Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Tom, I wish I could suggest that your fears and frustrations with radicalism in America were heightened more than they should be. I wish I could point all over the place and show you that America is not violently and hatefully polarized right now. And I really wish I could suggest that the radicals are paid no attention to.

Sadly, I can only agree with every word you're saying, and find some relief that there are others out there who are frustrated with this extreme polarization as I am. I consider myself an independent, largely because I simply refuse to associate with people who are partisan to the point of being hateful. We play the politics of extremes - you either kill babies or are a warmonger; either hate America or you hate everything that is not America. We subscribe to party-centric politics instead of issue-centric politics, and one of the biproducts of that appears to be people like KOS; so deeply entrenched on "their side" that its all about "Democrat or Republican" instead of the issues that actually matter.

Unfortunately Tom you called it. It's just not Markos it is many on the left side of the blogosphere. Look at the bloggers Edwards hired, the left side still defends their profanity riddled hate fests. I used to read quite a few lefty blogs but their lack of comity and vitriol has driven me away.

With Markos this is not new. I gave up my regular visits to his site with his comments about the contractors killed and butchered in Fallujah "their mercenaries...screw them. " He is devoid of both humanity and humility.

I'm with you on this. The state of partisan politics in our country is so poisoned that any centrist, gets hammered from both sides. Just look at the right-wing ads that are coming out questioning the patriotism of Republicans who oppose the President's surge. Like Zuniga from Kos on the left, they see any deviation from the party line or ideology as tantamount to a betrayal and worthy of punishment. In many ways, it reminds me of the ideology of al Qaeda, who see any Muslim that does not support them as an infidel and as such, a legitimate target of violence.

At least for now, it seems that the centrists of the democratic party are holding. They should, and their party should support them against these people, after all, the Democrats won in large part because of these centrists. Time will tell, if the party will simply follow the same formula as the Republican and self destruct.

As for your comment on a centrist party, we need one desperately. One who can draw the best talent from both the left and the right, and unite the country for the hard work and challenges that remain.

If you want a sight that is just as openly partisan Dem but more intelligent in its rhetoric, try MyDD. Kos spun off from MyDD, and frankly it shows. Generally, MyDD posts tend to be netrooty, liberal, Democratic, partisan, and well-thought-out. At least Kos gets four of the five.

Tom,

You noted it seems all so childish. Well, it is.

A vastly overlooked book is 'The Sibling Society' by Robert Bly (Iron John). Published in '97 at the height of the Clinton-Ginrich power clash. The thesis of this book is that the Boomers are esentially a generation of permanent adolescents...there are no parents around to mediate our squabblings.

I thought of Bly's book during an earlier post you wrote about how our two Boomer presidents, Bill and George, are the two most polarizing heads of state in our nation's history.

Kos, O'Reilly, Olbermann, Moore, Dobson, et al have done incalculable damage to the public arena. Children one and all.

Centrism is not exciting, and it does not sell, it does not get people to come read your political blog.

For every good idea that works well in our highly connected, globalized world, there are 10 idiot politicians (and one Lou Dobbs) who are against it.

Global civilization has solved all the easy problems, like growing food and making stuff. All that is left is the really hairy stuff like finding intricate balances for extremely complex and interdependent systems.

These problems are so complex that people of average intelligence can barely define them, much less solve them. And boy does politics ever attract the best and the brightest.

Glad to have you in the mushy middle, Doc. We may not always see eye-to-eye on things, but at least there's room for discussion and growth from dealing with you.

Now do you see why I got miffed about you posting your brother's anger some time ago? That was you embracing your Maher. It was alienating.

Glad to see you making the conscious choice to put it aside. Makes selling your life's work easier, which I'm happy and eager to see.

Hello, Tom.

First time commenter, but long time reader. I don't agree with everything you write, but you write interesting and well-thought out things even when I disagree... so I keep reading.

And I certainly agree with everything you write in *this* post. I hope it's not just your enveloping middle years-- I believe I'm younger than you are, I feel the same way, and I'm utterly unwilling to admit that I'm in my middle years. In my case, it's just the result of three or four pretty closely-spaced political traumas: The 2000 election drama, 9/11 itself, the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and the 2004 election.

Too shrill, too much yelling from entrenched positions, too many people utterly convinced that they have a direct line to the TRVTH when we should all realize that one of the virtues of America is that it is a 300,000,000 member parallel *search* for truths.

Not that I haven't been part of the problem, myself, to greater and lesser extents. (I am proud of things I said after 9/11; less so during the run-up to the war; and simply sat the 2004 election out, gritted my teeth, and tried to pick the least bad choice.)

That's one reaction.

