Rahm, obama, Biden, Lieberman...some posters on here have something in common. They Punch Hippies:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
It probably suits Rahm and Obama's political purposes to have "nutty" "leftwingers" like Dean, Moulitsas and Greenwald attack the bill as useless. You see, ever since the 1968 elections Democrats-sensible ordinary Democrats- have always had to find political distance from dirty smelly hippies. Usually this distance happens to be found at the length of an arm and a clenched fist. This is called "Punching a Hippie".
This way sensible "non-ideological" commentators like David Broder and David Brookes and--well, any journalist working the political scene like a disingenuous prostitute, can palm-off the status quo as a natural order of society. Generally the act of "Punching Hippies" a good excuse for journalists to defend their own inflated salary structures and accuse ordinary dissenters of being "wine track limo liberals". But it's also a way to show exactly WHO people like Rahm are being tough with. We hear these whip chaps are tough quite often in the press...but who are they really working over? In November 2008 I recall seeing Rahm on TV at an election party and some people in the room saying he'd be the tough guy enforcing the new leftist rules from now on.
I suggested: "He's more likely to be bullying and attacking the left than anything else. It's not like the GOP or moderates will fear him. They have different masters."
I got heckled. But as it turns out the reputation for being tough is mainly about guilt-tripping liberals, cutting off liberal pols funding or their fair share of revenue. This toughness translates almost exclusively into carte blanc for the right in the US.
maybe we'll survive the pummelling. It'll only get worse though. We have at least two seasons in Kandahar to endure and Democratic rationalization for that farce.