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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Glenn Greenwald to Democrats: You can come out of hiding now
Posted by Jill | 12:58 PM

This is especially important reading in the aftermath of yesterday's disgraceful DSCC whacking of Paul Hackett:

Republicans have been hammering the notion that the President’s actions were not only legal but absolutely necessary to prevent our children from being blown up, while Democrats have nervously suggested that maybe this wasn’t entirely proper but maybe we should also just ask the President how we can help to make what he wants to do legal.

And even with all of that, a plurality – almost a majority – believe that the President broke the law, and an overwhelming majority are open to the possibility that he did. Given the dynamic among politicians and the media, that is really an extraordinary result. So what explains the Democrats’ irrational and factually baseless fear of pursuing this scandal?

The central premise of conventional political wisdom is that Democrats are chronic losers whose real views are overwhelmingly rejected by most Americans. As a result, they can’t say what they really believe because what they really believe is embraced only by a handful of freaks and outcasts on the coasts and the "heartland" is repulsed by what they believe. As a result, if they want to win elections, they have to dress up what they think in much more moderate and Republican-accommodating language, constantly genuflecting to basic Republican premises but only nitpicking on the corners, because otherwise, normal Americans will continue to be repelled by their angry, radical agenda.

How many times do we hear that - from the media, from pundits, in the blogosphere, even from Democratic consultants? If there is such a thing as conventional wisdom, it’s that.

What is so unbelievable about this world-view is that it is so plainly predicated on falsehoods, on factually false premises. Let’s use the war in Iraq as an example. According to this prevailing wisdom, anyone who opposes the war on Iraq, who thinks it’s a mistake, who doesn’t pay homage to the President’s "go-on-offense-against-the-terrorist" routine when it comes to Iraq, is a pacifistic, out-of-the-mainstream loser who is an embarrassment to the Democrats and is the type of person who has to be repudiated and hidden if the Democrats have any hope of winning every again.

That notion is as widely accepted as it is false.

[snip]

The radical, out-of-the-mainstream view is not that the war in Iraq is a mistake. That is, quite solidly, the majority view. The radical view is that we did the right thing by invading Iraq. And yet, if you listen to the blogosphere, and more importantly, the establishment media, the premise is always that anyone who strongly condemns the war in Iraq (e.g. Howard Dean, Jack Murtha, etc.) is a fringe radical who is sinking the Democrats’ electoral chances. But the facts demonstrate that the opposite is true. A lopsided majority hold that view.

If a Democratic politician were to say that the U.S. was not winning the war in Iraq, swarms of media pundits and Bush followers would decree that Democrat to be an untrustworthy out-of-the-mainstream cretin who cannot be trusted and who Democrats must repudiate unless they want to keep losing elections. And yet, by a lopsided 65-31 margin, Americans agree with that view. The out-of-the-mainstream view is the one the media has depicted as being the only acceptable view - that we did the right thing in invading Iraq, that we are winning there, that questioning the wisdom of our ongoing occupation is "what Karl Roves hopes for" because it will doom the Democrats to defeat.

Democrats have to realize -- and now -- that nobody outside of the core Bush cultists even listens to these manipulative appeals any more. They worked in 2002 and 2003; they don’t work anymore. The well has run dry. All of the public relations stunts over the last month - the Heroic Salvation of Los Angeles, the new scary bin Laden tape where he copies Democratic talking points, the oh-so-tough-and-resolute State of the Union strutting – it all fell on deaf ears and achieved nothing.

[snip]

Are Americans running into the arms of the President because they perceive that Democrats are trying to prevent him from eavesdropping on Osama bin Laden? No, no such thing is happening. The opposite has happened. After two months of the news being dominated by this scandal, Bush’s approval ratings are back in the 30s and everyone has abandoned him other than the cultists who form his base and will never abandon him.


More here.

Either the Democrats think it's still September 14, 2001, or they're on the Republican payroll. So which one is it?
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