Comment Rescue: Nobody Seemed to Mind When The Right Invented These New Rules.
When the right is strident, it is “confident” and showing “resolve” but when the left is strident it is a mob.
The left is supposed to be so kind and warm and understanding and concilatory while we are being beaten, bashed, berated and the country’s democratic traditions are ravaged by the lunatic right. I like Mahaffie, but if he is saying that the left needs to back down and return to the cowering posture we adopted in the 80’s and 90’s I say, No Way. Never again.
Mike,
I see your point. But I for one refuse to go back to the bad old days.
Liberals have always taken the highroad and have been measured and reasonable. The problem was that our calm was not reciprocated and the result was that loud persistent liars on the right undid 225 years of democratic reason and wrecked the country.
I don’t intend to stand by and let that continue. If I have to be as loud, persistent and rude to participate in this new style of discourse that they inflicted on the country I will.
If it takes a mob on the left to fight back the mob of liars and crooks on the right count me in.
Yes I think most liberal ideas are very good when they do not take from me and solve real problems. I like that part, but head over to the DLC site and look for their 21% socially engineered middle class and I do not like that at all. If that is the case, becuase I know Repubs want much less like 5-10%, either make me part of it or give me a house and land in Argentina. Otherwise, I’ll continue to be a gadfly. Even if I am the only gadfly offering you new ideas and innovations, ‘ll keep goading you to live up to your principles.
I agree that the “liberal” of being nicy nice will not win the day. The right have a bag of politricks using the shock doctrine techniques. While the liberals reel from their escapades–they are not prepared to instantly fight back. You fight back with fact!
Tuesday night will be the telling moment. If Clinton wins even one state, the corporate media will have her “back”! If Obama wins, they will scream for her defeat!
If Obama wins, the media will automatically come up with all sorts of “stuff” to paint him as the “evil doer”! Liberals wont have the stomach for it. Progressives however, will fight with fact and fury. We can not permit another election that does not have the will of the people.
In my opinion, the Independents have the great ideas, the most progressive well researched ideas, because they work non partisanly, and for the betterment of people…not loyalty to party.
“But I for one refuse to go back to the bad old days.”
My concern is that the “either/or” framing–that either liberals “go back” to being passive or go forward to engage in smears, name-calling and feeding frenzies is a false dichotomy and a failure of imagination.
I don’t think you got Mike’s point at all.
false dichotomy…?
Tell it to Max Cleland.
If we expect the GOP to suddenly become reasonable we deserve all the abuse and electoral woe that they can dish out.
You did kind of miss my point, but that doesn’t mean I completely disagree with you. For what it’s worth, two of the three incidents I mention were “right-on-left” mob actions. The only other was one where you have yourself admitted that we (and I am a leftist) went too far. I did not mean in my posting to attack you personally for your role in that incident. I’m sorry it seems to have appeared so.
I don’t think that we, or anyone really, should ever back down. I do, however, object to the shouting-down and intimidation of our opponents. let there be stern and active debate. But let there be several points of view and let them all be heard.
“I do, however, object to the shouting-down and intimidation of our opponents. let there be stern and active debate.”
This is what I took as Mike’s point.
Your argument, Jason, is emotionally understandable but, I fear, is not going to lead you where you want to go.
It is also based, at least in part, on a mistaken view of the past. The Clinton attack machine did not suddenly appear with Hillary in this presidential election: politics on both sides has been coarsening (for lack of a better word) over the past two decades.
The tactics of shouting louder (and often with just as little respect for the facts) as your opponents will–from time to time–produce short-term electoral victories. It will not, however, allow you to build the coalitions necessary to govern successfully.
Nor is politics by one-liner (“Tell it to Max Cleland”) a substitute for real debate. If you thought the Georgia race of Chambliss versus Cleland was dirty, you certainly never looked at, say, Virginia politics through the late 1960-1970s, or any number of other states (Ohio and Illinois comes to mind) where state politics have been brutal and dirty long before the so-called “new media” or (if you prefer) “Right-wing smear machine” came along.
Are the excesses worth the cost? How many political points were made for the Democrats in Delaware or nationwide with the feeding frenzy over that teacher in IRSD? Was it worth the cost to that teacher–a private citizen and not a public person who was caught up in everybody’s agenda with little respect for the facts?
