Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Oct. 30 rally will ruin the election for Democrats? Hilarious.

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2267987/pagenum/all/#p2

Comic Timing
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Oct. 30 rally will ruin the election for Democrats? Hilarious.
By David Weigel
Posted Monday, Sept. 20, 2010, at 7:03 PM ET


Stewart and Colbert rally posters.

The Facebook page for Jon Stewart's Oct. 30 Rally to Restore Sanity was on its way to 100,000 attendees when liberals rediscovered that most familiar of emotions: panic.


Why would there be panic about the first fun or galvanizing event that Barack Obama's liberal base had to look forward to since their limited edition Shepard Fairey prints came in the mail? It's simple. Democrats look at the electoral map and see that they're doomed. Their hope rests on the resilience of liberal activists and union members, who will be spending the final 72 hours of the campaign pulling voters to the polls. And all of a sudden here come Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, turning a joke into a mega-rally and plucking liberals right out of their get-out-the-vote operations during their most crucial weekend.

"A lot of people on campus are going," says William Vogt, a Georgetown University junior and spokesman for the campus's College Democrats. "I'm planning to attend it, too. Right now I don't think we're worried about an effect on GOTV. The rally is Saturday; Halloween is Sunday. We're still going to vote on Tuesday."

This is high-grade Democratic nightmare fuel. In 2008, college kids from Washington, D.C., campuses regularly boarded buses to campaign for Obama-Biden in Virginia. In Iowa, twentysomething Obama volunteers erased bad memories of Howard Dean's messy campaign by getting to know locals and mastering caucus politics. Both of these activities seemed more useful than an attention-getting rally that, like so many rallies, will just reinforce what the activists think. And what they think when they watch Stewart and Colbert is: "Aren't these right-wingers a bunch of rubes?"

Democrats don't think this is helpful, and a few of them poured their hearts out to Politico's Ben Smith. "To the extent that some people who will attend his rally would otherwise be involved in GOTV efforts," wrote party strategist Steve Rosenthal, "this is not helpful."

snip//

That prompts a question: Why do Democrats think the Stewart/Colbert stunt is pulling away potential electioneers? The only sure thing about the 2010 election is that liberals aren't as excited to vote as conservatives are. Monday's Gallup Poll on the generic ballot found, for the first time in a while, that Democrats were tied with Republicans in a one-to-one vote. But it also found that Republican voters were much more certain to vote than Democrats were. Forty-seven percent of Republicans were "very enthusiastic," while only 28 percent of Democrats were. That was exactly the kind of sluggishness that killed the Republicans and boosted the Democrats in 2008.

But what do the stars of Comedy Central do to change that? The plan, as Stewart and Colbert opaquely describe it, would seem to be a booster shot of smugness. On the Rally to Restore Sanity Facebook page, the disembodied voice of Stewart issues a call for "the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler."

That's quite a bow to the new reality. A few years ago, it was liberals wincing at their fellow travelers when they were stupid enough to think that rallying on the Mall with Bush-Hitler signs would change anything. With the start of the Obama campaign in 2007, the liberal pose became happy and self-righteous. The biggest rally in modern American history was not 9/12; it was a gathering of liberals on the Mall on January 20, celebrating the arrival of the leader whose face they had on their walls.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2267987/pagenum/all/#p2

Related:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Jon-Stewarts-Rally-Starts-to-Worry-Dems-5103
Jon Stewart's Rally Starts to Worry Dems

[Ninga]

1. When "Democrats Vote, Democrats Win".....the winners always GOTV. Dems need to

stay home and work.

[babylonsister]

2. I think the rally just might restore sanity, and rev up the base.

Both have merit.

[Ninga]

7. Hard to predict at this point. Politics is hard hard grassroots work, and it would sure

be helpful if those who have the means and energy to go to such a rally would put their boots on the ground that week-end and work to help
GOTV.

How many are staying back to work instead of going? Even if a lot show up, plenty will not and it could have been a bigger deal.

Depressing either way.

[tavalon]

16. We vote by mail

So, most who are going to have voted by the previous week. And as I said, upthread, the Dems this year are just going to have to be happy that I'm even voting. I won't GOTV. That's my line in the sand. Even if I had been wavering on that, it was the new DNC website with it's dumbass keychain that sealed that deal, not these two.

I've been trying to wrassle up the money to go to the Oct 2 rally and I just don't think I'm going to be able to make it work, but by the end of the month, I possibly could so, yeah, I guess I'm one of those folks, except for the fact that I refuse to GOTV this year. Someone else will have to take my place.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

18. It should rev up the base. I'm going and I know a surprising number of others going

that I wouldn't think would bother. Even though I don't really dig her style much, I have to say that Lady GaGa and now Stewart and Colbert and other pop culture icons are doing an excellent job pointing out the wrongness of Teabagger values and this should be applauded.

[tavalon]

23. In a Democratic world not full of nervous Nellies, it would be

This is comic genius and from two diehard liberal supporters.

