When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough

 To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Before Times.  About how things got the be the way they are.  And they manifestly do not.  

In their telling, the history of the Republican Party is as follows:

Buckley drove out the heretics.

Then St. Reagan the Law Giver set down the Articles of Faith.  Tax cuts, good!  Guns, good!  Deregulation, good!  Abortion, bad!  Socialism, bad!  Democrats are misguided fools or worse!

Then...buncha stuff really not worth talking about.   Yadda yadda yadda.  

Then, suddenly and inexplicably...Trump!

I cannot in good conscience recommend listening to Mona Charen and her Center/Left-Center/Right posse of Bulwark goofs trying to keep up the pretense that their little clutch of weirdos represents the  hopes and wishes of millions of Americans who inhabit the Enlightened Center...

...while at the same time rending their garments over the fact that they're finally getting all that the Reagan the Law Giver promised.

But I can tell you that it's fucking gold.  

And if you're new here, you need to be forewarn that this blog routinely ventures into the Forbidden Zone of the Before Time in order to explain how things got to be the way they are.

Democrats are crazy, commie loons who don't represent real Murrica.  This is the foundational lie on which the modern GOP and the mainstream media were built.  And more importantly, it is an eternal lie.  A fixed point -- a navigational constant -- in the Conservative political constellation by which all political and ideological journeys are plotted.

So the fact that Bill Clinton delivered on more of the Republican agenda that any recent Republican president was never going to matter.  To them he would always be a pot-smoking Commie and History's Greatest Villain who, with the help of the sinister Mrs. Mao Tse Clinton, were forever secretly plotting to destroy Murrica.

This is also why it was never going to matter how far sideways, backwards or polydimensionally  Barack Obama was willing to bend, or how earnestly (and foolishly) how was willing to embrace the malignant Conservative "Extremes on Both Sides" framing, or how assiduously he courted the good opinions of  Conservative Beltway pundits, or how many of the Republicans own policies he was willing to enact in the name of compromise.  

Obama was the embodiment of literally everything every Sensible Serious Conservative (who are now  Never Trumpers under contract to MSNBC) said they were looking for in a Democrat...and they spent eight years carping about him, lying about him and doing everything in their power to destroy his administration.  Because to them he would always be the Kenyan commie usurper and History's Greatest Villain who, with the help of the sinister Mrs. "Moochelle" Obama, were forever secretly plotting to destroy Murrica.

Because no matter what the facts are, for Conservatives, Democrats will eternally be crazy, commie loons who don't represent real Murrica.  And I know this because more than 30 years ago, Newt Gingrich laid the GOP's strategic vision on the table for everyone to see.

From the venerable, sclerotic The New York Times in September of 1990

The Politics of Slash and Burn

'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted suggesting the word ''traitors,'' in response to inquiries from the press. But the others were allowed to stand; they appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates.

The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work....

I know this because after Republican rode Gingrich-style politics to victory in 1994,  the Republican Party explicitly honored Rush Limbaugh and Conservative Hate Radio as their keys to victory.  And him his valedictory, Limbaugh told his zombie army exactly how they should comport themselves from now on.  From the NYT, December 1994 (emphasis added):

Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh

BALTIMORE, Dec. 10— To all the advice for the new Republicans coming to Congress, add this from Rush Limbaugh: A hostile press corps lurks inside the Beltway.

"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.

"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November.

Mr. Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the class as its members tonight finished a three-day orientation here sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, two conservative Washington research organizations.

Barbara Cubin, an incoming freshman from Wyoming, told Mr. Limbaugh that because 74 percent of the nation's newspapers had endorsed Democrats, "talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide." On behalf of the women in the class, she gave him a plaque that said, "Rush Was Right." He also received a pin like the ones the freshmen wore, saying, "Majority Maker."

"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said...

In closing, he asked his audience to "leave some liberals alive" as artifacts so that "we can show our children what they were."

