I grew up a fan of ACC basketball. Atlantic Coast Conference college hoops, nothing better. I could go on all day about the near-operatic drama of the conflicts between the rival programs, but I won't. I was, and remain to this day, a North Carolina Tarheel, and have always been pleased that the various rivalries in the conference involved us: Carolina-Duke, Carolina-State, on occasion Carolina-Wake Forest. I respected and admired Coach Dean Smith long, long before I realized that Smith was a staunch and principled Democrat. For years I considered it a badge of honor for Smith, who could have run for and probably won any elective office in the state that he chose, including senator or governor, to consistently and politely decline to run for anything. He remains, to this day, above the fray.
But that approach has its price, both politically and on the court. Cross over the halfcourt squiggle and let's run some plays on the subject.
The ACC in general, and Carolina in particular under Smith and his successor Bill Guthridge, had the reputation of playing "prissy" basketball sometimes. The joke used to be that "basketball was envisioned as a non-contact sport, and the ACC tries to play it that way." Carolina fans hurled insults and invective at fellow ACC teams who dared to play too rough (we'd cheer like crazy when one of our guys either retaliated, or ignored a vicious foul to make a great play, but we'd mutter and grumble when one of ours incited the violence), and during the post-season tournaments when we played teams from the rough-and-tough Big East, for example, the howling and screaming would reach incredible heights. (Veteran Democrats know where I'm going already, don't you, guys?)
Like any other program, Carolina had its off nights and sometimes its off years. When a Smith team lacked the personnel to really achieve dominance, or was having a lackluster night, it reacted predictably: the players and the coaches would complain to the referees that the other team was getting away with murder. Usually they were right, but usually it didn't matter. The other team would get away with what we considered rank butchery, we'd howl and yell for the refs to put a stop to it, they'd win, we'd lose, and we would go away clutching a moral victory to our chests.
As Democrats and liberals, we've come away with a hell of a lot more moral victories (and virtual bloody noses and concussions) than we have actual victories over the last 30+ years. There's a reason for that.
In college hoops, bruiser teams like Georgetown and Pittsburgh learned a lesson that teams like Carolina took far too long to absorb: the referees don't win games. You do. In politics, the Republicans learned that lesson long, long ago. We can go back at least as far as 1980, when the Republicans gamed the election, and committed treason, to pull off the "October Surprise" and install Ronald Reagan in office. Never mind that they consorted with the same terrorists who were holding Americans hostage, never mind that they undermined the legitimate US government's attempts to free those hostages, never mind that they risked the lives of those hostages, cost the lives of eight US soldiers who died in the abortive attempt to rescue those hostages, never mind any of it. They got their man in office, and we got to "enjoy" eight years of debilitation, recession, and scandal. (Those with longer memories can go back as far as 1968, when, if the allegations are true, the Nixon campaign helped scuttle the Paris peace talks and prevent the end of the Vietnam War before the election, thus costing Democrat Hubert Humphrey the enormous "bounce" such an event would have given him.) Criminal behavior; lost lives of American servicement, American citizens, and foreign nationals; high treason; none of these have stopped the Republicans from wielding their will and transforming the American political landscape into the Manichean wasteland it is today.
And what do we do as Democrats and liberals? We engage in an exercise in futility: we ask the referees to blow the whistle and reset the stage so the scene can be played out properly.
The Republicans know something that we don't. There are no referees. The game, or the election or the legislative battle, plays out the way we make it play out.
Let's review for just a minute. This list is as notable for what it leaves out as for what it includes.
* 1968 Nixon campaign commits treason, undermining Paris Peace Talks with secret promises to Vietnamese delegation of a better US response if Nixon wins the election. Democratic response: lots of private cursing and almost no response outside of some angry words from President Johnson. (Note: it would be so very easy to go back farther, through the Red Scare, the Republicans' collusion with Hitler, the attempted right-wing coup against FDR, and more.)
* 1980 Reagan campaign commits treason, undermining Carter negotiations with Iran to release hostages. Carter commits to badly-conceived rescue mission that founders, costing the lives of eight servicemen. Democratic response: To level accusations of interference and treason against the Republicans would make the Dems look like sore losers, so little is said in public, and those who do speak out, like ex-NSC member Gary Sick, are publicly shunned and even excoriated by Dems. Hostages who claim personal knowledge of a plot are ignored, and Congressional investigations see nothing, see nothing.
