TPM Reader CC says ARGH …
Josh,
My response to the Goldberg article: “ARGH!!!!” Not again. I’m with you on the cliches and rehash of “what’s wrong” with the Democratic Party. I don’t even know where to start. I live in Virginia. There will never be a Democratic candidate as liberal as I am to win in this state. I accept that. Democrats need to be the Democrat that they are, wherever they find themselves, and know their voters. Basically, what all the articles in this vein basically say is, if Democrats don’t reject Hillary and John and Ted and Barbara, and start becoming more like the Republicans, they are doomed. The thread of the Republican noise machine runs throughout these stories and has basically been adopted as the starting point for what ails the Democrats, including how Democrats speak about themselves. I never ceased to be amazed by it.
As for not running on Bush-bashing, give me a break. Democrats can do both. You can have legitimate policy agendas and trash the guy. He deserves it. The Republicans made Democratic/Clinton/Gore/Kerry/and now Gore again-bashing a cottage industry since 1992. So cry me a river about the Bush-bashing.
I hope those Democrats who are seriously thinking of running for office, whether in ’06 or ’08, use their heads and don’t take these types of articles seriously. All they do is create the sense that you have to be all things to all people. Whack A Mole candidates. Impossible. Run on what you know and what you think you can do for America. And forget the rest.
Cheers!
CC
There’s a lot to say on this whole subject of Goldberg’s piece. But I think CC actually speaks for the great majority of fired-up Democrats on the web when it comes to evaluating candidates to standards of ideological litmus tests. Relatedly, I think people frequently mistake the intensity of the Dem online political world with how far to the left people may or may not be.
More on this whole topic later.