I know this because:

“Bipartisanship is another name for date rape” -- Grover Norquist, onetime adviser to Newt Gingrich and Republican Tax Pledge enforcement thug, citing an axiom of House conservatives. --  Denver Post, May 26, 2003 

"I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." -- Also Grover Norquist

So, let's review.  Democrats are 'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' with whom, obviously, no compromise is possible.  The media are part of the Liberal conspiracy and cannot be trusted.  Now is not the time to be moderate.  However our new Conservative overlords do promise to keeps some of us alive to display, as in a zoo, to teach future generations about the horrors of Liberalism.

And government is the source of all evil.

And Democrats murder babies for fun and profit.

And you need to be heavily armed because the Liberal gun grabbers -- who are definitely commies -- are coming for you.  In fact -- OMG!-- I think I hear Barack Obama outside your door...right...now!

And tax cuts and deregulation are the universal solution to all problems. They will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the vile New Deal and Great Society programs will have passed away.

And packing the courts with Federalist society extremists goons to achieve the outcomes they want is a good thing.  Even if you have to outright steal a seat from President Obama to do it:

3/ The Senate can and must deny Obama the chance to make an appointment to the Supreme Court. We have both the votes and the power to do so.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 13, 2016

And every single one of your favorite Never Trumpers not only went along with this filth, but reveled in it.  Were in the vanguard, for decades, each doing their bit to spread this plague into every dank, racist  corner of the country.  And in every dank, racist  corner of the country this sensibility grew and metastasized, yielding them more money, more viewers and more votes.  Or did you think Rick Wilson paid for his home and his other home and his boat and his plane with PayPal tip jars and GoFundMes?

But all the monstrous and very profitable lies about of the extremism and villainy the Democrats automatically give rise to this corollary:  if the Democrats are deranged and therefor unappetizing to "normal" Murris=cans , then there must be some large number of Sensible Centrists and Independents who have been left stranded outside the two-party system.  

Golly, y'know, there are probably millions of them.  Hell, as long as we're just making shit up to balance the political formulas we're conjuring out of thin air, who knows, why couldn't there even be tens of millions of these imaginary Centrist ideological wraiths out there, just beyond the limits of our senses.  We can't quite pin down who they are...or where they are...or what they believe...but for our fairy tale to work,we have to posit that they're really, really mad at The Extremes on Both Sides -- which, when it comes to actual Democratic party policies we can't really identify any that qualify as "extreme" in any sense of the word...but whatever.  

You know the joke about the ‪‎physicist, the ‪‎engineer and the ‪‎economist awho are re stranded in the desert?  So?  Well here you go.

They're starving. Suddenly, they find a can of beans. They want to open it, but how?

The physicist says: “Let’s start a fire and place the can inside the flames. It will explode and then we will all be able to eat”.

“Are you crazy?” says the engineer. “All the beans will burn and scatter, and we’ll have nothing. We should use a metal wire, attach it to a base, push it and crack the can open.”

“Both of you are wrong!” says the economist. “Where the hell do we find a metal wire in the desert?! The solution is simple: just assume we have a can opener”… 

The myth of millions of Sensible Centrist voters alienated by Both Side is the can opener.  

To prop up their toxic Both Sides Do It bullshit and their fairy tale of a huge and unserved Sensible Centrist voting bloc, as the GOP slid further and further into the abyss, the Beltway media and Conservative leaders and taste-makers desperately needed the Left to be seen just as irrational and just as dangerous as the Right.  So they just kept repeating those lies over and over and over again while ignoring and marginalizing -- 

Jim Carrey Dumb And Dumber GIFfrom Jim Carrey GIFs

-- anyone who said otherwise.  

They spent half a century using their money and their media to beat on the American polity as if it were a pinata.  And now that it has begun to give up the gifts they once prized above all else...all they can do is bitch and moan.

Consider that Michael Steele, who was hired by the racist Republican Party hired to publicly front for them...and who was subsequently run out of his party when they decided to just lean into the racism...is still a Republican.  He still pretends that he heroically drove all the racists out the the party during his tenure.  And like every other Never Trumper, who managed to lose their entire party, Steele still just can't stop bitching that Democrats refusal to morph into Republican-lite

"...and another political party that [Democrats] that quite frankly don't know how to do politics.  I think right not the way I see the world is, it is a challenge.  And not blowin' smoke and tootin' horns here, but Lincoln Project warned of this in 2020!  Not just 2022!" -- Michael Steele

Wow Mikey!  Y'all figured out the GOP was fucked-in-the-head as early as 2020!  Well take a fucking bow.  Are there any tangible rewards for genius are rare as yours?