* 1984-1988 Reagan administration plays treasonous footsie with Iran, and destabilize the legitimately elected government of Nicaragua, in what will become known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Democrats manage to convince themselves to create an investigative body, but pack it with Republicans hell-bent on concealing the truth and protecting their present president Reagan and future prez Bush. Dems hem and haw and mutter about propriety and the rule of law, while Dick Cheney and Oliver North ad-lib a brilliant political set piece in which North says he lied and betrayed his country because that's what a true patriot does. Dems response: hem, haw, and mutter about the rule of law.
* 1989-1991 Dems learn that Bush is having an affair (or maybe several of them), and that Bush White House aides are shuttling gay prostitutes and paramours in and out of the White House like it was Grand Central Station. Dems decide it would be rude to say anything, and instead wait to be speared like flounder by Republicans' orchestrated moral outrage over Clinton's so-called philandering ...
* 1991-2000 Republicans engage in a campaign comprised of equal parts sleaze, careful planning, and impromptu hysteria to paint Clinton as anything and everything except a decent American and a legitimate president. Clinton is a murderer, a rapist, a drug pusher, a corrupt politician, a thief, and a tax cheat. His wife is a lesbian fishwife who had an affair with a male staffer (you were looking for consistency?) and had him murdered to cover it up. His daughter is the White House dog. The Clintons are so bad that their entire bloodline should be exterminated. Whitewater. Filegate. Troopergate. Gennifer Flowers. Paula Jones. This, that, and the other, and wall to wall bullshit. The Dems' response varies: on occasion, someone actually shows enough nut to back down the Republicans on a particular allegation, but mostly they flounder, look shocked, and roll over to actually help paint Clinton as the dog the Republicans want us all to think he is. By 1999, the House manages to wangle an actual impeachment proceeding on the charges that "Clinton sucks."
* 2000 The presidential campaign auto da fe. Gore runs a pompous, lackluster campaign, running as much away from Clinton (and the many achievements of that administration) as he is towards the Oval Office, helped mainly by the perception that Bush is running for pledge chairman of TKE. In Florida, the vote is skewed, as it is in Ohio, New Mexico, and other states, by a large and rather effective "fuck the vote" campaign to keep Democrats from either voting or having their votes counted. The state is thrown into "chaos" that exists only in some county canvassing board offices (engendered largely by Republicans who insist on fucking with the process instead of letting it progress as it should) and in the media, whose claims of hysteria among the electorate are not grounded in fact -- most Americans are perfectly content to let the recount process shake itself out. Gore names Warren "Wee Willie Winkie" Christopher to head his "quick response" post-election team, and Christopher, aided and abetted by Tailgunner Joe Lieberman, spends most of his time temporizing and allowing the Bush team to flatten them in the press. Meanwhile, James "I Ate Evander Holyfield's Ear" Baker leads the Bush team. Dems are lofty, disconnected, disorganized, and underfunded, insisting that the process be allowed to follow its natural progression as determined by state law. Republicans want to win the fucking election, and, aided by mole Katherine Harris as Secretary of State and chief Bush enabler, manage to monkeywrench the system and drive the narrative to the point where even Democrats such as Bob Kerrey, Sam Nunn, and Dick Durbin are telling Gore to just shut up, go away, and let Bush have the damn presidency already. The process culminates on November 22, when Bush operatives assemble in a mob that storms the Miami-Dade County elections office, brutalizes election officials, and terrorizes the elections board into dropping its attempt to recount the votes. The media is suitably shocked, but soon the Bush talking points overwhelm the outrage, assisted by the Dems' flaccid response: instead of calling for investigations and arrests and discovery as to who those Brooks Brothers motherfuckers are (most of them are GOP staffers from Washington and Austin, bused and flown in as interstate election thugs), the Dems choose to just let it all go away. No more is heard about Miami recounts (which certainly would have given Gore more than enough votes to take the election); instead, Dems slink away grumbling and trying to challenge military absentee ballots, a real showstopper. Instead of using the Brooks Brothers Riot to destroy the Bush campaign's credibility and paint them as the anti-democratic thugs that they are, the Dems allow the rioters to take the presidency through an act of stunning brutality.
