In this brief post at LGM, Paul Campos captures succinctly everything currently wrong with the country's political mechanisms in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Deconstruct the dynamic in play there: the Senate minority leader is pointing to a routine cynical column by a center-right (or perhaps in the current parlance, "alt-center") columnist writing for the most manicured poodle in the corporate media kennel.
Even the lede in the tweet ("John McCain knew that we are better than [Clownstick].") is at least implicitly false. We have no idea what exactly McCain knew or thought along that line with any real specificity. But with his slow demise and now his passing, McCain has been appropriated by the commentariat as this hybrid of The Last Honest Man and the avatar of What We Have All Lost.
That's bullshit, and worse yet, it is clearly more about the professional scriveners and their official catechisms than about John McCain. Once again, McCain proved to be a more complex figure than can comfortably fit into their hero-worship narratives. He wasn't afraid to call out the emperor as an asshole, but aside from one notable exception, he rarely bucked with any real impact.
The party-line percentage for McCain's voting record is eighty-three percent, and it should be noted that he did not vote in 2018 at all, essentially holding that seat and its vote in stasis. It should also be noted, if you peruse the voting record in detail, that there were more than a few votes (for example, approving Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education) where the count was close enough that McCain could have altered the outcome simply by doing the right thing.
To me, that indicates someone who may personally see clearly that the king is a fink, and that shit is all fucked up now and for the foreseeable future, but who also politically understood what his constituents expect -- in other words, that a substantial number of voters were right there in the gutter with Clownstick. They want him there, they like what he's doing.
Stop with the "we're better than this" horseshit. If enough of us were actually better than this, the Republicans wouldn't be gearing up tomorrow to start pushing through Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, while making available only ten percent of Kavanaugh's documentation, and with the administration openly withholding another 100k pages of Kavanaugh's documentation when he worked for the Dubya admin.
They are bulldozing this thing that we're all going to have to live with for the next thirty to forty years, wiping their asses with the rules, telling everyone else to go fuck themselves, and no one is doing a goddamned thing about it. There's a reason for that, and that is because all the Republican senators are scared shitless at the prospect of infuriating the extra-chromosome base that supports this bullshit, every last speck of it. So again, that kinda undermines the "we're better than this" premise. If we were better than this, we wouldn't be here.
Which brings me to Schumer, who is still part of the establishment fantasist majority who believe with all sincerity that we can all get back to where we were before 2016, that norms and rules are still important, and that collegiality and comity are What's Best For The Country. Schumer is the leader of a faction that does not seem to understand that this is war -- war on parliamentary and legislative terms, but war nonetheless. Rules and procedures that both parties respected and observed for decades are under siege by a mad king who is openly defying anyone to do anything about it, because he knows no one will.
The guy spent fucking Labor Day trolling his own Attorney General, telling him how to do his job. He has spent all fucking summer doing much the same thing. That's illegal, it's obstruction of justice and witness tampering and perverting the course of law, and any number of other things that dictators and despots do routinely, but democratically-elected executives are expressly not supposed to do without consequence. And yet there is no consequence.
Schumer should be scheduling himself and as many surrogates as he can muster to flood the zone on the Sunday follies shows and get intemperate. This is something I've been saying for well over a year, and it has only become more true with each passing day: if you truly believe, as you keep saying, that the Republic is imperiled by the ongoing action of a despot and the ongoing inactions of his party, then you need to ACT LIKE IT. If someone's trying to invade your home or burn it down, you don't just petulantly natter on about what assholes they are and tell them they should stop. You fight back -- you threaten, cajole, bluff, make noise. You don't just stand there and wait for the intruder to do his thing.
Think back to 2008, and how Barack Obama came in with a Senate supermajority. Then Ted Kennedy took ill, and died in August of 2009. (August 25th, to be precise -- the same date John McCain passed.) Then Martha Coakley somehow managed to monkey-fuck what should have been a cakewalk to replace Kennedy in the Senate, and the seat went to Scott Brown. So now the majority was a no-longer-bulletproof, but still formidable 59-41.
Look at what Addison "Bitch" McConnell did, working with that disadvantage, and compare it with what Schumer has done with a mere two-seat shortfall. What McConnell "accomplished" with his permanent obstructionism is reprehensible, and when he dies his body should be dumped in a sewage canal. But he got shit done. He accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish.
Were I an orthodox Democrat or liberal, I'd be embarrassed by Chuck Schumer; as it is I'm embarrassed for him, as well as frustrated by him. He should be aping McConnell's mastery of procedure and mechanics and marketing when the Republicans were so outnumbered in the Senate. Instead Schumer gave up another seven nominations in exchange for McConnell's "promise" to "consider" renaming the Russell Federal Building after McCain.
