Going forward into (what I hope, pray, and dare to assume will be) the Obama administration, I have no doubt that we will be facing (just as during the Clinton administration) an ongoing right-wing sleazefest of conspiracy theories, unhinged accusations and hate-mongering, all tinged subtly (or not-so-subtly) by racial hatred.
The question is, what's the most effective way to respond? Some thoughts after the jump...
First, I think that the progressives are now in a much better position to respond effectively than we were in the Clinton years. The difference? This nation has gone through eight years of Republican incompetence, divisiveness, and incalculable harm inflicted on the nation and its image. (Heaven help us if the Bush crew had actually been competent - we'd be well and truly f***ed.) The country (except for the 20+% of dead-enders) is sick of it - and the Reagan glow has faded from conservatism, however much the Corner tries to claim that mantle.
The other difference is that Obama, as opposed to Clinton, has built a movement, not just run a campaign. One key to building this movement has been Obama's amazing personal charisma and his uncommonly intelligent messaging (his tying the Wall St. crisis to a "failed philosophy" was brilliant). The other key? It's us, people - the netroots! The tools for building this movement didn't exist in the Clinton years, and so we were isolated and lacked communication mechanisms such as this site and so many others.
So how to respond to the right's inevitable sludge-fest?
First, it behooves us to avoid reciprocating their hate - at least for them as people. Hate their ideas and tactics, yes, but not the people involved. Obama's calmness in the face of everything that's been thrown at him is the perfect example for us to follow. This is not to say we shouldn't hit back - and hard - by discrediting the messages and the messengers. And Obama has done this - but he's never made it personal. That's one of the reasons their attacks have been so ineffective.
Second, we the netroots have a crucial role to play. We must be disciplined and vigilant going forward. Obama's victory will not be the end of our labors, but the end of the beginning. We have to keep on exposing the lies and liars of the right for what they are.
Third, I think a particularly effective response to unhinged hatemongers (Rush being patient zero here) is prolonged, nonstop mockery. If we can get people to laugh at right-wing lunacy, our battle is half won. Here are two particularly good examples, one from this generation and one from a previous:
"Warming up a crowd in Sioux City this morning for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, U.S. Rep. Steve King said Republicans are not going far enough to paint Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as the purveyor of a socialist agenda.
King, known for provocative, partisan remarks, suggested Obama actually could be classified as even more extreme than a socialist. King also said his party is the only one with a legitimate claim on representing freedom as Americans know it.
"When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship," King said. "There is no freedom to the left. It's always to our side of the aisle.""
It's astonishing how quickly people have forgotten the gulags of the 1990s -- dissidents herded into camps on the Alaskan tundra, boiling bark and eating insects to keep from starving. And the purges: kulaks, political opponents, anyone who crossed the leaders vanishing without a trace. The show trials: I never thought that people would forget the sight of Newt Gingrich sitting broken on the stand confessing his rightist tendencies, or Rush Limbaugh in tears, admitting that he was an enemy of the state.
It's almost as though it never happened.
[from Obsidian Wings]
And second:
Anger can be useful but is often counterproductive, unless leavened with humor.