see, this is why this really needs to stop

[sisyphusshrugged]

We were all awake for some portion of the last twelve years, right? While the Republicans in congress blocked practically everything the most popular president of our lifetime tried to do procedurally because, um, they didn't like him or what he was trying to do, and then our previously unelected "uniter" president deployed some truly despicable tactics to roll over Democrats to get his agenda passed? We didn't any of us miss that, did we?

Well, some of we apparently did.

Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist and aide to retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark's presidential campaign, said a strategy of reflexive and across-the-board combat was tried this year -- and proved not good enough for a majority.

"Democrats in the Senate are going to have to face some facts -- they can't filibuster everything," he said, noting that the GOP this week increased its majority in that chamber from 51 to 55 votes. While fights on important principles are inevitable, he said, "if being an opponent of what George Bush stands for worked, John Kerry would be president."

"If there was ever a time when we turned out our base, we did it this year -- it just was not enough," Bennett added. "Kerry's equivocation on the war was not the problem. It was not that he was too moderate. It's that, fairly or unfairly, he was not seen as having an alternative vision."

Oh, where can I begin.

Kerry? Massively outspent by Republican 527 groups running spectacularly dishonest ads and in kind contributions to his opponent from major media corporations. Didn't respond for far too long because people like Mr. Bennett advised him not to be divisive.

Daschle? Massively outspent by 527s from out of state who carpetbombed his state with advertisements against him (while he, quixotically, insisted until just before election day that he wouldn't accept money from out of state).

He did manage to get a court decision saying that Republicans couldn't copy down the license numbers of cars belonging to native american voters, which was the chosen Republican keep in the vote activity in his state, but since it didn't happen until the day before the election it's questionable if the putative targets knew about it.

And, look, the networks and the AP put a heavily freighted fundamentalist code phrase on a list of most important issues (against all the rules of responsible polling) and look, the fundamentalists picked it.

What our chattering class has to sell is the illusion that they're ahead of the curve zeitgeistwise. In reality, they know about what anyone else who reads the papers knows a few hours earlier.

Please, please, please. Do not buy into this nonsense.

You know perfectly well two months from now they'll have a brand new dazzling insight at a 67° angle from this one and it will be as if this one never was. You'll be tacky as hell if you bring it up.

Meantime we'll get rolled some more.

Nod and smile and fucking fight anyway. You have more important things to worry about than maximizing some 72 dpi solon's advertising revenue.

Comments

[tully-monster.livejournal.com]

The election was stolen. There is no mandate.

[athena8827.livejournal.com]

agreed.

My sister, life_is_better lives in Fort Lauderdale and used one of those black box voting machines. She selected Kerry, then candidates in other races. The red "vote" button started flashing, telling her to finalize her vote. She double checked to look at everything and the machine had switched her vote to Bush! She was horrified. And she knows a lot of people that had the same thing happen to them.