* 2001-2008 Eight years of Bush. Dems are traitors, Dems are f*ggots (pardon the ugly terminology, but what was said is what was said), Dems are terrorist lovers who want to have unnatural relations with Saddam Hussein and send their daughters off to be part of the 72-virgin troupe for their al-Qaeda heroes. In a truly sick piece of manipulative political theater, 9/11 becomes Bush's finest hour, and while the smoke still billows out of the Twin Towers, Republicans are accusing Dems of doing everything except steering the planes into the buildings themselves. Protesters are rounded up and corralled in "free speech zones" in fields and parking lots where real Americans don't have to see them. Cheney and his brownshirts, aided by consigliere Alberto Gonzales, betray a undercover CIA agent for political gain and suffer nothing except a show trial that discomfits one midlevel fanatic, Lewis Libby, to the point where he gets to sit on some conservative organizations' boards and draw a fat salary. Gonzales tries to game the entire US Attorney system and is embarrassed into resigning, but now wallows in a sinecure position at Texas Tech. Dems' response: as during the Clinton administration, someone like Gore or Pelosi or Ted Kennedy will show some steel and make some outraged pronouncement, but mostly they just roll over and admonish each other to "respect the presidency" and "come together" in the "war on terror." A sidebar comes with the Republicans' attack on Gary Condit; with the enthusiastic collusion of the "liberal media," they try and convict him of the rape/murder of intern Chandra Levy even though nary a sliver of evidence of Condit's involvement in the crime was ever advanced. Dems' response: throw Condit under the bus as fast as they can fling him. It's notable that whereas Republicans protect their "victims" of scandal such as Libby and Gonzales, Condit is trying and failing to survive as an ice-cream business owner, with no think tank positions or board memberships.
In this march of cowardice, timorousness, and disaster, there is a sliver of hope: left-wing news/opinion sites like the Daily Kos, FireDogLake, and Talking Points Memo drive the media narrative to a certain extent. Without them and others such as TalkLeft, Libby would never have been tried, the NSA wiretapping scandal would have been ignored, and Gonzales would have been allowed to pack the US attorney system with his chosen true believers -- and Republicans would have insisted that the next administration "respect" the attorneys enough to keep them all right where they are, perfectly placed to continue monkeywrenching the judiciary and the Justice Department.
* 2008-present Good God. Barack Obama is a Kenyan terrorist and space lizard who snuck over the border from Planet Commie to pollute our precious bodily fluids, rape our white women, paint the White House black, pack the Cabinet with rappers and street thugs, and destroy our capitalist way of life. Do I even need to list the litany of shit surrounding this one? By 2010, a crowd of sexually twisted right-wing fanatics, militia lovers, and religious extremists who all play together under the "tea party" umbrella have managed to hijack Congress; even though other groups like the Congressional Progressive and Black Caucuses together more than outnumber the teabaggers, they manage to make sure that whatever gets through the House (or more often doesn't get through the House) does so with their approval. Sidebar: Anthony Weiner, a vocal and principled liberal, gets an attack of Internet stupid and tweets pictures of his apparatus to various women around the globe. Dems' response: throw him under the bus as fast as they can fling him, while trying to save the situation by making snide, under-the-breath comments about David "Diapers" Vitter and John "Shut Up, I Paid to Bang the Guy's Wife So There" Ensign as if that made everything even. Dems' response to the orchestrated and relentless Obama attacks vary widely, and badly. Some libs/progs split from one another, sniping about "emoprogs," "firebaggers," and "obamabots" at one another and forgetting that the Republicans are the common foe in their internecine bitching. Most Congressional Dems mutter and grumble about common decency and bipartisanship while either rolling over for the Republicans or, in some cases, actively working to help them achieve their goals. Currently, the teabaggers and their enablers, including John Boehner, have managed to simultaneously wreak havoc on the US economy, get passage of a generally awful bill that gave Boehner and his caveman caucus 98% of what they wanted, and pin the blame for the subsequent stock market tumble on "Obamanomics." Dems' response: Well, we've seen worse, at least they're not lining up with their asses in the air and "Kick Me GOP" signs pinned on their buttocks as they've done so many times before.
