The dems have been pretty damned spineless for a while now-- like the past 8 years-- and they still seem to really struggle with it regardless of the 2008 election. They're still acting like they're afraid of the GOP and the GOP can smell it.

I know that getting all dems on the same page is like herding cats and all, but there has to be a way for them to unite, to agree on some shared principles and goals, to recognize that if they can't get it together when they have this much power that they won't have that power for very long.

no rick, the crazies aren't getting in the heads of editors -- goddam, where is all this neural pathway bullshit coming from this morning? -- let me as calmly as possible suggest that the corporate media has the technology and the media control to make the crazies celebrities for the teevee-addled society in which we live...

i'm half addled me own self and i just hear about the teevee in places like this...

perlstein may think he is the authentic story-teller of the sixties up to now, but he is himself kinda goofy about some of it...

Lots of the crazies are "our elected officials" and other government workers, like this loon:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-savage/county-commissioner-bring_b_259386.html

Of course, it doesn't help that so many of our fellow citizens are so ignorant and il-educated that they will readily believe almost anything that already accords with their views, no matter how absurd that might be. Witness the lunacy with the whitey tape, or the bogus Kenyan birth certificate--even long after it was clear to any rational person that these were frauds, big chunks of the right were weaving all sorts of alternate explanations to save their fantasy. In the case of the whitey tapes, it was that the Norwegian government was backing Obama in the hopes that he would impose socilaism here; in the case of the birth certificate, it was something that Obama's agents had planted to throw everyone off the real scent.

Personally, I'd like everyone who beleives this stuff to contact me. I have a lovely antique suspension bridge for sale, and my Nigerian banker can help arrange easy financing.

This is a good question. Perhaps the one time when wildly implausible conspiracy theories gained a good deal of play in the newspapers came during the McCarthy era, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy made all kinds of spurious accusations about communist influence in high places. The news media, operating under the "equal time for both sides of a controversy" theory, gave plenty of ink to McCarthy's allegations--in fact, I think a fellow named Edwin R. Bayley (Joe McCarthy and the Press) has written a book about how the media's he-said, she-said style of reporting contributed to a broader exposure of McCarthy's ideas.

A little historical context here:
McCarthy is the fellow who suggested that General George Marshall was perhaps a dupe of the communists--truly goofy stuff.
McCarthy constantly attacked Democrats as tolerating treason within the highest level of government, and of failing to do enough to root it out. McCarthy's attacks were very useful to McCarthy's fellow Republicans--but eventually, McCarthy went too far, made too many wild accusations, and earned the contempt of a majority of his fellow senators--including some moderate Republicans--who formally condemned him. For that matter, Dwight Eisenhower regarded McCarthy as a scoundrel (after all, McCarthy had trashed his old mentor and boss, General Marshall), but Eisenhower for a long time refused to take a strong public stand against McCarthy, for fear (I think) of opening up a civil war within the Republican party).

There was a grain of truth behind some of McCarthy's allegations--there indeed had been some communist spies at work in the government--but the Truman administration went to no small length to root out alleged subversives from public employment, and Truman and his advisors (Dean Acheson, George Marshall) all were staunch anti-communists.

Of interest to me is the observation that we do not appear to be a citizenry more educated and informed than we were after WWII...more appalling are the numbers of people of my generation 70+ who continue to carry the prejudices and bigotry of their youth (mostly passed on by their parents/grandparents)...and I continue to mention isn't is LOVERLY to have a corporate media complicit in keeping the "folks" STUPID!!! I may need to learn how to begin a blog of my own and start gathering information on the salaries and connections of the people out there deciding what people see/hear/read/listen to and providing OPTIONS for seeking actual factual information...what prevents me from doing so is the fear that those options do NOT EXIST!!!

This is a good question. Perhaps the one time when wildly implausible conspiracy theories gained a good deal of play in the newspapers came during the McCarthy era, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy made all kinds of spurious accusations about communist influence in high places. The news media, operating under the "equal time for both sides of a controversy" theory, gave plenty of ink to McCarthy's allegations--in fact, I think a fellow named Edwin R. Bayley (Joe McCarthy and the Press) has written a book about how the media's he-said, she-said style of reporting contributed to a broader exposure of McCarthy's ideas.