Take a second and consider the profound stupidity of that empty gesture. Schumer could easily have jumped on Press the Meat or wherever, and publicly shamed McConnell into that. Hell, I could have accomplished that. Instead, Schumer managed to find a way to make it a net loss -- the Republicans got some more knuckle-draggers in the federal court system that the Dems could have dragged their feet on for months (as the GOP did for years with Obama's noms), and McConnell can hold on to that name change until after the midterms, and probably get even more concessions out of Schumer in exchange for renaming that building. Real fucking smooth gamesmanship there, Charles.
The Deomcrats are indeed operating at a severe structural disadvantage, especially in the era of Citizens United. The Republicans have a stable of crank billionaires and greedy plutocrats bankrolling their scamboogery, plus a media propaganda network that includes not only Fixed Noise, but Sinclair's nationwide group of local teevee stations, as well as nationally recognized newspapers such as the WSJ and the Post in New York, and the Moonie Times and the Examiner in Washington.
To give just one infamous example, the Moonie Times was a money-loser for its first thirty-three years of existence, finally achieving profitability in 2015. The "church" sunk close to $2 billion into the paper during that time. Try to imagine any known centrist or liberal (if there are any) billionaire willing to subsidize a propaganda organ that much for that long. Try to imagine any counterpart, anywhere else on the political spectrum, to the Koch brothers, who have famously sunk hundreds of millions into each of the last several election cycles, as well as bankrolling publications such as Reason magazine.
The floodgates opened with Citizens United, and fast-tracking jerkoffs like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court only ensure that it's going to stay like this for a long time. So it's understandable why Schumer might not want to appear as much of a rabble-rouser, for what's left of the Dems' big-money donors, who typically hedge their bets by donating to both parties anyway.
But you at least have to show some guts once in a while, and demonstrate that you'll fight for something sometimes. Think about it: polls consistently show that two out of every three 'murkins have grown tired of the daily shitshow, even with a relatively strong economy and no serious wars in the news (though troops who are currently deployed in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or elsewhere are welcome to disagree with that). Sixty percent or so hate this fucking guy and want him gone.
And yet, nearly two years since that cheeto-colored cumstain oozed into office, the Democrats have yet to present the American public with an alternative, any alternative. Don't piss and moan about the refs; if a completely non-charismatic turd like McConnell can figure out how to work them, the Dummycrats can work them.
Schumer has to stop with this sad-sack "more in sorrow than in anger" bullshit and get angry. Republicans hold firm by weaponizing and marketing the incoherent anger of their base; the Democrats punt on first down while they look at their base and browbeat them with stale odes to Thanksralphery.
Is it just remotely possible that there might be a better way to fight back against these knuckle-dragging morons and their clown-king?
Even the lede in the tweet ("John McCain knew that we are better than [Clownstick].") is at least implicitly false. We have no idea what exactly McCain knew or thought along that line with any real specificity. But with his slow demise and now his passing, McCain has been appropriated by the commentariat as this hybrid of The Last Honest Man and the avatar of What We Have All Lost.
That's bullshit, and worse yet, it is clearly more about the professional scriveners and their official catechisms than about John McCain. Once again, McCain proved to be a more complex figure than can comfortably fit into their hero-worship narratives. He wasn't afraid to call out the emperor as an asshole, but aside from one notable exception, he rarely bucked with any real impact.
The party-line percentage for McCain's voting record is eighty-three percent, and it should be noted that he did not vote in 2018 at all, essentially holding that seat and its vote in stasis. It should also be noted, if you peruse the voting record in detail, that there were more than a few votes (for example, approving Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education) where the count was close enough that McCain could have altered the outcome simply by doing the right thing.
To me, that indicates someone who may personally see clearly that the king is a fink, and that shit is all fucked up now and for the foreseeable future, but who also politically understood what his constituents expect -- in other words, that a substantial number of voters were right there in the gutter with Clownstick. They want him there, they like what he's doing.
Stop with the "we're better than this" horseshit. If enough of us were actually better than this, the Republicans wouldn't be gearing up tomorrow to start pushing through Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, while making available only ten percent of Kavanaugh's documentation, and with the administration openly withholding another 100k pages of Kavanaugh's documentation when he worked for the Dubya admin.
They are bulldozing this thing that we're all going to have to live with for the next thirty to forty years, wiping their asses with the rules, telling everyone else to go fuck themselves, and no one is doing a goddamned thing about it. There's a reason for that, and that is because all the Republican senators are scared shitless at the prospect of infuriating the extra-chromosome base that supports this bullshit, every last speck of it. So again, that kinda undermines the "we're better than this" premise. If we were better than this, we wouldn't be here.
Which brings me to Schumer, who is still part of the establishment fantasist majority who believe with all sincerity that we can all get back to where we were before 2016, that norms and rules are still important, and that collegiality and comity are What's Best For The Country. Schumer is the leader of a faction that does not seem to understand that this is war -- war on parliamentary and legislative terms, but war nonetheless. Rules and procedures that both parties respected and observed for decades are under siege by a mad king who is openly defying anyone to do anything about it, because he knows no one will.