Reed Galen in the aforementioned podcast:  Well Michael I wanna thank you for joining me today.  Before we let you go today, where can our viewers and our listeners find you online?  Where can we find your podcast?  And when can we find you on the air.

Steele:  ...and certainly MSNBC is my haunt.  I'm there quite a bit, which is always a lot of fun.  On pretty much every show, every day at some point.

Of course he is.

And consider that for decades anti-choice Never Trumpers like Charlie Sykes have been militating for the stripping women of their basic rights by overturn of Roe.  And yet, now that his wish has finally been granted by the Trump Supreme Cult, Sykes is having a big ol' sad over the fact that his anti-choice movement is continuing to push us further and further into Gilead, rather that spontaneously transforming into a kindly, open-hearted, persuasion-based movement.

Apparently poor ol' Charlie never noticed the decades of hysterical protests, clinic bombing, abortion provider murders and increasingly draconian laws being passed by Republican neanderthals designed to make it virtually impossible to operate a clinic regardless of what Roe said.  

And consider that, no matter how bad gun massacres have gotten in this country, we on the Left are still being told to sit down and shut up and wait because we're not qualified to speak on the subject.  David Brooks from 2018:

So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war. 

In 2018, the year Brooks penned this tepid, Centrist drivel, there were 308 mass shootings.

In 2019:

US mass killings hit a record high in 2019: 'This seems to be the age of mass shootings'

In 2020:

Shootings never stopped during the pandemic: 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades 

In 2021:

50% jump in active-shooter incidents from 2020 to 2021: FBI 

In 2022: 

The US had 647 mass shootings in 2022. Here's the full list. 

And in 2023, as of April 10:

There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, database shows

There have been 146 mass shootings so far this year.

So I'm thinking that it's waaaay past time to continue waiting for the Imaginary Responsible Gun Owners to show up and fix this problem.  

I'm also thinking that it's actually shit-shoveling Beltway hacks like David Brooks who was are not qualified to speak on the subject and who need to sit down and shut the fuck up.  Which is one of the many reasons you'll never see me kickin' it with Mikey-Mike Steele on MSNBC.

And finally consider that now that solution to the worst political problem of all AND the answer our recently-former Republican "allies" greatest wish is now at hand --

No Labels Makes Initial Investment in Bipartisan Presidential Ticket

The dark money group has spent millions of dollars preparing for a possible ticket with Sen. Joe Manchin as its presidential nominee in the event of a Biden-Trump rematch.

-- once again all our Never Trump "allies" can do is bitch and moan about it.  From The Bulwark:

How the ‘No Labels’ Gambit Could Wreck the 2024 Election

Now wait just a goddamn minute.  For decades, our newly-acquired, recently-former Republican friends and their fellow travelers in the Beltway media have been drumming one Very Big Lie into the heads of the American public, over and over again, every fucking day.  That "partisanship" per se was the root of all evil.  That a Vast, Imaginary Sensible Center of  Normal Americans had no political home in either party.  That the "tribalism" of the Extremes on Both Side was what was ruining this country.   

Then, 13 years ago, during the Before Time, came the answer to their prayers.  No Labels.  From NPR, December 13, 2010:

New 'No Labels' Movement Seeks Bipartisanship

...No Labels' "founding leaders" include Nancy Jacobson, a longtime Democratic activist and wife of Democratic pollster and Hillary Clinton campaign adviser Mark Penn; Kiki McLean, a former Clinton adviser and communications director of the Democratic National Committee; David Frum, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and editor of the conservative FrumForum.com; and Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to Bush, GOP Sen. John McCain, and the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat.

