Democrats: Playing well with others

Dana Milbank compares intraparty differences in reaction to the recent NARAL ads about Roberts and the Swift Boat Scumbags.

The decision by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America to pull an incendiary ad attacking President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court has produced a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party and a return to a nagging question: Has the opposition lost its nerve?

When conservatives complained about the ad -- which suggested that nominee John G. Roberts Jr. condoned violence against abortion clinics -- a number of prominent liberals joined in the criticism and elected Democrats ran for cover rather than defend the ad, which was dropped.

Amid similar criticism against another controversial ad, most Republicans brushed aside demands to repudiate Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that had taken aim at John F. Kerry's war record. Some Democrats said the difference revealed on their side an ambivalence about modern political combat that helps explain why their party is out of power.

The Big Dog didn't get elected just by virtue of being "The Man from Hope."

While both parties have participated in their share of nasty and dishonest politics over the years, a number of Democrats have come to the conclusion that they need to be tougher. "You can't blame your opponents for applying a strategy that beats your brains out," former president Bill Clinton said in a speech last month, in which he mocked Democrats for responding to attacks like Pavlov's dogs by saying, "Oh, how mean they are."

"You can't ask them to stop being mean to us," the former president said. "You've got to be tough enough to beat it."

The crown prince of Democratic loserdom, though, is quoted as well and that, um, gets Bob Somerby's blood pressure up.

MILBANK (8/13/05): "Republicans don't mind running an ad that's entirely false, but Democrats have never learned, and I'm not sure many of them want to learn, how to play that kind of politics," said Robert Shrum, an adviser to several Democratic presidential campaigns. NARAL had to pull the ad, he said, because "they weren't getting support from any substantial quarter."

Shrum was discussing last year’s Swift Boat Veteran ads—ads which slimed John Kerry’s war record. As Milbank continued, another major Dem, Chris Lehane, said Dems should get down-and-dirty too:

MILBANK (continuing directly): Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, who like Shrum favors hardball politics, protested that "we Democrats bring a well-thumbed copy of Marquess of Queensberry Rules while the other side unsheaths their bloody knives, with a predictable outcome." Lehane said the NARAL ad "was great, and exactly the type of offensive that breaks through in the modern age.”

Shrum and Lehane, tough to the core, said Dems should drop their silly old rules and play the way Rush and Sean do. Readers, you can be like Rush Limbaugh too! Bob Shrum knows you have it in you!

Of course, it’s amusing to see a loser like Shrum discussing those Swift Boat ads. Shrum is the hapless fellow who advised the Kerry campaign—the campaign which failed to prepare for the Swift Boat attacks (attacks which everyone knew were coming), then sat around, twiddling its thumbs, when the slanders finally hit. Is there any human being with less on the ball than this born crown prince of losers? But then, like many who are weak and inept, “Shrummy” likes to pose as a tough guy. But his total failure to know how to fight helps explain John Kerry’s defeat. And of course, he was also high in the chain when crackpot attacks against Al Gore put George Bush in the White House to begin with. What an amazing spectacle—to see this Born Loser giving this counsel. No one knows how to lose like Shrum—and his newest advice is just as stupid as his previous, born-loser work.

Should Dems and libs go out and lie too? No—that would be very stupid. For one thing, Dems and lib wouldn’t be nearly as skillful as Reps, who have spent the past forty years perfecting idiotic themes like the one that Gibson played against Sheehan. Liberal elites! Political correctness! Media bias! Moral equivalence! Pseudo-con screamers have a string of honed bumper stickers which fakers like Gibson can access and play with. In our view, it’s sad that Republicans have let their rhetoric be defined in recent years by the Rushes and the Seans—but it would be utterly stupid for Dems to try to play that game too. And of course, it would be something else; it would be grossly immoral, an abdication of the most basic principles. But so what? Born Losers like Shrum don’t care about that. They care about their fine wine and gourmet meals (see below)—and they love to go out there and posture.

Our view here has been clear for years (although it’s been utterly pointless to state it). We think that Dems should try telling the truth—attacking the cycles of lies and deceit that have defined our discourse for the past several decades. Of course, Shrum is the last man on earth to do that; he’s now a regular guest on Hardball, where he plays kissy-poo and huggy-hug-hug with his dim-witted host, Chris Matthews, who did more than any other broadcaster to defeat Shrum’s guy in Campaign 2000 and put George Bush in the White House. No one spread more disinformation or insulted Gore more than Matthews did; indeed, by the fall of 2001, Matthews was even saying, on the Imus show, that Gore "doesn’t look like one of us. He doesn’t seem very American, even.” But so what? Corrupted Born Losers—Born Losers like Shrum—have agreed to make a deal with all this. The mainstream press corps’ turn to the political center-right has only been part of the Democrats’ problems. But people like Shrum would eat live worms before they’d discuss the actual facts concerning press treatment of Clinton/Gore/Kerry. And now, having decided that Dems can’t tell the truth about that, Shrum has come up with a better idea. We should lie about everything else. We should be just like Republicans. Readers, you can be like Rush Limbaugh too. You can be just like John Gibson!

The Howler is right, of course. In the Post article, Milbank points to successful Democratic attacks on Bork, Gingrich, and Livingston...but those attacks were based on reality, not trumped up charges that they weren't really in Cambodia on Christmas Eve, or lied about the circumstances in which they received medals. Bork has constitutional ideas that are beyond the pale. Gingrich was an arrogant marionnette and serial adulturer, and Livingston was leading the charge against Clinton's adultery while having been a prodigious adulterer himself. There are plenty of pimply cysts on the buttocks of many on the Right to point to.

The NARAL ads made many Democrats uncomfortable because it pushes the boundaries of how far they're willing to go in attacking an opponent. The ad could have more effectively pointed to how little we know about Roberts true opinions, hinted ominously that what little we do know points to a candidate that will in all likelihood be a rubber stamp for the Republican president, and ask, "The administration won't release his files. What is the Cheney administration hiding?" Making connections that are stretched beyond recognition aren't going to make the case as effectively as using Roberts' nomination and the administration's ongoing lack of candor as just one more example of this administration's abuse of power.