This will be my first post here at By The Fault. In this election season there are so many topics and so little time but I think there is no more important issue than the “Implosion”. Charles has been covering the implosion at Talk Left. I am in a position to have a bit of first hand knowledge of this one and will likely have things to say about it but I wanted to talk about the wider implosion. The implosion of the Democratic Party.
I have been a Democrat for most of my adult life. I have marched and stuffed envelopes and donated my time and money to the causes I thought it represented. Those causes, I once thought, included things like standing up for the “little guy”. I would never have believed anyone in the Democratic Party would hold against me, or anyone else, the fact that I did not attend an ivy league school. In my experience little guys rarely have resumes that include ivy league schools. It was the Republicans, I always thought, who were the party of privilege and elitism. This year I see this being turned on it’s head. I see a smart able woman, a woman who clearly has the potential to be one of the most consequential politicians of her time, being smeared by lies and half truths, dragged through the mud, called a hick and a whore and even having her family denigrated just because she stands in someones way. And then there is Governor Palin.
Lets be honest, many of the people attacking Governor Palin have gone completely off the rails. In Palin we have a candidate with some very troubling views. Why has she not been challenged for those views instead of being accused of concealing her daughters first pregnancy by saying it was her own? Honestly, who would have believed two weeks ago that we would see formerly respected progressive women, women who have no doubt fought ignorant prejudices and stereotpes in thier own lives, stand up and suggest a woman can not be Vice President because she has children? I honestly don’t understand why she seems to have this effect on what I had believed were rational people. Is it because she is, you will pardon the expression, “attractive”? I am asking because I honestly don’t understand. For example, Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left says she “wants” to talk about issues and in her next post she twitters about the fact that Palin did not REALLY sell the plane on eBay, when btw she never actually said she did, as if she is reporting on D-Day. And then there are the other things she and others have been “reporting” or more accurately whispering that I won’t even repeat here.
If becoming the thing I hate is the only way I can win, I will lose thank you. The funny part is I actually think at least some of these “democrats” think they are smartly adopting republican tactics in order to win. So much for “do or say anything to win”. The problem is they suck at it. Republicans have always been about a decade ahead of Democrats when it comes to things like messaging and framing. They smartly and surgically use these slimy tactics only as seasoning to all the other things they are doing. It is not the main course or even the dessert, it is the garnish. Over the last few weeks the haters on the left have given us a feast of moldy, unwashed parsley. The only effect this has had so far is to cause a backlash that I believe is only starting to build.
What bothers many of us most about this is we have seen it before and not long ago. You could say we are seeing a pattern of behaviour, not necessarily from Senator Obama or even his campaign although their hands are far from clean, but from his “supporters”. On the other hand, with one single bold act, that of choosing Senator Clinton as his VP, Obama could have healed the breech in the Party and kept Sara Palin in Alaska. If wishes were horses. Now we have and angry divided party and a surging opposition. Obama promised to bring hordes of new people into the party. He seems to have delivered on that at least and, well, hordes seems to me a pretty good word. I am saddened and embarrassed by the filth that has come from the left recently. If this is the Obama Democratic party, I am afraid I want nothing to do with it.
Speaking only for me.