In the Left's Own Words

Salon's (It's called Salon, for literary leftie luminaries who apparently get paid by the word) Joan Walsh on "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.", a new book by NY Times Magazine contributor Matt Bai. Via RCP:

For many voters, the Democrats' commitment to fight Republican overreaching isn't merely "negative" or anti-Bush, as Bai argues, it's an ambitious, positive program to restore the country's social, political, global, military and economic vitality. It's complex, and its ultimate success is far from certain. But to many voters it's as welcome as those helicopters flying in to rescue people stranded on their roofs during Hurricane Katrina two summers ago.

Well it wasn't state or local government busing people out. It was US military helicopters and their crew flying in to rescue people. What part of that effort do Democrats take credit for? Too complex for them.

Democrats for social, political, global, military and economic vitality? Oh, I guess she means these people she writes about:

We witness the sordid spectacle of wealthy Democrats whining about their impotence. "We are so tired of being disenfranchised!" billionaire Lynda Resnick wails at a lavish 2004 book party for Arianna Huffington. For some of the people Bai interviewed, the solution that emerges from all this wailing and rending of expensive garments seems to be that rich Democrats and smart people must unite and give the party what it needs: the benefit of their big brains and bigger bank accounts, but only on terms dictated by the rich folks, preferably in meetings held at fancy resorts.

A little eco-Geritol at Gstaad. Carbon credit party favors at the Oscars.

Walsh herself lets slip she wakes up on California time. Left Coast time is no wake-up call at all. Sorry, from what I've read here I tend to agree with Walsh's target Bai and his book--Democrats are that lame, with no big ideas. All they have is reflexive, small-minded Bush-bashing, nothing new, nothing positive. Walsh hilariously suggests big ideas are not all they're cracked up to be:

Finally, it's crucial to remember that the Democratic Party had some big, bold ideas in the 1960s, but they didn't turn out quite the way Bai hopes big, bold ideas will.

Well, yeah. Broken families, broken dreams, no big deal to Democrats. Conservatives continue to generate innovate ideas that actually improve people's lives, and care about the security of our country, despite Hillary's wishful thinking that we're all a bunch of great right wing conspiratorial loonies and the biggest danger out there.

Bonus quote from Bai's book on the Daily Kossacks, the core of the Democrat Party today:

"They were, in fact, the voices of the new public square, but it was more like the Parisian public square in the days of the Bastille -- not a place where townspeople came to carefully consider what their leaders had to say, but where the mob gathered to make demands and mete out its own kind of justice."

No wonder these guys are apologists for anti-Semitism and surrender-monkeys to terrorists.

Another bonus quote, this one Walsh approves of:

One of my favorite stories in "The Argument" features Democratic Congressional Campaign chairman Rahm Emanuel, another ambiguous figure -- Bai seems to like him, even though he's a message-agnostic, win-at-any-cost pol from Chicago -- blowing up after having to sit through a work session on crafting a coherent Democratic appeal. Told that it's not enough to simply attack the Republican Congress (which is the whole point of Bai's book), Emanuel snarls: "I have my knee on their vertebrae, and I'm not going to let up on the pressure until I hear the vertebrae snap."

There you have the Democrat party of today, in their own words. Now they run Congress and the Do-Nothing Democrats' approval rating is the lowest in history.