Conclusion: After all this (and not yet a word about the Wisconsin recalls!), what's the point?
Remember: There are no referees. No one is going to step in and reset the game because the Republicans brutalize the process to get their way. The only way we win, to get something done that's right and good for the country, is to force it to happen. We have to stop throwing one another under the bus. We have to stop mumbling about the Rule of Law: it helps no more than it helps a boxer getting pummeled by Mike Tyson to squeal about the Marquis of Queensbury. We have to go after the opposition -- the Republicans, not our fellow libs/progs/Dems, dammit -- like angry wolverines.
We won two of six in Wisconsin. Disappointing, maybe (and Chris Bowers could have done a hell o a better job than he did in this diary), but what's the narrative? Wallowing in defeat or celebrating the two wins and pushing for new recalls? Pointing fingers at one another or standing together to recall some other right-wing toad? And what's up with the Prosser story? A recent diary about a special prosecutor's appointment to investigate Prosser's attack on Justice Bradley got 20, count 'em, 20 comments, and wasn't rec'ced. We should be part of a much larger, orchestrated media blitz on that old bastard, reminding voters and reporters every damn day that the son of a bitch brutalized a fellow justice, and a female to boot, and until he resigns or is convicted, we won't tolerate him continuing to sit on the Supreme Court without heavy opposition. We should hang Prosser around every Republican neck in Wisconsin, and every time we talk about House and Senate Republicans, we slap them with Prosser -- "Who can take you seriously about XXX when you continue to tolerate and enable a Supreme Court justice who attacked a female colleague to keep his seat on the bench? When will you demand his resignation? Why do you tolerate it?" Change the R behind Prosser's name to a D and tell me what the response would be. Would Prosser still be on the bench? Hell no, the Republicans would have forced the issue by now (and rightfully so).
Wisconsin was an unmitigated victory, regardless of what we wanted to happen. So would six wins have been. So would one win have been. So would none -- the effort, the energy, the GOTV, everything would have been grounds for serious praise and redoubled effort. It's the fucking spin. Let the Republicans holler and bloviate about Dems getting their heads handed to them. They'd say the same thing if we won all six recalls. It's what they do. We don't play their game any more, and we don't play on their turf any more. We don't wait for the refs to come down on the deus ex machina platform and reset the narrative. We force the narrative into the shape we want it. Next up: blast Walker out of his shoes. If we can get his ass ejected out of office, terrific. If not, we keep the narrative, and the attack, going, and force Walker back on defense. The more he has to spend time, money, and energy defending himself, the less time he has to conceive and implement policies that destroy Wisconsin families. Think how much time and energy the GOP made Clinton waste in battling their bullshit. They didn't have anything better to do, they had no real goals except monkeywrenching the administration. But all that time Clinton spent fighting Whitewater, Jones, and impeachment was time he could have spent implementing policies that would have done this country good. The GOP couldn't have that. We have to use that tactic against them instead of scuffing our toes and gibbering about "bipartisanship."
Back when I was a kid, I was a good little Tarheel. I loved it when we went into the Four Corners -- essentially getting a few points ahead and then stalling like hell, hoping to keep the lead until the clock runs out. Let me commit Tarheel treason:
Fuck the Four Corners. Fuck the stall. In this "game" we're "playing," the clock never runs out. When we play aggressive offense, we win. When we play "four corners," we lose. Period.
In one sense or another, we've been playing Four Corners for thirty years. We're playing it with Boehner. Obama's playing it. We're moving towards it in Wisconsin. We do it in these diaries, every goddamned day, whether we're attacking FDL or each other.
One thing I learned from Dean the Maestro was that five modestly talented athletes, working together, can whip the hell out of a squad of highly talented athletes who don't play as a team. As long as we mope and moan, as long as we squabble with one another, as long as we wait for the Referees On High to set things right, we will continue to lose. The nation will continue to lose. Humanity will continue to lose.
This diary has used the game of basketball as a metaphor, a frame if you will, but this is not a game. It's the fight for civilization.