Just think about the way these are used lately. They are the methods used by the centrist leaning Democrats to keep those who question the direction we are going as a party in a place where we are ineffective.
The ridicule is used here at DU often. It ignites anger, as it is meant to do. It makes people want to fight back against the machine people know is there but feel helpless against. It is meant to support a certain candidate and make others look foolish. But the vitriol is more likely to result in a large scale staying home and not voting for the inevitable.
The tactic of ridicule is being used quite widely in Florida now. It is working. Florida worked with the GOP here to get the vote through for the early primary. Then they immediately started the ridicule of Howard Dean and the DNC. It was well orchestrated indeed. They covered up their own dirty deeds by shifting blame and filing lawsuits.
Florida Democrats were on board with the Republicans here in March 2006.The "ignoring the base" is being used right now by our party. The mindset for years now in the Democratic party is that if they play to the conservative base they will win. They will do so even going so far as to defend bombing Iran, I fear. It is easier to sound "tough and smart" than to tell the truth and risk attacks by the righty bloggers and Fox News. Our machine is not as effective, and they do not fear us.
Neither do they respect us.
They are putting through
bills made in secret meetings.
The final version of the bill also dropped a requirement that the director of national intelligence conduct an assessment of the effects of global climate change on national security. The overall legislation would give Congress' approval for the whole range of intelligence programs over the coming year, including spy satellites and eavesdropping, human spying and battlefield collection, along with recommended spending levels. Most of the bill is secret.
They are having to be watched by the ACLU day and night and passing bills that are
train wrecks ready to happen The bottom line is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are disorganized and giving no signals to members on the FISA wiretapping expansion and retroactive immunity to telecom companies, which is going to result in horrific legislation. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller is once again inviting Mike McConnell into closed hearings on how to fix the FISA law, and the markup is next week. There are no drafts of legislation around, which is a bad The Senate Judiciary Committee is hamstrung by Dianne Feinstein, who prevents a majority, and by the instincts of Democrat leaders who, in a conflicts between Judiciary and Intelligence, will go with Intelligence because of a perceived fear of national security weakness.
Rockefeller, in order to get something 'bipartisan' that can pass the Senate, is working with Kit Bond to draft something that can get to 60 votes. Bond of course is close to McConnell, and so it's likely that the bill coming out of the Senate Judiciary is going to contain retroactive immunity for telecom companies (thank you lobbyist Jamie Gorelick) and a permanent fix to FISA that expands executive power
It is almost unbelievable how quickly the lobbyists moved in and took control.
As for the appeasing...they are allowing the right wing to set the message and control the agenda. I don't know if they are aware they are doing it, but the ignoring of the base plays into that as well. They have the centrist think tanks making sure the netroots/nutroots are put in their places.
Letting the GOP control the agendaTwo of the worst that come to mind recently are the censure of Move On and the resolution about Iran.
MoveOn hit a nerve. In the face of truth, the right-wing has been forced to change the subject -- away from the administration's betrayal of trust and the escalating tragedy of the occupation to of all things, an ad! To take the focus off maiming and death and the breaking of our military, they talk about etiquette.The truth has reduced them to whining: MoveOn was impolite. Rather than face the truth, they use character assassination against an organization whose three million members stand for the highest patriotic principles of this country, the first of which is a commitment to truth.
And the Iran resolution. They are still spinning this.
Despite the removal of the most directly threatening rhetoric, the resolution still endorses the position of the Bush administration--mainly that Iran is engaged in a proxy war against the United States in Iraq. The resolution urges the Bush administration to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and urges the administration to impose strict economic sanctions on Iraq. The resolution--despite being non-binding--is a significant escalation in the rhetoric towards Iran in that it makes the claim that the Iranian military is a terrorist organization. The resolution also relies heavily on the recent testimony of General Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.
They apparently did not even see proof of it all. Just voted.
There is so much more, the votes the last year, the votes before that. Many of these were excused because the congressmen lived in red states. And many keep defending that.
Some things are just right and wrong, not red or blue.
The ridicule comes in various forms...the subtle put down, the obvious name-calling, the insinuation that the poster isn't truthful. It comes in various forms at the think tanks. I believe the words netroots, nutroots, neo-populists, fringe...come to mind first.
And we are told that if we just get more Democrats in office, it will change. Trouble is these are things that Democrats are doing right now, to each other.
