Democrats' Winning Strategy

My latest piece is in Human Events this week:

If all of the United States were like Philadelphia, the Democratic Party would have a strategy for sweeping the 2004 elections. It would involve former President Bill Clinton, 2000 loser Al Gore, race-profiteer Jesse Jackson and actor/pundit/all-purpose political hack James Carville.

The tactics would be unfounded charges of racism, naked Bush-bashing and facile demonization of Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. Using these methods, Democratic Mayor John Street of Philadelphia fought off an insurgent campaign by Republican businessman Sam Katz.

- posted by Carney at 2:14 PM; link

 
re: Off the Back Page, Out of the Closet

Today, David Frum shows us he can joke about abortion, too. He posts on his blog:

"Well! To judge from the mail I received, you’d think I had endorsed infant sacrifice on the Washington Mall."

Not exactly, Frum, but you did stick up for the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of children--to a conservative audience. At least sacrifices have some putatively pious purpose. No, Frum is just supporting their legalization for pragmatic political purposes.

- posted by Carney at 11:26 AM; link

 
Off the Back Page, Out of the Closet

David Frum says it best himself: "Now let me say right off: I am not pro-life."

Frum, when it was his business to declare who loved his adopted country, wrote, "here is what never could have been [expected]: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves 'conservatives.' "

Frankly, I think a few folks will find it a bit more surprising that someone who is openly "not pro-life" would go about trying to purge others for being insufficiently conservative. National Review should be thankful this guy is off their back page.

- posted by Carney at 6:53 PM; link

 
This is a Crime?

"On his second night in Iraq, one month ago, Sergeant Pogany, 32, saw an Iraqi cut in half by a machine gun. The sight disturbed him so much, he said, he threw up and shook for hours. His head pounded and his chest hurt."

- posted by Ethan at 4:00 PM; link

 
Opus Sinistri

Charles Pierce has written a Boston Globe magazine piece that at first promises to unearth some insidious right-wing conspiracy in Washington to take over the Catholic Church. It turns out to not really say anything much more than Fr. C. John McCloskey's smile weirds him out.

But as another salvo in the attempt to demonize traditional elements in the Church, the Globe piece falls into a typical liberal media trap: identify the "right" (in this case McCloskey and Opus Dei) and juxtapose it to the "mainstream." There is no left, just the right and the normal folks.

Particularly egregious is the treatment of Rev. Richard McBrien, described in the piece as simply, "a theologian at the University of Notre Dame." McBrien has publicly announced at times he would defy the pope. He has also agitated for the ordination of women.

While maybe he's to the right of Charles Pierce, McBrien's a liberal theologian.

p.s. It's not just my opinion.

- posted by Carney at 1:37 PM; link

 
Returning to the Cave

Richard Rorty, probably the most famous living American philosopher, has an article in the print version of the Fall '03 issue of Dissent. In it, he joins forces with Jacques Derrida and Jurgen Habermas (respectively, the most famous living French and German philosophers), who have recently exhorted Europe to rise up and counterbalance American power. Aside from the preeminence of its author, the article doesn't have much to recommend it–it's a pretty standard indictment of U.S. foreign policy.

Michael Walzer, who probably deserves to be the most fmous living American political philosopher now that John Rawls has passed, also has an article in the same issue; his brief article, though, Is There An American Empire?, is much more interesting. It's an overview of the reasons why it is difficult to call America an empire (complete with modish references to Gramsci, Nigiri and Hardt) coupled with a recommendation that we instead simply speak of American hegemony. This might seem like a merely terminological distinction, but it actually allows for a much more nuanced critique of present American foreign policy than you usually hear–one that even Carney might be able to go along with. Highly Recommended.

- posted by Mark at 10:35 AM; link

 
Lowest of the Low

In a country famous for serial killers, he was the best. Now he's plea-bargained himself out of the death penalty. I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story.

And while I'm on the subject of high-profile trials, I'd gift my left ball, as the man said, to see Rosie go down.

- posted by Mark at 12:00 AM; link

 
Just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm

I just saw Howard Dean on Fox issuing yet another apology for the statement he made a few days ago about wanting to be the candidate for Southern men with confederate flag decals on their pick-up trucks (beacause their kids need a better education, too). That's not quite accurate, what he actually apologized for was beginning a much needed debate about race "clumsily".

He likened himself to Lincoln in his willingness to face the issue of race in America head-on.

Bravo, Howard.

- posted by Mark at 1:02 PM; link

 
The (D) is for Discord

National Democrats avoided Kentucky and Mississippi like the plague, but that didn't do any good. Voters there finally did what South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama had already done: kicked the Democrats out.

But Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson all had boots on the ground in Philly. Mayor Street skyrocketed in the polls once it was clear he was subject of a criminal investigation. Clinton said he knew what it was like to subject of such investigations. Jackson played the race card (imagine that!).

Look at what the national Dems are trying to do with Texas redistricting. Look at why they tried to do with Florida 2000. The closest thing the Democratic Party has to a message is "Bush and Ashcroft are corrupt and racist." Wait `till 2008, I guess.

- posted by Carney at 9:40 AM; link

 
Time Lies

The Time Almanac has an informative page on the chronology of the 2000 recounts, which gets interesting when we get to the historic day of Tuesday, December 12. That entry starts with a too-often overlooked fact, "The U.S. Supreme Court rules 7-2 to reverse the Florida Supreme Court, which had ordered manual recounts in certain counties."

After describing the ruling in more detail, the Almanac gives us a whopper:

"The decision means that the Supreme Court, not the electorate, has determined the outcome of the presidential election."

Time cannot mean to tell us that the Supreme Court's ruling was an open disregard for the electorate's will. The point of the GOP lawyers' argument was that selective manual recounts were taking the election out of the hands of the electorate and into the hands of partisan county officials. Stunning.

- posted by Carney at 12:25 AM; link

 
Black is the New White

How does one take seriously Howard Dean, who says this:

"The dividing of working people by race has been a cornerstone of Republican politics for the last three decades ."

on the same day Philadelphia's Democratic Mayor John Street wins reelection on the strength of claims that an FBI probe into his office was a racially motivated ploy by the Bush Administration?

- posted by Carney at 12:10 AM; link

 
Lunacy

You know that up is the new down when a blogger like Kevin Drum is criticizing Bush from the right. Though let me state the obvious: there is nothing particularly liberal about pouring federal money into returning to the moon in order to "mobilize the U.S. space industry as well as boost morale at NASA."

- posted by Bob at 2:38 PM; link

 
Steyn

Mark Steyn on the Arab world in the Chicago Sun-Times:

"There's something pathetic about a culture so ignorant even its pathologies have to be imported."

I've got no problems with generalizations per se, and no deep sympathy with Islamism in particular, but, somehow, I still manage to find the above statement crude, jingoistic and (yes) ignorant. It's a school-boy taunt masquerading as political commentary.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was also pure comedic gold.

Let me try my hand at this kind of political satire:

"Yo' kulcha is so stupid, that in the face of the erosion of yo' traditional values due to the advance of Westernism, you be forced to resort to forms of resistance to globalization that ain't entirely traditional demselves."

I'm going to call my first book: The Lying Arab World is a Big, Fat Idiot.

- posted by Mark at 2:03 PM; link