I’m Really Late On This One,

but it’s been irritating me for quite a while, so bear with me.

By now, I’m sure, everyone knows about this Daily Kos piece from the end of December. It’s been linked all over the right side of the blogosphere. Markos “screw ’em” Moulitsas unloaded that day from his frustration over Bush’s victory. Markos is a Democratic activist, though not one of the candidates he supported won anything. Yet The Daily Kos is #3 on the Ecosystem with 2262 links at the time of this writing, and a daily traffic volume of 267,061 hits a day. He’s the biggest Lefty player in the blogosphere by those numbers.

Let me quote the pertinent parts of that post as I see it:

But what makes me angry was Kerry and his gang’s inability to take advantage of the situation. I may regret saying this later, but fuck it — they should be lined up and shot. There’s no reason they should’ve lost to this joker. “I voted for the $87 billion, then I voted against it.” That wasn’t nuance. That was idiocy. And with a primary campaign that consisted entirely of “I’m the most electable”, Kerry entered the general without a core philosophy or articulated vision for the job.

I could deal with losing to a popular incumbent. But it’s tough to deal with the most unpopular incumbent to win reelection.

Of course, there’s a silver lining to all of this. A Kerry presidency would’ve been an unmitigated disaster, with a hostile congress, budget woes, the mess in Iraq, etc. Not a good time to be in charge. Those Supreme Court seats would’ve been nice (whoever we would’ve been able to push through a hostile Senate), but we’ve got an opportunity for long-term gain.

—

The Democrats need to offer an alternative agenda over the next four years. It won’t be enacted, so they can shoot for the moon. The hell with good policy, make proposals that sound great. The GOP used flag burning and gay marriage to rally their side. We can find equivalents. Don’t worry about them becoming law, because they won’t. Worry about branding the party and placing every bit of bad news (and there will be plenty) squarely at the feet of the party that controls all levers of government.

We need to make the GOP radioactive. Their incompetence is providing the ammunition. It is our job to wield it. Remember, they control everything. We don’t need to be bipartisan. We don’t need to work with them for them to pass their agenda. So we offer up clear alternatives to everything they propose. We have to be aggressive.

We have nothing to lose. Being in the minority is being in the minority. Yet we have much to gain.

In the first part, Kos acknowledges that a Kerry presidency would have been “an unmitigated disaster.” One can only assume that through the sole charm of his not being Bush would that disaster have been, err… mitigated. He acknowledges that his party was incompetent in selecting Kerry, and unable to beat what should have been a self-defeating foe.

Yet this is the party that he wants to lead the nation. And he berates the public for not voting for Kerry. Doesn’t it occur to him that, just perhaps, the majority of the voting public who went for Bush might have also seen that Kerry would have yeilded that “unmitigated disaster,” and were not off-put by another four years of Bush?

It’s blindingly apparent to me the level of contempt Markos holds for the electorate – those people who actually energize the democratic process. To him, the reason Bush won was because his supporters were all brainwashed by “the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy — the $300 million annual machine that developes the conservative message (think tanks), disseminates it to the public (Fox News, Rush), and trains their leaders in how to wield it.” It never occurs to him that the public might have rejected the Democrats on the merits of their arguments. It’s unthinkable.

And this is illustrated by his recommendation for future victory: Bamboozle the electorate! After all, it works for the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”! Right?

“The Democrats need to offer an alternative agenda over the next four years. It won’t be enacted, so they can shoot for the moon. The hell with good policy, make proposals that sound great. The GOP used flag burning and gay marriage to rally their side. We can find equivalents. Don’t worry about them becoming law, because they won’t.” In other words, lie. Deceive. Mislead. The idiots don’t know any better, so dangle the carrot and they’ll follow. We’ll give ’em our real agenda after we get into power!

This differs from the current Democrat campaign strategy… how, exactly?

And this guy is the most popular Lefty blogger out there?

What worries me is that Bush only got 51% of the vote. Kos says, “We need to make the GOP radioactive. Their incompetence is providing the ammunition.” Yet he illuminates with blinding arc lights the incompetence of the DNC, and why it is already “radioactive”. And he wants more of it! The irony is, while describing it in minute detail, what he describes never actually reaches into his consciousness. The reality he illustrates rests uncomfortably in his subconscious along with his obvious loathing for the people who just won’t put him and those like him in charge. He can write about it without it ever actually being processed to its logical conclusion.

Markos and people like him are the ones with their hands on the tiller of the Democratic Party. As much as I hate to say it (since I believe a “loyal opposition” is a good and necessary thing) we need to let them steer that ship into the shoals. In fact, we should help. They’re not the loyal opposition anymore. They’re not “the other side.” They’re the enemy. They are not interested in what’s best for the nation. They are not interested in what’s best for the Iraqis. They are not interested in what’s best for the world. They are only interested in grasping the levers of power, and they illustrate on a daily basis that the Constitution means less to them than it does to any elected Republican, and far less than it means to me and people like me.

A long time ago I wrote Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary. I still believe that. But I also believe that both liberals and conservatives have to share a common vocabulary – the words used must have the same meaning for both sides – and they must both share a love for the society they occupy. I don’t see either from the Left. Words mean what they want them to mean and that meaning can change at any time so long as it brings an advantage, and they hate the society they live in. They loathe it. They want to tear it down and build a utopia – the utopia I talked about in On Guillotines and Gibbets – if we damned proles would just acknowledge our masters and prostrate ourselves before them.

I’ve written a lot in this blog about the decades of corrosion that the Left’s control of media and public education have wrought on the public. The fact that almost 49% of the voting public was willing to go for Kerry, when even the most rabid Leftist recognized what a Kerry presidency would have meant, ought to illustrate that more vividly than anything I can write.