The Fall Of the Stockholm SynDemocrats

From Sully to Boxer to Lieberman, a wail of pain goes up as they beg:

“Please don’t pick on my abuser! He gives my life meaning!”

File under: The “soft bigotry of cowering conciliation.”

A script has been running in D.C. for far too long now. You and I know it, and it is what makes us rage. In fact everybody knows it, but by mutual consent, no one in the City of Broken Dems, no one in the MSM, no one on Hate Radio, no one inside the DLC go-along-get-along gulag is allowed to talk about openly.

It is a template that no one I know has ever approved of, or even seen, but one that has been imposed as holy writ and is acted out as rigorously as kabuki, and through which mile after mile of Common Wisdom has been extruded like so much Political Play Doh

through the Pundit Fun Factory.

The one that says that the rise of hard Right Conservativism is inevitable.

That the fractious, pussy Dems cannot pull together in the face of a threat to the nation from the Right fast enough to stem the tide.

That Dems must lose, but not on the basis of ideas or ideals or by a toe-to-toe punch-up over the morality of Liberal precepts versus the degenerate ideology of the Right, but simply because the script demands that the Dems eternally take a dive in the sixth.

An "everybody knows" mentality where Dems are supposed to play the hapless Washington Generals to the GOP Globetrotters, forever.

Dems are contracted to strut and fret their hour upon the stage -- prisoners to GOP casting directors -- playing the coin-toss-losing Redcoats to the GOP colonials from this classic piece of early Cosby...

Click here for Windows MP audio

(Courtesy of this Barnes & Noble site)

That Dems -- based apparently on the Sekrit Mondale Treaty of ’85 -- are required to fight clad in ruffled shirts and powdered wigs in some arcane, roundabout form of Queensbury-rules, thumbs-in fisticuffs where challenges to manly virtue are delivered via engraved invitations of hand-painted batik by manservants -- while Conservative are free to fight WWF-style with whips, chainsaws, snipers and impeachment.

And we are finally tired of it.

I, for one, would be content to honorably win or lose a principled fight, shake hands with my principled opponent, and live to fight another day. Through such struggle, new truths can be learned, and the fact that I may actually be wrong about this or that can be revealed. There is no shame in this: That’s how I was taught. How I was raised.

But that’s not how this Culture War has been fought. For waaaay too long, the leadership of the Democratic Party has been content to march in formation into partisan machine-guns, and fall back, wounded, blathering of honor and collegiality while the GOP stayed in their pillboxes, laughing and reloading.

This is not about being the loyal opposition; this is about playing the chump.

And we’re tired of it.

Had it.

Done.

Digby, as usual, takes these tart apples and bakes a feast of well-analyzed and articulated outrage.

Here’s a snip…

…

There is a little tremor in Rush's description of the "powerful" Democratic base (he realizes it and tries to amend his statement.)The opposition actually has him rattled for the first time in recent memory.

Unfortunately a good part of the Dem establishment is not just rattled but virtually hysterical. Ezra wrote this today:

…
I've really been saddened, in fact, by how often, when I drill down into anti-Lamonter motivations, I find their ideological and electoral motivations mere sandrock obscuring a core rage at this affront to tradition and orderly succession.

I didn't believe this even a few months ago, but I've been forced to conclude that what scares folks about Lamont is that he represents an assault on privilege -- Joe Lieberman's, to be sure, but also theirs, no matter what sector of politics they currently represent.

Apparently these comfy Democratic insiders don't mind the Republicans treating them like neutered farm animals --- but I do. I take it personally when a propaganda industry makes millions spreading lies that liberals are terrorists or traitors. Yet the political establishment, including the media, doesn't seem to think I should care about such things --- even as I've seen my party and my country degraded and humiliated for years by this virulent strain of rightwing politics.

This is not simply about Lieberman or Lamont: This is about the fact that the days of “Lead, follow or get out of the way” have dawned for Democrats. The stakes are too high to demand any less.

We know the failed GOP has left us, on every side, one godawful mess after another to clean up, and we cannot begin the long, hard work of binding up our national wounds and bleeding out the Limbaugh/Cheney/Falwell poison that is killing our culture while Vichy Dems range freely inside our perimeter, setting fires, smashing cars, counciling defeat and cutting our tendons on behalf of our enemies before the battle is ever joined.

They must sober up and join the fight, or be kicked to the electoral curb, tagged as the vacillating appeasers they are.

For those not familiar with this kind of melee -- the one Bobo Brooks shrieks is some kind of "Inquisition" -- the proper nomeclature for it is “democracy”, and it is the Fort Sumter of that wider struggle that’s playing itself out right now in Connecticut.

The fact that Brooks reacts so viscerally and hysterically -- ranting that the very idea of a Democratic incumbent being challanged in the Democratic primary is some kind of primal betrayal -- exposes the shape and scope of the Conservative infiltration of the Democratic Party: That Conservatives have come to believe axiomatically that the leadership of the Democratic Party are their obedient chattle. Veal, to be passively marched into the hate-and-scapegoat machine as required by the Party Overlords, and Bobo is infuriated that a buncha smelly, angry peasants have laid their filthy paws on his Precious.

Be with us, or stand with the Neocons, but now you must stand on your hind legs and pick a side...or hit the fucking bricks.

Because we’ve had enough of the Liebermans and their “soft bigotry of cowering conciliation.”