The guy spent fucking Labor Day trolling his own Attorney General, telling him how to do his job. He has spent all fucking summer doing much the same thing. That's illegal, it's obstruction of justice and witness tampering and perverting the course of law, and any number of other things that dictators and despots do routinely, but democratically-elected executives are expressly not supposed to do without consequence. And yet there is no consequence.
Schumer should be scheduling himself and as many surrogates as he can muster to flood the zone on the Sunday follies shows and get intemperate. This is something I've been saying for well over a year, and it has only become more true with each passing day: if you truly believe, as you keep saying, that the Republic is imperiled by the ongoing action of a despot and the ongoing inactions of his party, then you need to ACT LIKE IT. If someone's trying to invade your home or burn it down, you don't just petulantly natter on about what assholes they are and tell them they should stop. You fight back -- you threaten, cajole, bluff, make noise. You don't just stand there and wait for the intruder to do his thing.
Think back to 2008, and how Barack Obama came in with a Senate supermajority. Then Ted Kennedy took ill, and died in August of 2009. (August 25th, to be precise -- the same date John McCain passed.) Then Martha Coakley somehow managed to monkey-fuck what should have been a cakewalk to replace Kennedy in the Senate, and the seat went to Scott Brown. So now the majority was a no-longer-bulletproof, but still formidable 59-41.
Look at what Addison "Bitch" McConnell did, working with that disadvantage, and compare it with what Schumer has done with a mere two-seat shortfall. What McConnell "accomplished" with his permanent obstructionism is reprehensible, and when he dies his body should be dumped in a sewage canal. But he got shit done. He accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish.
Were I an orthodox Democrat or liberal, I'd be embarrassed by Chuck Schumer; as it is I'm embarrassed for him, as well as frustrated by him. He should be aping McConnell's mastery of procedure and mechanics and marketing when the Republicans were so outnumbered in the Senate. Instead Schumer gave up another seven nominations in exchange for McConnell's "promise" to "consider" renaming the Russell Federal Building after McCain.
Take a second and consider the profound stupidity of that empty gesture. Schumer could easily have jumped on Press the Meat or wherever, and publicly shamed McConnell into that. Hell, I could have accomplished that. Instead, Schumer managed to find a way to make it a net loss -- the Republicans got some more knuckle-draggers in the federal court system that the Dems could have dragged their feet on for months (as the GOP did for years with Obama's noms), and McConnell can hold on to that name change until after the midterms, and probably get even more concessions out of Schumer in exchange for renaming that building. Real fucking smooth gamesmanship there, Charles.
The Deomcrats are indeed operating at a severe structural disadvantage, especially in the era of Citizens United. The Republicans have a stable of crank billionaires and greedy plutocrats bankrolling their scamboogery, plus a media propaganda network that includes not only Fixed Noise, but Sinclair's nationwide group of local teevee stations, as well as nationally recognized newspapers such as the WSJ and the Post in New York, and the Moonie Times and the Examiner in Washington.
To give just one infamous example, the Moonie Times was a money-loser for its first thirty-three years of existence, finally achieving profitability in 2015. The "church" sunk close to $2 billion into the paper during that time. Try to imagine any known centrist or liberal (if there are any) billionaire willing to subsidize a propaganda organ that much for that long. Try to imagine any counterpart, anywhere else on the political spectrum, to the Koch brothers, who have famously sunk hundreds of millions into each of the last several election cycles, as well as bankrolling publications such as Reason magazine.
The floodgates opened with Citizens United, and fast-tracking jerkoffs like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court only ensure that it's going to stay like this for a long time. So it's understandable why Schumer might not want to appear as much of a rabble-rouser, for what's left of the Dems' big-money donors, who typically hedge their bets by donating to both parties anyway.
But you at least have to show some guts once in a while, and demonstrate that you'll fight for something sometimes. Think about it: polls consistently show that two out of every three 'murkins have grown tired of the daily shitshow, even with a relatively strong economy and no serious wars in the news (though troops who are currently deployed in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or elsewhere are welcome to disagree with that). Sixty percent or so hate this fucking guy and want him gone.
And yet, nearly two years since that cheeto-colored cumstain oozed into office, the Democrats have yet to present the American public with an alternative, any alternative. Don't piss and moan about the refs; if a completely non-charismatic turd like McConnell can figure out how to work them, the Dummycrats can work them.
Schumer has to stop with this sad-sack "more in sorrow than in anger" bullshit and get angry. Republicans hold firm by weaponizing and marketing the incoherent anger of their base; the Democrats punt on first down while they look at their base and browbeat them with stale odes to Thanksralphery.
Is it just remotely possible that there might be a better way to fight back against these knuckle-dragging morons and their clown-king?
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