Dave Brooks: Rescuing the Democrats

[The Zanti Regent]

Read this

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21BROO.html

Anyone still dumb enough to think the New York Times is a "liberal" newspaper?

His GOP bias is incredible and deserves an MWO nomination for Whore of the Week!

[otohara]

1. NYT's Hired Brooks To Help Counter

the whole "librul" paper thing. William Safire & the ramblings of Tom Friedman wasn't enough GOP spew for them.

[Cocoa]

2. Brooks talking about the dems not respecting the voters

Brooks who is very sincere-looking and thoughtful-looking as he delivers his republican talking points, now writes about respecting ordinary folk.

Yes I'm sure Edwards's populist message really resonated with Brooks. Brooks, who flattered the yuppies in his book about "bobos."

[papau]

3. Interesting observations- as usual Brooks has a grain of truth in the bias

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21BROO.html

October 21, 2003
Rescuing the Democrats
By DAVID BROOKS


EWTON, Iowa — In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes argues that we have seen the birth of a Republican majority. In 1992, Barnes points out, Republicans held 176 House seats. Today, they hold 229. In 1992, the G.O.P. controlled 8 state legislatures; now it controls 21. In 1992, there were 18 Republican governors; now there are 27.

<snip>Howard Dean argues that the Democratic Party has lost its soul. If it returns to its true fighting self, instead of compromising with Republicans, it will energize new and otherwise disenchanted voters.

Dick Gephardt argues that the party has lost touch with the economic interests of working men and women. Instead of offering bread-and-butter benefits to lower-middle-class workers, it endorses free trade policies that destroy job security.

Joe Lieberman argues that the party has become too liberal and too secular. It has lost touch with the values of the great American middle.

John Edwards has the most persuasive theory. He argues that most voters do not place candidates on a neat left-right continuum. But they are really good at sensing who shares their values. They are really good at knowing who respects them and who doesn't. Edwards's theory is that the Democrats' besetting sin over the past few decades has been snobbery.

<snip>Except for Bill Clinton, Democrats have nominated presidential candidates who try to figure out Middle American values by reading the polls, instead of feeling them in their gut. If they do it again, the long, slow slide will continue.

[maha]

4. David Brooks Is an Idiot

His politics aside, the man is jaw-dropping, mind-boggling stupid. How do people like this get to write for the New York Times?

[zoidberg]

6. How is he stupid?

I thought it was an interesting editorial. There has no doubt been a decline in the party over the past ten-fifteen years. The Edwards hypothesis is about as viable explanation to the decline as any. I think Brooks did a decent job of presenting this. Perhaps I'm missing something here. Is he an idiot just because he doesn't share your political bias?

edit: I also recall fellow NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman calling out the Clintons for their elitism: It took a combination of brilliant political leadership on the right and an awesome mixture of political ineptitude, personal arrogance, and cultural elitism on the part of liberals to give Armey and their allies their current position of power. (I sometimes think that the Renaissance Weekend killed the Clinton Administration.)
http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/TopHeavy.html

[maha]

8. He's an idiot in general,

not just because of this one column. He never fails to astonish me. But to humor you --

In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes argues that we have seen the birth of a Republican majority. In 1992, Barnes points out, Republicans held 176 House seats. Today, they hold 229. In 1992, the G.O.P. controlled 8 state legislatures; now it controls 21. In 1992, there were 18 Republican governors; now there are 27.

But the really eye-popping change is in party identification. In Franklin Roosevelt's administration, 49 percent of voters said they were Democrats. But that number has been dropping ever since, and now roughly 32 percent of voters say they are. As Mark Penn, a former Clinton pollster, has observed, "In terms of the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal."

What are we not seeing? For one thing, we are not seeing how many voters call themselves "Republican" these days as compared to FDR's time. I don't know, but I am willing to bet money that the GOP has lost, percentage-wise, also. In Roosevelt's time, nearly all voters claimed a party affiliation. These days, at least a third, if not more, do not. So the second paragraph is a carefully crafted lie -- it IMPLIES that ONLY Democrats have lost ground.

The first paragraphs deals with a ten-year survey of elections that swung in the direction of Republicans. In the grand scheme of things, ten years doesn't say much. The Republicans have gone through similar periods of being lost in the wilderness, yet they keep coming back.