And it was rolled out with all the Beltway trumpets and flourishes.  From Frank Rich in The New York Times, December 19, 2010:

...Although No Labels sounds like a progressive high school’s Model U.N., its heavy hitters are serious adults -- or at least white male adults. Among the 16 billed speakers at last week’s official launch in New York, there were three women and no blacks, notwithstanding an excruciating No Labels “anthem” contributed by the Senegalese-American rapper Akon. (Do find on YouTube.) The marquee names on hand included Michael Bloomberg; Senate Democrats (Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, the incoming Joe Manchin of West Virginia); moderate Republicans drummed out of office by the Tea Party (Charlie Crist, Mike Castle); and no fewer than four MSNBC talking heads. Despite Bloomberg’s denials, some persist in speculating that No Labels is a stalking horse for a quixotic 2012 presidential run. At the very least the organization is a promotional hobby horse for MSNBC.

“Morning Joe” plugged No Labels with an alacrity to match Fox News’s Tea Party boosterism (if not Fox’s decibel level)...

Its two prime movers are a political consultant, Mark McKinnon, a veteran of the Bush and McCain campaigns known for slick salesmanship; and a fund-raiser, Nancy Jacobson, who, along with her husband, the pollster and corporate flack Mark Penn, helped brand the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a depository for special-interest contributions.

No less depressing is the No Labels veneration of Evan Bayh, the Democratic senator from Indiana who decided to retire this year rather than fight for another term. For months now, Bayh has been positioning himself as a sacrificial lamb to broken Washington; when he made the rounds plugging No Labels last week, he was greeted as a martyr on MSNBC.

And even though, by every conceivable measure, No Labels accomplished absolutely nothing but A) balming of the egos of Beltway Both Siderist hacks and frauds and, B) redirecting of large quantities of dark money from the checkbooks of credulous dopes into the pockets of No Labels grifters, in the wake of the catastrophic 2016 election David Fucking Brooks remained 100% certain that No Labels snake oil was the still the ideal cure what ailed America democracy.

From PRNews:

The Center Strikes Back: David Brooks NYT Column Heralds Emergence of No Labels-Led "New Center"

-No Labels Set to Unveil New Center Coalition at Unprecedented Bipartisan Leaders Meeting in DC on Dec. 5-

In the wake of a historically divisive election, No Labels is making an aggressive play to unify citizens and leaders around a "New Center," a development described in this morning's David Brooks The New York Times column. No Labels is set to unveil leaders of the New Center on December 5 in Washington, D.C. at 1787: Constructing the Peace After the War, a first-of-its-kind leaders meeting featuring members of Congress, mayors, governors and leaders from across the country.

In describing the current political climate, Brooks suggests that "what's about to happen in Washington may be a little like the end of the Cold War—bipolarity gives way to multipolarity. A system dominated by two party-line powers gives way to a system with a lot of different power centers. He says, "The most important caucus formation will be in the ideological center."

Brooks draws on a recent memo written by Brookings Scholar and No Labels co-founder Bill Galston and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol who defined the New Center as:

One that does not split the difference between Left and Right but offers a principled alternative to both.  Its core tenets—Opportunity, Security, Accountability, and Ingenuity—can respond to the challenges of the present and chart a path to the future … We do not know what policies a New Center will yield.  Nor can we predict what institutional form or even party alignment it will take.  But the alternative to a coherent and effective New Center is a degree of public discontent that could end by undermining democratic self-government itself...

A fully deranged, openly racist Republican party had swept an authoritarian lunatic into the White House and we find Brooks and Bill Kristol and Bill Galston all huddled in the same corner, still impotently fingering their Both Siderist rosaries, still praying to the false Sensible Centrist idols they had made.

I'm sure at least a few of you remember the noble work No Labels did at the tail end of 2015 when they gave Donald Trump their coveted "Problem Solver" award.  From Brother Charlie Pierce:

Joe Lieberman's 'No Labels' Group Has Labeled Donald Trump a 'Problem Solver'

Here's some stupid for lunch.

In fact, if you're interested (but why would you be?), after someone explained to Trump what No Labels was and that there was an award involves, he showed up at their "convention" to give a long, meandering speech.  After Joe Lieberman hyped Trump as the solution to America's problems, he and A.B. Stoddard and the rest of the grifters and political detritus that make up No Labels leadership sat down and gazed on lovingly.  