A little historical context here:
McCarthy is the fellow who suggested that General George Marshall was perhaps a dupe of the communists--truly goofy stuff.
McCarthy constantly attacked Democrats as tolerating treason within the highest level of government, and of failing to do enough to root it out. McCarthy's attacks were very useful to McCarthy's fellow Republicans--but eventually, McCarthy went too far, made too many wild accusations, and earned the contempt of a majority of his fellow senators--including some moderate Republicans--who formally condemned him. For that matter, Dwight Eisenhower regarded McCarthy as a scoundrel (after all, McCarthy had trashed his old mentor and boss, General Marshall), but Eisenhower for a long time refused to take a strong public stand against McCarthy, for fear (I think) of opening up a civil war within the Republican party).

There was a grain of truth behind some of McCarthy's allegations--there indeed had been some communist spies at work in the government--but the Truman administration went to no small length to root out alleged subversives from public employment, and Truman and his advisors (Dean Acheson, George Marshall) all were staunch anti-communists.

Okay, we get it already. The Republican Party is batshit crazy. You know, your constant stream of posts about the right's detachment from reality is more than a little played out. Since, as you point out (for the umpteenth time), this has been going on for at least a half a century, the real story is no longer Republican wingnuterry. It's the continued & absolute ineffectiveness of a Democratic Party that hasn't been able to come up with a strategy to finally kill an opposition tactic that's this predictable, and this detached from reality. The more Democrats whine about Republican craziness & media complicity, instead of directly taking on those obstacles in order to pass the principled & meaningful legislation we claim to want, the more we demonstrate that it is we -- not Republicans -- who are out of touch.

Perlstein's piece was indeed excellent, but the more interesting question for me is not whether the election of liberals is like a full moon bringing out the inner werewolf among our crazed right wingnuts, but whether conservatives have the necessary political maturity at all to take part in political democracy. Barak Obama is now the second progressive Democrat to be elected president since a Southern-style right wing took over the GOP in 1994. If we know anything about the political tradition of the South it is that conservative Southerners assimilate badly with anyone who does not look, act, think and talk just like them. And both times since the Dixification of the GOP, the radical right has attempted to undo the results of a national election by destroying the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency that the rightt simply refuses to accept.

The right wing worked hard (via the Richard Mellon Scaif-funded Arkansas Project) to find an impeachable offence against Bill Clinton, and finally had the Lewinsky scandal fall into its lap. Now, the right wing is obsessed about Obama's citizenship. The South secceeded from the Union before Lincoln even took office when the 1860 election did not go the South's way and it felt its way of life jeopardized. I am sure after Lincoln was elected there were more than a few future Confederates heard hollering the rebel yell that "I want my country back!!!"

I think it is reasonable to assume that the next progressive Democratic president to be elected in the future will face a right wing determined to undermine the legitimacy of their presidency in some way. The point is that the right wing of the GOP is completely unwilling to engage in normal democratic politics unless it is able to have things entirely its own way with a monopoly of power. That has been obvious from the start of the Obama administration.

I think everybody who thinks that this something new is probably wrong, at least on the basis of the last 40 years of history that I have witnessed.

Even Nixon was praised by the media as shrewd and politically astute in the early seventies despite his transparent dishonesty.

All that has changed is the garb and the makeup: the Nixon of today wears a lipstick and a skirt, of course with an intellect that somehow falls short of inspiring all but the crazies.

Junebug

Point well taken. But it is not as easy as it sounds. Even though liberals have won the last two elections they are still at a structural disadvantage against conservatives due to the concentration of wealth and corporate ownership of media facilited during the past Conservative Era since Reagan.

Conservatives have created an alternative media establishment that allows them to pretty much control the national narrative both for their own True Believers and for the larger MSM that too often echoes right wing themes by demanding that the American political culture treat those themes seriously however ludicrous or even lunatic they might be (ie death panels) or respond to them in some way.

A further problem I think is that too few Americas recognize there has been a discernable shift in the American polity from control by democratically elected and accountable officials to an un-elected financial oligarchy. This has come about through a combination of the concentration of wealth faciliated by the de-regulation of the American economy engineered under Republican and Democratic administrations and the transformation of the American democratic republic into what is for all intents and purposes a political empire as the US takes on more and more imperial obligations overseas.

Between those two forces -- concentrated financal power and imperial obligations -- enormous stress has been put on the American republic. That is why many right wing commentators including Dick Cheney give lip service to their support for an American democracy but really advocate for something else, along the lines of an imperial presidency or even dictator. While they would never say so openly, in their view a democratic republic is simply too slow and ill-equipped (because of divided powers between the Congress and what they see as a too-weak executive) to discharge America's global political and economic responsibibilities in an effective way as the "benevolent hegemon" befitting its place as the world's only superpower.

