The past year has been great fun, I have to admit. Laughing around, sniggering at the teabaggers. Pointing fingers whenever they do something ignorant, silly, contrived, overreaching, hyperbolic or just plain crazy.
Oh, it's been a ball. First among Kossacks, I love a good joke.
But hey, c'mere a minute and let me tell you a little joke.
There's a bunch of liberals sitting around in a fair trade coffeehouse, January 22, 2013. There's President Palin (or Huckabee, or Romney, or whoever) moving out Sascha and Malia's stuff, and the GOP took back both sides of Congress.
They're fucking pissed.
They're all wondering how the fuck they got there. What should we have done. What we didn't do. Whose fault was it. Is it my fault? Your fault? His fault? All that bullshit.
Then one of them says, "Hey, wait a minute. When we were all planning this caper back in 2010, all we did was sit around tellin' fuckin' jokes!"
OK, that's enough Tarantino for today.
What am I saying? Am I saying we shouldn't tell jokes at DKos, shouldn't laugh at the day's events? Hell fucking no. If you think that, start over again. You've missed it.
What I'm saying is I was wrong. You were wrong. We were all fucking wrong. About what? Not Obama, not Congress, not health care, not Reid, not Pelosi.
We were wrong about the Teabaggers.
Are they misinformed? Yes. Are they loud and racist? Yes and yes. Are they overhyped by the media? Shirley. Are they the kind of people who shouldn't have an influence? Oh, yes.
What did they do? They kicked our ever-loving 'tocks on one issue: Enthusiasm.
Let me say that again. The 'baggers handed us our own asses because they were more enthusiastic than us.
And really, I should have seen this coming. I listen to AM talk radio for the love of Cheez-Its. I heard the daily calls, relentless, from a half-dozen talk show hosts every day. "Make your calls," "Talk to your member of Congress," "Network with each other," "Stage a rally," "Show up to their offices in groups," "Make sure they know your name."
It was right there in front of me the whole time, and all I could do was talk about how silly and stupid they were. My big mistake was, I assumed whenever I heard this that the average Teabagger was no more active than the average liberal on the Internet.
Why are the working this hard? Because they think Glenn Beck is sugarcoating it. They think Barack Obama is going to end the world.
So apparently, scared trumps hopeful.
Now don't get me wrong, they are stupid and they are silly. But what the fuck does that matter to a politician? In our democracy, the stupid's vote counts just as much as yours or mine. And they can be just as intimidating to party leadership and elected officials -- even if they're terrible at being organized, they can just be loud and frightening if they just keep shouting.
They weren't good on message. They embarrassed themselves with racism, birtherism and loony right-wing ideas. They fought each other at the drop of a hat.
But they also are taking over their own party.
And they're also scaring our guys because they're not hearing from us in equal measure.
What am I suggesting?
I want all of us to be as loud, as persistent and as omnipresent as the average Teabagger.
BUT WAIT, Droogie, I hear you say. I don't feel enthusiastic!
If you don't feel enthusiastic now, fuckin' fake it. Because if you don't feel like it now, how much stronger are you gonna feel when you're sitting in that fair trade coffeeshop I mentioned earlier?
Like Woody Allen said, half of life is just showing up. And we haven't been.
The Republicans must know we are still here. The Democrats must know that we are still here. The media must know that we are still here. Barack Obama must know that we are still here.
And we can do it better. Not only will we be there, but we will be there with better organization and a better message. Because we can be smarter when we want to be.
We do, after all, have the advantage of being correct.
Do we want to emulate the tactics of the Teabaggers? Hell no. If you heard me saying that, I thought I already told you to stop reading and start over from the beginning.
The only thing we need to be meeting them on and beating them on is enthusiasm.
They are against the president's agenda. We, who helped elect him, are for it. It's dirt simple, ladies and gentlemen. Now let's get out there and do it.