And the name  "Bill Galston" brings me, at last, back to where I started.  Because Galston is one of the useful "Center/Left" goofs that Mona Charen keeps on-hand to maintain the pretense that her Bulwark podcast is some sort of Sensible, Center/Left/Center/Right salon, which still represents the hopes and wishes of millions of Americans who inhabit the Imaginary Center.  And yet, when finally handed victory on a silver platter -- a third party that has scraped together enough dark money and clout to get on the ballot in almost every state -- how do they react?

Tis glorious, I tell ya.  Glorious.  And I say that as the guy who wrote a whole, long thing about what a poisonous scam No Labels was just two days after they launched in 2010 and has followed up many times over the last 13 years on the twists and turns that scam and many of its imitators have taken. 

And for most of the last 13 years, pretty much nobody except my wonderful readers and a few of my fellow Liberal bloggers much cared.

And then over the last couple of weeks...

From the Washington Post:

A No Labels third-party bid in 2024 is dangerous

A No Labels ticket would be a stalking horse for an extreme MAGA Republican candidate.

From the Washington Post again:

No Labels group raises alarms with third-party presidential preparations

It has money, name-brand political backers and declines to describe either President Biden or Donald Trump as acceptable candidates.

From The New Republic:

Look Who’s Fighting: Third Way Puts the Beatdown on No Labels

The centrist Democratic group forms a united front with its more liberal counterparts to trash a third-party candidacy that could elect Trump.

From The New Republic again:

No Labels’ Pitch to Donors Pretends Joe Biden Doesn’t Exist

A video obtained by TNR tries to suggest that both parties are being captured by extremes—but somehow forgets to acknowledge the sitting president.

From New York Magazine:

The Terrifying Threat That No Labels Will Reelect Trump Why is a mysterious group building a political doomsday device?

From New York Magazine again:

No Labels Has a Genius 2024 Plan That Would Kneecap Biden

From The American Prospect:

No Labels’ Real Label: Vanity Candidates ‘R’ Us

Claiming that no real centrist could vote for either Biden or Trump, it’s got its own spotlight-craving pol (Joe Manchin) waiting to pounce.

From Jacobin:

The No Labels Party Can’t Give Up on the Conservative Dream of Post-Partisanship

Joe Lieberman wants a “commonsense, moderate, independent” politics in America, to be advanced by his group No Labels. It’s a bankrupt “post-partisan” vision that has no solutions to any of the multiple dire threats facing Americans.

So just for fun, let's check in with Mona Charen and her crew to hear how they're going to explain why getting another of their dearest wishes fulfilled is, y'know, a bad thing.

Charen: But first off I want very much to address something that is out there.  It's been a little bit below the radar but Matt [Bennett, Executive Vice President of Third Way] has been following it very closely.  Namely there is an effort by a group that calling itself No Labels that is launching or attempting to grease the skids for a third party candidate.  They have 70 million dollar War chest they've already achieved ballot access in a number of states Arizona Colorado Alaska and Oregon it has signature Gathering efforts underway in other states and the idea is to present a third option Beyond Democrat and Republican a moderate political choice for those who dislike both Trump and Biden.  So Matt, fill us in on this who's behind it and why are you so exercised about it.

Bennett:  Thanks for having me Mona.  Bill Galston can talk a little bit more about who No Labels is.  Actually Bill's been very involved with them until recently because I think like me he's quite concerned about this presidential bit, but No Labels started and has done quite a bit of good work in the center trying to bring Republicans and Democrats together...

driftglass:  No they absolutely have not.  But please continue.

Bennett:   The reason that we're so worried about [No Labels running a third party presidential candidate in 2024] is not because we think that their ticket, no matter who's on it, could actually win the election.  They absolutely positively cannot win the election.

driftglass:  But...but what about those tens or hundreds of millions of politically homeless Sensible Centrists?  That silent, frustrated majority in the middle I've been hearing about every fucking day for the last 30 years from Beltway pundits?  The ones I have been told a jillion times are just chomping at the bit for vote for a Sensible Centrist Third Party?  

Bennett:   No third party candidate has won a single electoral vote in 50 years and no third party candidate -- including one who's chiseled into Mount Rushmore -- has ever come close to winning an election.

This is me, once again gesture meaningfully in the general direction of every third party scam I've seen blossom over the past 20 years under people like David Jolly, Matthew Dowd, Adam Kinzinger, etc. 