Chambliss v. Cleland is an example of Democrats trying to live by the old rules of civility, compromise and decorum and I think you know it.
Based on that race, I take a very dim view of Democrats bringing white papers to gunfights ever again.
I get that Mike was not arguing for unilateral Democratic disarmament, but I see that sentiment on the rise. Even viewed through the IRSD issue I see liberals being expected to be the “bigger” and “more mature” participants in public discourse.
Fuck that.
Ewww – I just got an image of the Democrats as an Alan Colmes clone army.
Steve, I don’t think political discourse is “coarsening” so much as our ideals are evolving. This is a positive view.
When we review political discourse from our past we find many instances of personal “low” attacks. However, now we are beginning to see another way. So we have a situation where lazy name-calling is accepted under the old model but so is reasoned debate. Let’s hope I am right and we are evolving towards a time when more of the cheap shots backfire.
The ability to deliver a low shot while making a reasoned argument may be what separated BO from the pack.
And if the Repubs yelled their bullshit policies into place, why is it OK for the Dems to yell their bullshit policies into place? Just because they are OUR bullshit policies? We must make sure they are SOUND policies and not driven by pandering to the usual supporters or we are no better than the R’s.
Identitity politics are not the same as policy debates. One need not sacrifice the American Idol attitude and have good policies to boot. In fact I think it would put a candidate over the top.
“I see liberals being expected to be the “bigger” and “more mature” participants in public discourse.
Fuck that.”
So the only alternative that presents itself is therefore to be “just as small” and “just as immature”?
“Chambliss v. Cleland is an example of Democrats trying to live by the old rules of civility, compromise and decorum and I think you know it.
Based on that race, I take a very dim view of Democrats bringing white papers to gunfights ever again.”
Chambliss v. Cleland–of course it was dirty politics; Georgia politics has been dirty from the word go and the increasing targeting of local and state races by both major parties exacerbated that trend. Yes, it was dirty politics, but no dirtier than MO politics either in the Ashcroft race in 2000 or the senatorial race there in 2004.
You sit in the Philadelphia/New Jersey radio market and suggest to me that either the Dems of the GOPers has a monopoly on smears and dirty politics? C’mon, Jason.
Dogless is 98% right: “And if the Repubs yelled their bullshit policies into place, why is it OK for the Dems to yell their bullshit policies into place? Just because they are OUR bullshit policies? We must make sure they are SOUND policies and not driven by pandering to the usual supporters or we are no better than the R’s.”
The 2% I disagree with is that tactics matter, ends don’t justify means, and soundness is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
I come back to your refusal to learn any lesson from the IRSD affair–your answer in post 7 suggests that you’d do it the same way all over again.
Which is a problem: Max Cleland is an honorable man, but he knew he was going into politics and he knew the game could get rough. He accepted that. The teacher from IRSD was a private citizen who got dragged through the national mud to make political points because of a second-hand accusation by a 10 year old that everybody so wanted to believe was true that they couldn’t wait to check their facts.
If you don’t see a difference there, then I am genuinely sorry for you.
Flibble Flabble.
I will bank your pity for future use in the event of a Clinton win.
In that case, Jason, you’ll have it on deposit for a long time.
However, because I’m feeling generous, I’ll let you apply to McCain’s victory as well.
Jason,
I need to apologize to you. For a long time I disagreed with you on this matter, one you’ve written about before. At times I even scolded you about it. I was one who wanted to bring “white papers to gunfights.”
My problem was that I didn’t know the Rethuglicans had their guns tucked away where I couldn’t see them. You warned me repeatedly that the guns were there…it was only a matter of time before they would pull them out and blaze away.
You were right and I was wrong. I apologize to you for giving you grief by measuring you against my inadequacy, by not having a level of insight that was keener than mine.
I’m with you on this now. Give the rethugs back as much and more as they dish out to others.
The only way to beat the bully is to beat him up badly, repeatedly if need be, until he quits.
You know. I never meant my original post to be a Democrats vs. Republicans sort of thing. In at least two of the three cases that I cited, it is not clear which political party the “mob” belongs to; I suspect that the mob anger in those cases was rather bipartisan. Only in the last, which had to do with a particular candidate, was there any red/blue split.
My sole point was that it would be a shame for us to become a society in which someone felt physically afraid to express a contrary opinion in a public meeting. If that happens, we are truly in trouble.