Losing becomes a habit.
Lose often enough and you can’t conceive of winning. You don’t accept delivery from change. You’re a loser. (The source of the graphic is a right-wing idiot, but in this personification of the Democratic Party establishment he’s dead-on.)
Washington Democrats are losers. They have become habituated to losing.
The only way the party can achieve success is by replacing the whole
lot of ’em.
The best example of this attitude is in a memo Digby of Hullabaloo recently got. "A very savvy friend of mine, a political player of many years," wrote this, and he’s still worried about Dukakis:
The current overconfidence in Democratic quarters though is a bit
unwarranted. One only needs to remember Mike Dukakis and his 17-point
July1988 lead.
Michael F-ing Dukakis? This is piss in their pants Democracy in action. Dukakis ran in 1988, in a High Thesis year, a point at which the Nixon Thesis of Conflict had been validated by the Reagan-credited victory in the Cold War. The assumptions Reagan ran on — low taxes, government is evil, kill ’em all — were the common assumptions of the American people at that time. Dukakis leaned against those assumptions, saying "competence" was the issue.
But competence is never the issue. Not in politics. Politics is always
the issue in politics. Always. That so-called 17 point lead was just a
generic candidate running in a vacuum. The Thesis had not yet been
heard from. Once it was the knees jerked and it was all over.
In 2008 the Thesis is dead. Ronald Reagan (left) is dead, as dead as FDR was in 1968. If Democrats don’t yet know that the
Reagan-Bush Thesis of low taxes, government is evil, and kill ’em all
is dead, completely discredited by events, then they’re crazier than
the Republicans. As this so-called very serious expert is.
He belongs in a loony bin, not a corner office.
Hillary Clinton is the candidate for these morons. Her entire life is
built on leaning against the Thesis, on assuming its basic truth, on
moderating, on yeah-but. She’s the candidate for people who don’t
believe what they’re saying. If nominated, I have no doubt Republicans
will seek to do to her what they did to Dukakis. It is their best chance, because she and the people around her accept the premises on
which such attacks will be based.
But that is very unlikely. There’s another fear this piss in their
pants Democrat has, fear of fascism, fear of marketing, fear that
democracy doesn’t really work, and that you can fool all the people all
the time, at least enough of them to steal a third term for Mussolini:
Thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, corporations are now free to give
unlimited money right up to Election Day on persuasion ads. Several
magic words cannot be used. As a general rule, major corporations do
not like Democrats controlling the White House and the Congress. So
imagine one industry group, the insurers and drug companies under the
GOPs current Medicare drug benefit and privatization schemes. The
10-year estimate from all of us transfering to these industries is in
the hundreds of billions of dollars. So if they spend 1% to maintain
this cash flow, it amounts to a rounding error. Halliburton and the
rest of the war profiteers certainly have a vested interest in the GOPs
theory of war without end. The oil and coal industries have similarly
large stakes. So one should expect a great deal of independent spending
during the year knocking down the Democratic nominee and it will be
difficult to trace the origin of much of the money until later. Some
spending will be done by make believe trade associations, others by
newly created 527s.
There are also many large industries which have been systematically
screwed by this Administration, starting with the entire tech sector.
If Google, Microsoft, Apple, and the rest see the defense contractors
and drug companies try to hijack Washington — especially if they add
AT&T to the mix — they’re going to get busy.
Besides, any company which wants to defy a 2-1 majority against the Republican Party risks an all-out assault from the Democratic Party once it has taken power. They risk missing the bus on an entire political generation. They risk total destruction. How many do you think they want to do that? Look at the current fundraising numbers for your answer.
This also assumes that people can be convinced of anything if you throw
enough money behind it. How weak-willed does this turkey think
Americans are? How little faith does he have in democracy, small d? How
little faith does he have in the basic beliefs of his party?
The answer is none. And the reason for that is simple. As I have been
explaining here for over a year now, we need a new Thesis, based on new
Myths and Values and media which speak to our time, and our problems, in order to
move power in new directions. This moron doesn’t have any, and knows it.
He needs to be fired. Now. He needs to be taken far from American
politics, to an island somewhere, and allowed to sip pina coladas until
the sun goes down on November, 2008.
In the end, I think this offers yet-another argument for John Edwards.
John Edwards does not accept the premises of the Bush Thesis. His
position is analogous to that of Ronald Reagan in 1968, or any other
movement conservative who might have chosen to run then. Only none did.
Because in 1967 Republicans were as fearful of the New Deal Thesis as
Democrats are now of the Nixon Thesis. They were afraid to speak up,
loud and proud, for what the majority of Americans were starting to
believe, just as Democrats are today. (And I include Mr. Obama in this.)
In terms of the 1967 Game we can have Nixon or go straight to Reagan.
We can be calculating calibrators, leaning against something which no
longer exists, or we can defy it, and stand for what we believe in.
We can be fearful or we can be fearless. I prefer fearless.
It’s reasonable at this point to assume most Democrats will fall in
line with the piss in their pants wing of the party. After being
battered for a generation, most don’t have the courage of their
convictions, assuming they have convictions at all.
And that’s an historic shame, because in the end Nixonism merely
delayed the conservative revolution, as Clintonism will delay the rise
of the Netroots. She’ll offer rhetoric, but no action, living in
constant fear of being found out.
I don’t think this generation has time for that, frankly. But it’s not my call to make.
It’s yours. If you want Nixon, you can have her.
