I knew Glenn Greenwald would be commenting on the DC Democrat’s impulse to say the Mass results proved the party has moved too far to the left.
Though out the history of his blog, Glenn has been an outspoken critic of wimpy centrist Democrats efforts to try and out Republican the Republicans. He’s fully document the rationalizations of these DC Don’ts (Don’t take a stand because you might lose) and the pathetic political failures that resulted from this losing move to the right strategy.
Glennzilla below:
Blame the all-powerful left
Last night, Evan Bayh blamed the Democrats' problems on "the furthest left elements," which he claims dominates the Democratic Party -- seriously. And in one of the dumbest and most dishonest Op-Eds ever written, Lanny Davis echoes that claim in The Wall St. Journal: "Blame the Left for Massachusetts" (Davis attributes the unpopularity of health care reform to the "liberal" public option and mandate; he apparently doesn't know that the health care bill has no public option [someone should tell him], that the public option was one of the most popular provisions in the various proposals, and the "mandate" is there to please the insurance industry, not "the Left," which, in the absence of a public option, hates the mandate; Davis' claim that "candidate Obama's health-care proposal did not include a public option" is nothing short of an outright lie).
These lying swine would never admit or look at the recent post election polling data from Mass that a majority of the Obama voters who voted for Brown wanted the public option. As has been diaried on Kos, the Mass voters were pissed that Obama and the DC Don’ts hadn’t gone far enough.
And that spineless hack Bayh was a finalist for the VP slot. These are the kind of ilk in the Obama White House. Do they get it? I doubt it. But don’t take my word for it, and Glennzilla says it so well:
The very idea that an administration run by Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and staffed with centrists, Wall Street mavens, and former Bush officials -- and a Congress beholden to Blue Dogs and Lieberdems -- has been captive "to the Left" is so patently false that everyone should be too embarrassed to utter it. For better or worse, the Democratic strategy has long been and still is to steer clear of their leftist base and instead govern as "pragmatists" and centrists -- which means keeping the permanent Washington factions pleased. That strategy may or not be politically shrewd, but it is just a fact that the dreaded "Left" has gotten very little of what it wanted the entire year. Is there anyone who actually believes that "The Left" is in control of anything, let alone the Democratic Party? The fact that Lanny Davis -- to prove the Left's dominance -- has to cite one provision that was jettisoned (the public option) and another which the Left hates (the mandate) reflects how false that claim is. What are all of the Far Left policies the Democrats have been enacting and Obama has been advocating? I'd honestly love to know.
Or as this guy said the base of this White House really is the haves and the have mores:
And then Glennzilla has a comment for some here:
And then there is the "Blame the Left" theme from Obama loyalists, who actually claim that the Democrats' problems are due to the fact that the Left hasn't been cheering loudly enough for the Leader. I recall quite vividly how Bush followers spent years claiming that the failings of the Iraq War were not the fault of George Bush -- who had control of the entire war, the entire Congress, and the power to do everything he wanted -- but, rather, it was all "the Left's" fault for excessively criticizing the President, and thus weakening both him and the war effort.
At moments like these Greenwald always cuts through the crap.
Link:
http://www.salon.com/...