Bennett:   Our concern is not that they will win. Our concern is that they will serve as a spoiler.  And what has us most concern is that there's all kinds of evidence that they would serve as a spoiler benefiting the Republic ticket which at the moment looks like it's going to be Trump and hurt the Democratic ticket which is almost certain to be Biden and Harris so that's why we're so worried about this.

Charen:  Can you explain the role of Mark Penn?

Bennett:   I will attempt to do so

He attempts to do so.  I'll spare you.  

Charen:  Bill Galston, you as, Matt mentioned were involved in founding No Labels but you have since distanced yourself from them.

Yeah, about five minutes ago.

Charen:  So let me just read you a quote from Joe Manchin who people have been talking about as a possible No Labels candidate in 2024 and then have you respond. Quote "If enough Americans believe there is an option and the option is a threat to the extreme left and extreme right it will be the greatest contribution to democracy I believe I don't rule myself in and I don't rule myself out." Well what's wrong with that, Bill?

Galston: Well in principle nothing, in practice everything.

Shorter version, Galston figured out this was a bad idea and didn't want its stink on him.  Advocated against it internally.  Got nowhere.  Then resigned.

Galston: The No Labels effort I think responds to a genuine problem and that is that the polarization of the two political parties that has occurred over the past two generations has left a lot of people in the middle feeling quite dissatisfied.

Because as the Right has rocketed further and further into Crazytown, goofs like you kept dragging the "middle" further and further to the Right so you could continue on-brand as being whiny little bitches about The Extremes on Both Sides. 

But now that the GOP has dropped all it's masks and come out as the fully fascist shithole we warned you it was becoming, it's suddenly permissible to introduce concepts like nuance and degrees into the simple-minded Both Sides catechism.

Galston:  We have, for 150 years, have essentially the same two-party system.  A lot of Americans aren't thrilled with the two political parties for reasons that I can not only understand but assent to but, in my judgment, there is a profound asymmetry between the two political parties.  

Well fucking "duh".

Charen then brings up Ralph Nader as an example of how a spoiler candidate in Florida in 2000 tipped the election from Gore to Bush.  Which I never thought I'd hear a Republican cop to, but I guess that bit of history has now become useful to her argument and therefor, wow, Nader 2000 unexpectedly enters the chat. 

Charen:  I'm just wondering what can these people be thinking when they must know that this pipe dream about actually electing a moderate is just that, and yet the chances are it's going to improve the chances of trump returning to the Oval Office.

What are they thinking?  They're thinking grifters gotta grift.  They're thinking don't blame the playa, blame the game.  

Linda Chavez:  I mean I look at Joe Lieberman, who's somebody I have always admired you know and...

Nope.  Nope.  Gonna cut you off right there.  If you "have always admired" Holy Joe Lieberman you have automatically disqualified yourself from havoing any part of any conversation where actual adults are talking about politics.  

Chavez:  I understand the frustration that the two-party system -- particularly the way it is now constituted -- does not give us proper choices.  We get candidates who skewed to their base in both parties and end up with the great middle of America where I think most of the people on this panel find themselves without candidates who represent our views and who will promote the kind of policies that we approve...

And there it is.   They just cannot give up the lie.  The "great middle" lie.  The "both parties" lie.  And yet when No Labels calls their bluff by actually showing up and saying, "I have heard the terrible torments of the 'great middle' and am here to liberate them from the bondage of Both Sides" these same Center/Right pundits freak out and head for the hills.  

Head for the hills...but still chanting their "Both Sides" mantra   

So once again a terrible idea, spawned, fed and nurtured by the Beltway media and recently-former Republican influencers and taste-maker has grown into exactly the monster that a few dirty, disreputable Liberals warned that it would.  

And once again, a monster they created is now lumbering towards the pillars of our democracy which have already been grievously damaged by all the previous monsters the  Beltway media and the Republicans have conspired to create.  

And so once again it will be up to us Democrats -- us 'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' Democrats -- to save the world, while our Never Trump allies -- who have completely colonized the Liberal media -- peer over our shoulder, endlessly carping and criticize everything we do.  

Burn The Lifeboats