The rest of Brooks's editorial is a view of the Democratic presidential campaigns from a conservatives' point of view. It is true there is a struggle going on for the soul of Democrats, but this is not a sign of "decline." Rather, it represents varying degrees of recognition of how the VRWC is poisoning America. The Dem candidates range from the terminally cluelss (e.g., Lieberman) to some guys that have a couple of clues but don't see the whole picture (e.g., Edwards, Kerry) to those who see it pretty clearly (e.g., Dean, Clark).

We're not talking about just a struggle within one party. The 2004 election will be less about Dems vs. the GOP than it will be a referendum on America itself. If you don't see that, buddy, I can't help you much.

Let's skip to the very end:

When I interviewed people during the 2000 campaign I found many voters preferred Democratic policies to Republican ones. But they didn't trust Al Gore because they thought he looked down on them. They felt Bush could come to their barbershop and fit right in.

Except for Bill Clinton, Democrats have nominated presidential candidates who try to figure out Middle American values by reading the polls, instead of feeling them in their gut. If they do it again, the long, slow slide will continue.

Does George W. Bush represent "middle American values"? (If he does, I'm the Virgin Mary.) Or did he fool a lot of under-informed voters that he was a nicer guy than Gore?

As the great Republican president Abraham Lincoln may have said, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. As the idiot Bush couldn't get out of his mouth, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

The task ahead of us is, then twofold: The Dems must nominate a candidate who is not only electable but who shows signs that he understands the danger America faces at the hands of the Bushes and the VRWC. Appeasers like Lieberman will not do it. We need a fighter.

Second, we have to break through the right-wing media to get the truth to the people.

If we can do that, it'll soon be the Republicans who will be in decline.

[DemDogs]

11. The ways in which you are wrong are staggering

First, I don't agree with David Brooks, but anyone who pays the least attention knows that he is by a great distance the most intellgent and articulate conservative voice. What's more, he often spears the conservatives for their foggy thinking.

I don't think the article implies that Republicans have not lost party registrations, and I don't know what they truth is, except that the R's control the House and the Senate. I don't like the statistics I do know.

Does Bush share American values? Of course not, and no one including Brooks thinks so, but Brooks is right: voters thought Bush did. They thought he would make a good friend, a good date (as repulsive as that might sound). Nothing in what Brooks says is inconsistent with your statement that Bush fooled voters. Do you think it will work to tell them they were fools? I don't.

You just don't agree that Edwards is the candidate who, like Clinton, reaches the voters who make a difference in who wins elections. I am not sure what you think the "soul of the party" is since you think both Clark and Dean have it, both of whom have messages and histories that inconsistent with the core messages of the party, from FDR through Clinton. The point of the column is that the party will never have a resurgence without reaching voters who believe in the Party's message but felt more comfortable (face it) with GWB. Brooks is not alone when he thinks that the person who can reach them is Edwards.

And if you want a fighter, Edwards is a fighter, more than any other candidate in this race. He fought corporations and insurance companies for something like twenty years. A candidate does not have to foam at the mouth to prove he is a fighter. When he does foam, he turns off those voters Brooks was talking about. So we need a non-foaming fighter who connects with voters. And we're lucky, we have one. Edwards.

[Francis]

5. His writing isn't good

I am always interested in both sides of a debate and I thought he was good on Shields and Brook on PBS but I have real difficulty reading his column.
I am not referring to the subject matter.

[maha]

9. He's neither a good writer nor a good thinker.

Which, again, makes me wonder how he's gotten where he is.

[Larkspur]

7. If Edwards has the most persuasive theory on the Dem Party decline

why hasn't his "I'm from the poor mill worker family" line caught fire with the Democratic base as opposed to Howard Dean's "You have the power to change..."?

This Democrat is from middle class origins, parents were children of poor immigrants, and closer to Edwards roots than I am to Howard Dean's, yet it is Dean who has inspired me and thousands of others who have never participated in politics before?

Maybe Edwards style of narcissic campaigning is going extinct?

[maha]

10. The "log cabin" mystique

It's an old American tradition, you know. If you rate the candidates purely by log cabin factor, you get some interesting results:

http://www.mahablog.com/2003.10.12_arch.html#1066438866168

[DemDogs]

12. Edwards is resonating

The antiwar message is what attracted attention to Dean. It is also what will, whether we like it or not, make him unelectable in the general election. We need to come to our senses. Eugene McCarthy excited voters with an antiwar but his willingness to splinter the party cost us the election in 68. Learn the lessons of the past or resign yourself to repeating them.