I've been trying to write a post about the BS that is Joe Klein but Digby posted the
best piece this year so far - destroying him:
Feel the magic. Joe Klein has a new book coming out in which he excoriates the rich insider Democratic consultants. Apparently, Klein thinks the Democrats should listen to rich insider Democratic pundits instead.
He writes:
Roger Ailes was right when he predicted at the beginning of the television era that in the future all politicians would have to be performers.
How interesting. What to make of the fact that two paragraphs later he says this:
... let me give 2008 a try. The winner will be the candidate who comes closest to this model: a politician who refuses to be a "performer," at least in the current sense.
Whatever. Klein criticizing the Democratic consultants is like Charlie Manson criticizing Richard Dahmer as far as I'm concerned.
. . . He . . . appeared last night on Charlie Rose in an otherwise quite interesting round table about Democratic foreign policy and he refined his point a little:
I think the problem for Democrats now is this: there are some well-informed and intelligent and tough centrists, but there are challenges coming from two separate directions. One is coming from the left of the party which ever since Vietnam has assumed that any use of American force overseas is immoral.
And the more serious threat --- and this threat is coming to both parties --- and this is coming from below, it's this populist threat that I think is absolutely significant in this country and this is people who just want to make the world go away --- they want to pull the troops out of Iraq and not think about the consequences, who are anti-immigrant, anti-Chinese economic competition and just want to make the world go away.
That's his analysis. The party's big challenges are finding a way to deal with the pacifist left and the threat "from below" of the the barbarian populist hoards. What ever are the intelligent, well-informed, tough centrists supposed to do with these horrible people?
He sounds quite frightened of the Democratic voters who are getting sick and tired of being told that we should shut up and listen to people who seem intent upon helping the right use "values" and national security to bludgeon this country into accepting a religious police state.
. . . As much as I agree that the Democratic strategists are lame, I actually think that the liberal punditocrisy is a bigger problem. They spend all their time kissing up to the right, disparaging elected Democrats and mischaracterizing the real concerns and beliefs of the grassroots of the party.
By the way, Klein's book is called (get ready)...
Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You're Stupid
I would have thought he'd save that one for his autobiography.
Read the whole thing. I have nothing to add. As almost always happens - what digby said.
Best post of the year.
P.S. - Digby has given me license to quote extensively from the posts.