Politus takes on DKos

[whometense]

And takes no prisoners...

http://politus.blogspot.com/2005/12/they-would-rather-dems-lose-than-dlc.html

I have been hanging around DailyKos.com since the beginning (my user number is 1253) so I feel well qualified to comment on the tenor of the community. I am still an everyday visitor, although I don’t post there anymore.

The Kos community, much like the MoveOn.org community it in-breeds with, has developed a set of “facts” about Bill Clinton and the 1990s that help them unify their Green-tinged worldview. For their world to make sense to them, the center-left Bill Clinton must be wicked and cannot have legitimately won two elections.

<...>

Nader and Markos share many things, but chief among them is a hysterical, irrational hatred for the Democratic Leadership Council. Those fuckers would drive the Democratic Party off a cliff before letting the DLC help us win another presidential election. They would rather the Dems lose than the DLC win.

Lots more posts over there.

[whometense]

1. Check out this smackdown:

http://politus.blogspot.com/2005/12/corruption-of-soul.html

Markos, it wasn’t hard for you to be a Democrat in 1994 because you weren’t a Democrat! I’ve seen you claim in your blog that back in the early 90s you were apolitical, and at other times I’ve seen you claim you were in your right-wing GOP phase.

In fact, you did not become a Democrat until 2003. In 2002 you were a strong advocate for Green party candidate Peter Comejo, the Socialist party member who ran for governor of California. You actually encouraged your “netroots” knee-jerks to vote against California Governor Gray Davis in the 2003 recall election, effectively cheerleading for the election of Arnold Schwarzeneger. You call yourself a Democrat?

In 2000 you were seduced by St. Ralph. Even today, your philosophy – as stated at DailyKos – is shot through with Nader’s anti-Democratic Party blather. And one of Nader’s biggest themes was that the Democratic Party had become corrupt in the 1990s, the same crap you are throwing around today in Newsweek.

I was a Democratic Party activist during that time, and I certainly was not corrupt. I knew thousands of other Dems -- members of congress, governors, central committee members, regular folks – and none of them were corrupt either.

It is incumbent on you, Markos, to explain just who were the “corrupt” Dems back in 1994, and what their corruption was. Your charge is -- dare I say it – McCarthyite in its cravenness. You owe a lot of good people a profound apology.

But I realize that flogging the “Dems were corrupt” theme is good for business. It might sell a few more books. Dividing the Dems with phony resentments is easier than uniting the party, and it pays better, too!

Good luck with the book, Markos. I’ll be critiquing it when it comes out.

[ProSense]

2. OMG!

He is in fact one of the MCM crowd. He has infiltrated the party. Here is an observation I made previously:

The RW took over the Republican Party and gained enormous strength, albeit through deception and lies. What I find interesting is that it appears they decided that instead of trying to tear down the Republican Party and build a new party, which would have been recognized immediately as fringe, they worked the system to their advantage.

As the left claims altruism, progressives seem bent on another route---tear down the system and build a new one and truth will win out in the end. I believe truth does win out eventually, but not all truths wins out at the same time. If truth wins out today, does that mean another candidate will never again come along and use bribery as a way to try to win the day? And possibly succeed?

So the problem with the extreme progressive view is that it assumes that all people will come around at the same time and that all the flaws in character and judgment (bribery, corruption, etc.) will cease to be a factor?

I wish the left would come together and work within a system to defeat right wing ideology and bring more people around to liberal ideals.

Every time progressives challenge the left instead of fighting the right, the right wins. Screams for more political parties always seem to come from the left. The right is content to work within the Republican Party. So we'll have four or five parties---blocks of voters---vying for one spot, they'll have one. If I believed that the equation would also splinter the Republican Party, I'd have no problem with more parties, but that doesn't seem to be how it would work out.

What do you think?


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=273&topic_id=54658#54928


I was advocating that change shoud come from within the party, but that it must be done legitimately. These guys lie and pit people against each other. The result is a weaker party. It also proves that their position cannot stand on merit; otherwise they'd stick to the issues.

I mentioned "truth" ruling the day. Of course, their tactics prove that their altruism is BS.

[beachmom]

3. Maybe THIS should be our automated post to the lefty freepers:

Kookie Komments

We've been getting some really frantic stuff in the comments threads from the Deanie-Greenies. Here's my reply:

Hey Stoopid!

If you can't make a point, don't expect to get published. No style points here, dumbass; it's all about content.

Love,

Politus

This guy is awesome, putting into words how I feel!!! Okay, now who thinks that Harry Reid should be attending the Kos Kid convention? These guys are the fringe of the fringe. Just because they're loud doesn't mean they deserve any clout! (hmm . . . I sound like Johnnie Cochran there don't I?)

Edited for grammar mistake.

[ProSense]

4. Related, but different:

Laboring To Birth A New Party
Oregon union leaders working to create a third political party.
BY DON MCINTOSH
Some of Oregon's biggest union heavyweights are working to create a third party that would make state Democrats less certain of labor support.

In December, labor biggies like former state AFL-CIO president Tim Nesbitt joined with leaders from the Teamsters and public-employee unions around a plan to form a new labor-backed party in 2006.

Its presumptive title: the Working Families Party of Oregon.

