad (by historical standards, it's very good); I mean that there's nothing to rally around or conform our arguments to. That was the thing about the Kerry filibuster -- the caucus wouldn't rally to Kerry, but at the same time none of the whiners of the type that populate this article stepped up to do anything bold or media-friendly either. So you take what you can get.
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