Barak Obama and the progressive movement he represents faces off against an entrenched Right Wing that has spent the better part of the past 30 years constructing their new conservative empire. They still have lot of cards to play because of their residual wealth and power and they don't seem remotely interested in helping the rest of us govern this nation despite the fact that for the moment the American people seem to be on the side of the angels.

very patient prose --twice -- ted.

my gaze has always been on the corporate machine-like decision-making practices that grow more and more de-humanizing.

so that 70s CEOs with polyester suits and beatles haircuts are now transformed into reptilian greedheads making millions and utilizing sway, power, influence, bribery, lobbying, blackmail, murder, etc. to keep control of everything and gain more power and control.

not surprising that the republican party is the conveyance of first choice now -- especially since the beatles broke up and ronnie rayguns came to washington and sealed the deal...

whatta country!

"Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers..."
Dead wrong. The Media ARE the conservatives and they'll play any damn game they want. And they are playing the suckers for suckers ....

Ted Frier --

... it is not as easy as it sounds. Even though liberals have won the last two elections they are still at a structural disadvantage against conservatives due to the concentration of wealth and corporate ownership of media facilited during the past Conservative Era since Reagan.

First, liberals most certainly have not won the last two elections. Clinton ran as a centrist and governed as one. And while Obama may have run as a liberal, he's governing like a centrist. As to your point about the concentration of wealth as an obstacle to a liberal agenda, Schumer, Dodd, & Frank have done precious little to combat economic disparities. As Dick Durbin noted only a month ago, Capitol Hill is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. Neither Democrats nor liberals have done anything to change that.

A further problem I think is that too few Americas recognize there has been a discernable shift in the American polity from control by democratically elected and accountable officials to an un-elected financial oligarchy.

More's the pity that there isn't a political party out there to not only point this out to Americans, but to clearly explain how & why their legislation will improve the lives of working class families while reining in the excesses of the financial elites.

Look, the problems are as complicated as Democrats want to make them. Baucus's committee wouldn't wield nearly the power it does in these negotiations if Obama had used 4 of the 5 House bills -- each of which includes a public option -- as counterweights to the Finance committee's plan. Obama wouldn't be playing defense against ridiculous accusations if he had gone out early with an aggressive town hall roadshow that identified 3 or 5 essential elements that he expected to see in the ultimate bill, and if he explained to Americans how & why those essential elements improve both their physical & financial health.

This is on the order of 500 words too long, and I apologize for my long-windedness. My point is that we need to stop whining about how everyone has it in for us. It's whiny & defeatist, and it's been going on forever. Enough.

Junebug

I wish our side would put up more of a fight as well. It's time we stopped conceding the language to conservatives and letting them define the rules of debate. When conservatives try to make the argument about "freedom versus big government" we need to turn that debate around and say its really about "democracy versus the special interests." That is what conservatives are really attacking when they attack the state -- democracy itself. Power just doesn't disappear when minimize government. Reduce the reach of government (democratic government we need to remind people) and The People are not magically "free." They have to governed by someone -- and that someone for conservatives is corporate and financial elites, with perhaps a church leader or two thrown in -- the favored rulers in any conservative system. Sure, conservatives will cut your taxes. But not getting a wage increase in a conservative "free market" economy that makes life tough on unions and favors investors over workers is its own form of taxation as well -- one levied by private interests that aren't democratically accountable.

It's the continued & absolute ineffectiveness of a Democratic Party that hasn't been able to come up with a strategy to finally kill an opposition tactic that's this predictable, and this detached from reality.

Posted by: junebug 12:49 PM

At a bare minimum, I would like to see/hear the never ending demand that the Right do penance or apologize be stabbed with a wooden stake.

They aren't going to apologize and penance is what treasonous appeasers do before putting on the blindfold. Why, oh why, oh why are they constantly given credit for having the ability to be something different than what they are?

Norquist's quote about bipartisanship being date rape drew howls at the time he said it but it's way past time to take it at face value. A noisy and misleading minority are having a hugely outsized effect on the direction this country is going in.

Ever noticed that Dems never play the Right for patsies or lead them down blind alley's just to leave them screwed and confused, but the Right does it to the Dems like clockwork? There is something very wrong with that picture.

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