If they successfully create that third party, then those union leaders want Oregon to adopt New York's system of "fusion" voting. In that system, third parties can use their ballot line for other parties' candidates.

The underlying political science of fusion voting is that it gives third parties a chance to show their strength by demonstrating how many votes they collect on their ballot line. The theory is that candidates will know how much support they got from that party, and be accountable to it.

"If you organize to get candidates elected with your 10...percent of the vote," Nesbitt says, "and they know that your voters voted for them because of that one issue, they're going to tend to deliver on that issue."

About 16 percent of Oregon's workforce is union, but unions say higher voter participation among its members translates to labor representing 23 percent of the state electorate. Unions are also a reliable source of cash and legwork for Democrats.

Labor organizers say part of the impetus behind the Working Families strategy is to give unions leverage over wayward Democrats who don't defend labor goals like the minimum wage or Oregon Health Plan. A larger goal is to win back traditionally Democratic voters who would back candidates supporting universal health care and tax fairness but defect to Republicans over non-economic "wedge" issues such as gay marriage, abortion or gun control.

"We're aiming our sights at people who are culturally conservative...working-class people who vote against their own economic self-interest because the Democrats haven't offered an economic program for a long time," says Barbara Dudley, one of the effort's leaders and a former executive director for Greenpeace USA and the National Lawyers Guild.

Forming a minor party in Oregon takes 19,000 signatures, which Working Families organizers plan to gather in the spring. They then hope to persuade the 2007 Legislature to restore a fusion-voting option to Oregon's ballot, which had that choice during third parties' heyday more than a hundred years ago.

Madelyn Elder, president of the 1,100-member Communications Workers of America Local 7901, is an out-and-proud lesbian who has long fought within labor circles for gay rights. But Elder was quick to sign on to the Working Families approach, despite its inattention to a staple Democrat issue like gay rights.

"Gay marriage is not going to make a difference on most people's dinner plate," Elder says. "It's not going to put gas in their car or get them to work."

State Democratic Party chairman Jim Edmunson says the third-party strategy may be based on a flawed theory that splintering into smaller groups gains more power.

"If you look at the success nationally of Republicans, they have done it through consolidating their coalitions," Edmunson says, "rather than having a hodgepodge of groups who are all advancing relatively narrow agendas."

But Nesbitt thinks otherwise. He says making candidates accountable for a Working Families agenda, in effect, takes a successful page from the "right-to-life" playbook.

In the six years Working Families has been active in New York, its biggest electoral victory was a county district attorney with 54 percent of the vote. In 2004, the New York party polled about 2 percent in statewide votes in which it endorsed Democrats Charles Schumer for Senate and John Kerry for president.

So if the theory works, and social conservatives will vote for a Democrat on a Working Families ballot line, why is the party getting such low numbers?

Nesbitt and Dudley say that question misses the point of how the party used the carrot and stick of endorsement to get Democrats and Republicans in New York to pass a statewide minimum-wage increase.

And Nesbitt adds that in a close race, a candidate "would die for that 2 percent."


http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=7110

[ginnyinWI]

5. Kos doesn't "get" John Kerry, so I don't "get" him! n/t

[Dr Ron]

6. Thart's not necessarily the problem

I'm not sure if Kos doesn't get Kerry, or if he gets him and is intentionally distorting Kerry's record and statements.

Kos started out on Dean's payroll. Dean had the problem that there was only room for one northeastern liberal in the race--and Kerry was a much more consistent liberal. Kos helped out the Dean campaign by spreading the idea that Kerry supported the war.

During the campaign Kos had his site's link removed from the official campaign site for his comment in support of killing paid Americans in Iraq. Perhaps this is why he continued his vendetta even after the election.

Looking at Kos's attacks on Kerry, they might be out of ignorance, but I they also look like comments calculated to create a false impression about Kerry to harm him among Democratic bloggers.

[karynnj]

7. Was it Dean's intent to spread the lie that Kerry was pro-war?

Or was it more Kos on his own. I hate the idea of anyone spreading lies about an opponent - and in this case it is troublesome in that it probably helped the Republicans. It bothers me because Kerry's relationship to war and the military is so key to who he is. I can't see how anyone could listen to him talk about Iraq and not see how deeply he cares. On the thread that Vector started in GD-P(that she has a thread here that links to ) someone put a trailer for a Kerry film she is making. (Zu??????). At one point in the video Kerry is talking to campaign workers about why the election is important. His voice when he talked about the "kids in Iraq" told it all - he cares.

It seems from things said in this thread that Kos has no real philosophical or political world view- which is pretty pathetic for one of the most famous liberal bloggers. It does end my confusion on why he supports people less liberal than Kerry over Kerry.

[Dr Ron]

8. My guess is that it was the Dean campaign

This idea was spread by the Dean campaign itself, and we heard it from far more sources than Kos.

It definately appears Kos looks much more at the political process than policy. He goes with people whose style he likes in polital races rather than considering what the people will do once elected.

[blm]

9. I think Dean probably regrets the divisive tactics undertaken by his camp

and I have no doubt Kerry wishes his camp hadn't exaggerated differences with Dean, too.

But, that's what they did. Both camps exaggerated their differences on Iraq when their actual positions were much closer. The media exaggerated the differences even further then the campaigns did.