[babylonsister]

24. I 'really' wish I could go, and am glad some DUers will be there.

Go, have a great time, and I'm sure these guys will have an important message couched in lots of fun. Great opportunity for you!

[tavalon]

15. Not on your life

I've agreed to hold my nose and vote for the poor substitutes we've been given for Democrats. I'll not GOTV this year. I can't do the kind of lying that would entail and saying "vote for the Democrats because at least they aren't batshit insane" is not likely to win any joy from any side. And the Stewart/Colbert thing is the only fun thing this season of ugliness has had.

[zeemike]

3. the problem is that it might interfere with the plans of the DLC

Which is to loose at least the house setting up a good two years of fund raising.
Good cop bad cop woks well for that purpose.

[prolesunited]

4. Wow, you're privy to this plan?

Any proof?

[tavalon]

17. If he/she has eyes, it's pretty easy to see that the Democrats far prefer the minority

While technically in the majority, they've governed as though still in the minority. So, who ya gonna believe, Tim Kaine or your lying eyes.

[zeemike]

21. No proof is possible.

Sense intentions are internal in men's hearts and those who have such plans rarely reveal them to the public.
But when you see the same things play out over decades it makes some of us think and wonder.

[Cha]

13. There's no problem then.. since you have no idea what you're talking about.

[zeemike]

19. But you do.?

I am just drawing a conclusion based on 30 years of observation...

[Marsala]

5. Obviously it will spur a backlash against hipsters!

Grr.... hipsters... And those damn kids. Old people will vote en masse to teach those young whippersnappers to respect Fox News.

:sarcasm:

[Me.]

6. "Obama volunteers erased bad memories of Howard Dean's messy campaign"

Really?

"Democrats don't think this is helpful"
Well as a number of the Democratic leadership have not been helpful to the democratic cause, my response to that is , well that's just too bad. Maybe it's time to hear and see something other than a tea party rally, which I don't remember being criticized as much as Stewart and Colbert are by the the ever so helpful, so called democratic strategists. What was their response to the Beck/Palin rally, I didn't hear it cause the silence was deafening.

Weigel is seemly, after watching him on KI, a right leaning hack.

[babylonsister]

9. I think he considers himself a moderate, but don't know for

sure.

[Me.]

10. The He Needs To Check Out The Video Tape

As I said, on KO, I've been starting to wonder why K has him on.

[Raine1967]

14. I believe he's more libertarian leaning...

In 2000, Weigel voted for Ralph Nader, and served as a Delaware college elector for Nader. In 2004, Weigel voted for John Kerry. However, he has written that " the Nader vote, but not the Kerry vote, as a weak Democratic president with a conservative Congress would have been pretty tolerable in retrospect". He voted for Jack Ryan in the Illinois United States Senate election, 2004 Republican primary. Since early 2007, Weigel has been a registered Republican in the Washington, D.C. area, in order to vote for Ron Paul at the Republican primary stage of the 2008 presidential election. However, in 2008, Weigel voted for Barack Obama, reasoning that "I really don’t think McCain has the temperment to be President or the interest in standing up to a Democratic Congress... I’ve got the luxury of a guilt-free, zero-impact vote in the District of Columbia, which I would cast for Bob Barr if he was on the ballot."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weigel
===========================================

I don;t mind him, he's a reporter first and formost, imo. In this case, I find his article funny.

There may be a lot of people showing up on DC on the 30, but not enough to hurt the GOTV, IMO. Personally, I would like to see more people showing up on October 2.

The people who show up at either rally will vote.

[rocktivity]

11. "Howard Dean's MESSY campagin?"

This is a DLC or GOP meme, all right. And given Politico's reputation among the left, don't you think these Dems would reach the people they needed to by "pouring their hearts out" to Huffington or Kos?

x(
rocktivity

[Me.]

12. Exactly

The repetition of it also underscores my point about Weigel.

[qb]

8. I think the Comedy Central rallies sound brilliant... a giant smack at the conservative rallies

and the sycophantic media that reported on them.

Dems should stop whining and continue with their GOTV plans.

[AtomicKitten]

20. I believe it will rally the troops and, in fact, turn out Democrats to vote. nt

[babylonsister]

25. I agree!

:fistbump:

[tavalon]

22. Democrats these days are afraid of their own shadow

GOTV? GOTS (Get Out The Spine).

[marlakay]

26. The base morale is very low and needs this

sorry if it takes away volunteers but tough it, if congress had done its job we wouldn't have low morale...so its not our fault we would rather go laugh for a day then work some more for another dem person we may or may not be able to count on.

[swilton]

27. I have problems with Jon Stewart's

equating the fringes of the far right (tea-baggers = birthers, Islamophobes, racists, those who believe Obama is the Manchurian Candidate) with the fringes of the far left (Code Pink/ 9-11 truthers, those who desire the Busch Admin prosecuted for war crimes). There is a BIG differences in the substance and degree of truth of those two fringes.