It’s likely the triumphant proclamations of sweet liberty from the liberal media, old and new, about the New Democratic Mandate will continue until at least Dec. 15, when the holidays will put most of the country on the news snooze button. Actually, that won’t stop the victory laps from both the Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel wings of the “progressive” machine, it’s just that very few people will be reading or listening. There’re only so many columns that can successfully offer new insight on George Allen’s self-destruction—no skin off my nose, since he was, a long time ago it seems, an awful ’08 GOP presidential contender—the assignation of Karl Rove to Bob Shrum-like loser status or history’s certain verdict that George Bush will be regarded as the country’s worst president. Jimmy Carter can now set back and sit for a spell. And Warren Harding is resting even easier in peace.
In fairness, it’d be churlish to deny the Bush detractors their moment in the winner’s circle. It’s not as if Conservatives didn’t rub it in after the ’94 midterms or take smug satisfaction just two years ago when so many Kerry supporters were reported to have sought solace in therapy and made emigration plans to Europe that never quite materialized. And I’d be dishonest to shrug off the Republican loss of Congress as mere political theater, especially since a lot of excellent incumbents or candidates—Maryland’s Michael Steele and Bob Ehrlich, Missouri’s Jim Talent, Wisconsin’s Mark Green and Kentucky’s Anne Northup, to name a few—were put out to pasture.
There were some positive results last week amid the general wreckage: Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee, who gladly accepted RNC money while dumping on his own party, was defeated. Of far greater importance, however, was the defeat of restrictionists like Arizona’s Rep. J.D. Hayworth, the honorary Minuteman who probably got to sleep each night counting the number of Mexicans he’d like to deport. Pat Buchanan wasn’t on the ballot, nor were the anti-immigration writers at The National Review, but they can’t be happy that it’s at least possible Bush might craft a guest-worker program for the illegals who help prop up the economy with the new Congress.
Then again, it’s difficult to see, despite Nancy Pelosi’s charade of partial bipartisanship, the protectionist, pro-tax and isolationist hordes of Democrats giving Bush a semblance of legislative victory, even on an issue that The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have found, to use the temporary buzz phrase, “common ground” on.
On the issue of Iraq, a subject The Times editorializes about more often than the necessity of banning trans fat or the necessity of engaging Syria in diplomacy, there’s been a slight change of view in the once “elite” press. On Nov. 12, The Times called for “at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on the streets of Baghdad” and warned Democrats not to blow an opportunity to wrestle what’s known among “progressives” as “Bush’s war” away from the administration. I guess that’s why the daily endorsed “send the troops home” Ned Lamont—hero to the hysterical netroots community—over Joe Lieberman not only in last summer’s Democratic primary but in the general election as well.
Last Sunday’s editorial won’t go over well with like-minded left-wing organs such as The Nation. True, The Times, in keeping with its shrill anti-Bush permanent campaign, did issue this statement: “Under Republican control, Congress has exercised virtually no oversight of the administration’s misconduct of the war, and the new Democratic leadership is eager to hold extensive hearings. The public deserves a full accounting (backed by subpoenas, if necessary) of how prewar intelligence was cooked, why American troops were sent to war without adequate armor, and where billions of dollars in reconstruction aid disappeared to.” Just check Dick Cheney’s pockets is the read-between-the-lines accusation, needless to say.
(By the way, Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff, who views politics as merely a spectator sport, had a doozy of a first line in his December column. “Bush fires Cheney and names McCain as the replacement V.P.—although it is not yet entirely clear to me who tells Bush to fire Cheney, if not Cheney.” That’s a joke pitched to the monthly’s high tax bracket, Brioni-clad radical chic crowd, but it’s not a bad idea at all.)
The trouble is, at least for the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd, is that the sniff of power will inevitably break up the anti-administration coalition. For example, The Nation’s Nov. 27 editorial, “It’s Over for Bush,” contends “Americans want out of this disastrous war—now, as soon as possible.” It remains to be seen whether The Times will be as politically foolhardy as The Nation in encouraging a blitzkrieg on the GOP once the new year begins, complete with Henry Waxman-led witch hunts in the House that’ll remind voters of the price Conservatives paid by badgering Bill Clinton during his presidency. (I was in favor of Clinton’s impeachment, not incidentally, and still believe the principle was correct, but the political calculation was a mistake.)
It is conceivable, at least in an alternative universe, that Democrats and their media enablers will coalesce around the idea that winning the upcoming presidential election is preferable to the thrill of retribution, but that’s a long shot. The fight has already broken out in left-wing blogs, with a debate over who really deserves credit for the Democratic takeover, Emanuel or Dean. (Emanuel is, by my reckoning, the brightest light in the Democratic Party today, and Pelosi would be nuts to ignore him.)
There was an illuminating exchange of views on Nov. 9 at The American Prospect’s blog Tapped, where onetime sportswriter Charles Pierce (a disciple of foie gras enthusiast Eric Alterman, by way of introduction) sided with Dean and called Emanuel “a supercilious gombeen” who “produced a bumper crop out of ground that somebody else plowed.” My favorite response came from “joejoejoe” (presumably not the re-elected Connecticut senator) who advocated at least a temporary truce between the warring factions. “I’m siding with the Kumbaya contingent for the moment,” this person wrote. “It’s 1966 and Rahm is playing Mike Love to Howard’s Brian Wilson. He’s injecting a pop vibe into the crazy mind-bending experimental shit and creating something with more mass appeal than either one could produce on his own. The kids are hip to the sounds. Surf’s up.”
Never mind that Mike Love had zippo influence on Brian Wilson’s majestic work of the mid-’60s and believed that the musical genius who tragically abandoned Smile in 1967 was destroying the fun-fun-fun image of the Beach Boys. What’s significant is what the ’60s metaphor expressed and what that could portend for the Democrats in 2008; already, George McGovern is meeting with congressional Democrats on how to get out of Iraq. Can Arthur Schlesinger Jr. be far behind? My own image, if we’re going to take the way-back machine to another era, is of the Democratic luminaries replacing those faces on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Front and center, supplanting the costumed Beatles, would be Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Pictured in the collage would also be Charlie Rangel (“Who the hell wants to live in Mississippi, anyway?”), David Obey, Jackie and Teddy Kennedy, Barney Frank, Waxman, Jim McDermott, Robert Byrd, Huey, Dewey & Louie, Rob Reiner, Jim Webb, John Murtha, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Kos, Katrina (of The Nation, not the hurricane, although maybe there’s room for a busted levee), E.J. Dionne Jr., John Edwards, Norman Mailer, Joseph Wilson and spouse, Aaron Sorkin, Atrios, Paul Krugman, Mario Cuomo, Thomas Jefferson, Seymour Hersh, George Soros, Eugene Debs, Martin Sheen, Susan B. Anthony, Maya Angelou, Sinclair Lewis, Eleanor Clift, Yasser Arafat, Chris Matthews, Bart Simpson, John Reed, Walter Cronkite, Barbra, Al Sharpton, Jann Wenner (who’ll fork over cash for the privilege), George Clooney, John Dingell, Billie Joe Armstrong, Ann Richards, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore (but no Tipper), Patrick Leahy, Dean, Maxine Waters, Jon Corzine, Spike Lee, Mike Lupica, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, Michael Stipe, a zip-lipped John Kerry, Peter Beinart, Jay Rockefeller, Todd Gitlin, Theo Epstein, FDR, Anthony Lewis, a sign reading “Welcome MoveOn.org,” and, well, you get the idea.
Replacing the cutout of Bob Dylan would be the equally unpredictable McCain. Bono, after much deliberation, wouldn’t make the cut. There are limits, after all.
