Is it
this one?
Here is a perfectly nauseating article in the Times about how Democrats are apparently not taking full advantage of GOP woes, are generally sad, haven't come up with a plan, aren't crazy about their leaders, are afraid the Republicans are going to do this or that to hurt them, and apparently a bunch of other stuff too.
The article itself reads like a pretty lazy piece of journalism. But the people quoted, the mindset, the navel-gazing and sad-sac carping. Truly, just shut up.
My point isn't that dirty laundry shouldn't be aired. But the mindset of chatter and enervating insiderism is not the solution to the problem: it is the problem.
Or this one?
I just read this awful and pathetically narrow piece of 'news' from the New York Times: Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities. All of the Democratic elected leaders that are quoted look dumb: Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Phil Bredesen, Evan Bayh, Dick Durbin, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Barbara Boxer come off as people looking to someone else to lead.
Or this one?
The Problem With Democrats
Mainly it is that they are idiots. Today's NYTimes story by two of the worst reporters in America (though this story is fair enough, the Dems did the negative spinning themselves), Adam Nagourney and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, is all the evidence that you need.
Or this one?
But Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November.
Asked to describe the health of the Democratic Party, [one Dem] said: "A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months. We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about[.]"
. . . "We have been in a reactive posture for too long. I think we have been very good at saying no, but not good enough at saying yes."
. . . "The country is wide open to hear some alternatives, but I don't think it's wide open to all these criticisms. I am sitting here and getting all my e-mail about the things we are supposed to say about the president's speech, but it's extremely light on ideas. It's like, 'We're for jobs and we're for America.'"
Ya'll know the answer. I'll make my point on the other side.
When Senator Barack Obama wrote his famous
diary last September, I posted this
comment:
Criticism of the ones we love, constructive criticism, should always be welcome. I thank you for [y]our reasoned argument but I respectfully disagree.
Certainly, a[mo]ngst your colleagues, it is my view that you should not criticize each other. I have always applauded Sen. Ben Nelson's approach on this while strongly criticizing Sen. Lieberman's precisely for that reason.
But since it was my view, and the view of many others, that Sens. Leahy and Feingold made a terrible mistake, I think it is not only right, but incumbent, upon us who feel this way to say so and loudly.
The stakes are monumental. We should not stand silent and let our frie[n]ds make mistakes without voicing our views. That is what some of us have done.
I com[m]end your impulse to defend your colleagues. It is what YOU should do. But I believe those of us who disagreed with their actions did what WE were supposed to do too.
That, in a nutshell, is why Democratic Senators should not speak ill of their own Party and their own colleagues in my view. They are the partisan team. They must stick together.
But we are the people they represent. It is not only our right but our duty to speak out when they make mistakes.
Is our language sometimes too much? I plead guilty. I wrote in the heat of the moment. But my underlying point remains. And I think we are right to point out this horrible approach taken by the Democrats quoted in the Nagourney article.