Dean's Pathetic Democrats

[Terran1212]

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20050607_ctrick.2075654.html

Published on Tuesday, June 7, 2005 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
Dean's Democrats Remain Pathetic
by John R. MacArthur

Is there anything more depressing than watching the Democratic Party lie down in front of the Bush administration's public-relations and political steamroller? The latest cave-in -- giving Bush three far-right judges in exchange for the temporary preservation of the Senate's filibuster perogative -- was enough to make me violate Jefferson's dictum against despairing of the commonwealth.
My question, unfortunately, is rhetorical, for I witnessed something even more dispiriting two weeks ago, at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser and pep rally in New York. It was the sight of Howard Dean, erstwhile Democratic reformer and truth talker, talking nonsense on behalf of a party leadership that hates reform and despises the truth.

As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the lapsed physician now carries the stretcher for a party too sick even to diagnose its own organizational self-interest, much less defend the social and constitutional principles now under siege by the White House. The only thing worse than Dean's prepared platitudes, sometimes shouted, is his virtual silence on the two great issues that Democrats work so hard not to confront: the hideous, mendacious war in Iraq and the big-money corruption of electoral politics and congressional legislation.

Granted, the gathering at the Essex House ballroom, on Central Park South, wasn't an ordinary public event. The several hundred attendees were mostly hard-core party faithful, aparatchiks, office holders, and office seekers, led by New York State Chair Herman "Denny" Farrell and state Senate Minority Leader David Paterson. Nor was the Dean message for party regulars exactly the one he uses for a general audience, such as that of Meet the Press last month.

But it's not that different, either. And that message -- which Dean recites with numbing consistency -- is all about image, and almost not at all about substance: in short, the kind of empty phrases that Dean so effectively ridiculed during his ill-fated presidential campaign.

*** EDITED BY ADMIN. PLEASE DO NOT POST FULL-LENGTH COPYRIGHTED ARTICLES. ***

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Guess this assh**e has never listened to Bush's 'jumble' of phrases!

[ClintonTyree]

2. Who pissed in this gas bag's Wheaties?

:wtf: I have four words for you, John R. MacArthur. Shut the fuck up! :grr: