"A Very Bad Enemy To Have"

I became a football fan when I was very young, probably about 5 or 6 years old. What I liked in particular about the Raiders was their motto at the time: "We'd rather be feared than respected."

I have no idea why that resonated with me, especially since I was rather slight in build at that point, and bookish. But it did, and I appreciated the fact that the Raiders' motto was not just empty bluster - they meant it. Their defense, largely made up of misfits and castoffs like John Matuszak, Ted Hendricks, and the like, went after whoever had the ball with nothing short of sublime fury. Teams were scared shitless to come into the Coliseum -- it truly was the Thunderdome of the '70s. Quarterbacks knew they were going to get fucked up when they visited Oakland.

And the Raiders had personality, they branded instantly with the working-class environs of Oakland. The players were all memorable characters, with nicknames, swagger, attitude to burn. And talent. No one who watched the pre-Super Bowl XV hype can forget watching John Matuszak hulking through the French Quarter the entire weekend before, hitting every bar, grabbing every hot chick within reach, burning the candle at both ends and finding still more ends to burn. Then showing up for the game and terrorizing Ron Jaworski into throwing three interceptions, and shellacking the hapless Iggles 27-10.

Oh, they had their screwups too, like any team, but they were always tremendous fun to watch, and you always knew that no matter how hard they partied the night before, they'd play like hell for the entire 60 minutes, never conceding a goddamned inch.

A Republican reader at Talking Points Memo puts in two cents that every Democrat operative needs to internalize, and now [emphasis mine]:

....Democratic politicians tend to be wimps. Anyone can see how easily they get pushed around by interest groups in their own party; when criticized aggressively, they tend to seek sympathy rather than hitting back. This encourages Republican political operatives to use rough tactics.

I don't think this is a matter of ideology. In fact, I don't know what it is. I just know if I were a Republican politician there wouldn't be many Democratic politicians I would be afraid of. Maybe it's a reflection on my own personality that that I take for granted the importance in politics of generating concern that one might be a very bad enemy to have.

Now, before anyone fixates on this person's pre-emptive "[m]aybe it's a reflection on my own personality...." I'd point out that the letter appears to be very well-written and thought out. This person is not being an asshole or a partisan firebreather, imho. It's a very cogent assessment of what works with the American public at this point in time. This is something we forget sometimes when we focus hard on the pols themselves. Somebody voted for them.

True, some of those voters are addled, or clueless, or clinically insane. There's no other explanation for how a creature like Tom Coburn gets into the US Senate, other than a preponderance of cephalopods in Oklahoma. But some of them simply responded to the tone in which the message was presented.

This does not mean that the Democrats have to alter the content of their message, nor does it mean they have to devolve to the craven antics of the lunatic Jean Schmidt, who might as well just start packing her shit and preparing to head back to Ohio now. I certainly don't want the Democrats to dumb themselves down or water their message to make it more palatable to the Trading Spouses demographic.

But they simply must start investing more in the deconstruction of workable tactics and viable impressions. In many ways, they can't win for losing -- they branded as bloodless and overly cerebral, so they get a smart passionate guy like Dean out there and he gets tagged as a firebrand for one stupid whoop-it-up moment that got rerun like a syndicated Seinfeld.

Still, they should be encouraged by the fact that until that point, Dean was leading the pack with his passion and intelligence, and had made serious inroads in the still-developing field of Internet fundraising. There's a lot there to work with, and the sooner the Dems start tying that strategy to developing a serious bench of sore losers, the sooner we can all be rid of the animals that are hellbent on ruining the country.

So get guys like Paul Hackett and Barack Obama out there as much as possible, and develop a kick 'em when they're down mentality. Good teams put away bad teams, and they do it with smart players and smart playmaking. Kerry was just a bad choice with a lame strategy. It's not entirely his fault, he's just better as a senator than as a presidential candidate. It's a huge step, and the only reason a potted plant like George W. Bush made it is because of the tremendous machinery behind him.

Ignore the machinery, and just take your game to them, Democrats. That's what The Tooz would tell you. He may have only gotten 33 years out of his time on this planet, but rest assured he made the most out of them. Are you?

[update: a commenter at Atrios mentioned this excellent Mother Jones profile on Paul Hackett, who as you recall lost narrowly to Jean Batschmidt, in a 70% Republican (and apparently somewhat mentally unhinged) congressional district in southern Ohio. Definitely check it out; Hackett literally epitomizes exactly what I'm talking about here -- he's smart, passionate, funny, engaged in the issues, and totally unafraid to tell assholes to just go fuck themselves already. That is what is needed to turn this mutha around.]

“These guys in the Republican Party adopted this tough-guy language,” Hackett tells me, still steamed, an hour later. “They’re bullies. They’re offended when somebody takes a swing back at them.”

Damn straight. Come to think of it, it's not right that Ohio should have this guy to themselves. Fuck it -- Paul Hackett for President in 2008! Official slogan: This time, why not somebody who makes you want to give a shit?!

Come on, who else in this party do you actually wanna vote for, honestly?