The other, which I've successfully avoided, is to use the great power of the internet to only engage in debate with people who agree with you... and a few token idolotrous disbelievers. It's easy to shout someone down, to depersonalize them, to treat them as Other, when you outnumber them 2:1, 5:1, 10:1. It's easy to be bold and throw out the read meat when half your community standing behind you... just like it's easy to pick on the awkward kid at school when you've got half the cool kids cheering you on.

And *that* is Markos. That's a lot of people, because it's human nature, but for Markos, it's not just a tactic, not just a strategy, it's a business model.

I wish I had a better answer for you than that, Tom, but I don't. I just got tired of being the problem.

http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/

Mr. Barnett, if that site isn't the epitome of vitriol, I don't know what is. I don't even know if I should post it, but we need more people like you to counter these guys.

I've never seen so many "college intellectualls" look like asses peddling "loose change" and telling me terrorism is made up.

However, I believe it goes all the way back to the 2000 election. That was a historical event that many far leftists and establishment liberals still hold a grudge for. Trust me, some people just can't bury the hatchet.

The left blogs are not only KOS. I have only looked at that page once. Try www.bloggingheads.tv for great commentary from the left. Reasonable people with reasonable ideas.

Let's not put everyone into the same box.

There is more to the bloggsphere than just KOS.

Well, lets see. Its been about 15 years since Newt Gingritch said that the solution to mothers like Susan Smith strapping their kids in a car seat, dropping the car in a lake, then lying about it was to vote Republican. He and the Republican Party paid no price when it was revealed that Ms. Smith was from the family of a pillar of the Republican establishment whose idea of Christian Conservative Family Values incluses incest and adultery, and he was Speaker of the House before the year was out. Being targeted with that sort of thing can make you a bit nuts, and fact is, the Republicans had quite a run with their viciousness. I'm not sure its time to make nice with them now.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/11/02/column.shields.opinion.gingrich/index.html

As I tell all my friends on the left and right, hate kills. ...but so does fear. Many Democrats feel the same way you do about the increasingly self-absorbed MMZ and his "ideological purity" tests but fear the blogstorm a post like yours can create. Doesn't this talk of 'taking people out' have a whiff of the Cultural Revolution to it?

I was exiled from Democratic Underground for being insufficiently Leftist on my blog - though not on DU. My worst crime there was to debunk and ridicule some of the worst 9/11 conspiracy theories - the ones involving Aliens who controlled the NeoCons from secret military bases.

My posts on Free Republic were Vapourised in the Orwellian sense (retrospectively deleted from the historical record) because I have a medical condition Fundamentalists don't believe exists - and I can prove that it does, photos, blood tests etc.

There is no place on either site for those who value rationality above partisanship.

I used to worry about the Far Right at the time of Reagan. But now, I've seen what I feared come true on the Left, so much so that the "reality based" community is now demonstrably psychotic. "Bush Derangement Sydrome" is as real as the Clinton Hate Follie that preceeded it, but at least that was confined to the Extreme Right.

I still fear the potential of the Far Right: but I'm sad to see much of the Mainstream Left is just as bad as my worst fears, and it's not just potential, it's actual.

I'm not sure its time to make nice with them now.

When will it be time?

What is a centrist?
Wikipedia defines is as Liberalism with low taxes (aka the Clintonite Triangle) which of course is confusing since low taxes cannot support Liberalism's fat nanny statist welfare state.

That said, the American Left is under the power of the International Left which wants nothing to do with any American political party.

To me as one who moved from left to right directly after 9/11, I look at the state of American body politics as being in a state of Individualism vs Collectivism.

Any ideology which supports collectivist implementation (ie Centrism) cannot allow for individual freedom. I'm supporting Individualism ie right to free speech, right to religion, right to bare arms, right to keeping your own money, right to defend against tyranny and so far the only American party coming close to these ideals comes from the Republican Party.

Wail away with the hate speech against me, I believe you have that right.

I suspect that the extremes of partisanship and of vitriol have always been there - today it's just easier to access it without being plugged into those extremist circles. At least since John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson went at it, there has been tremendous bile and hatred and dehumanization and red meat throwing...and now, as then, I expect the good sense of the majority of Americans will keep the country approximating the best course between them...

Personally speaking in the late 1990's I was far more put-off by NOW embracing a 'male chauvanist pig' (I was a product of second wave feminist sisterhood) than I was put-off by anything the Republicans were doing or saying. For some 25 years I believed in NOW until their actions were in direct conflict with their words. According to NOW's behavior CLinton was a good 'male chauvanist pig' because he was a Democrat who supported NOW's agenda. I didn't know it at the time but later have learned just how much identity politcs (a tool of collectivism) has invaded our beliefs.

I no longer support groupthink doublespeak.

I'd rather know where the heart of the party lies. Trying to interpret that from the two-second sound bites of the politicians is useless. Reading Kos is much more clear, and no interpretation is needed.

I'm not sure how much of this is truly a new phenomenon for the Left, even the Left in America. 1997's Seattle riots gave us a good clue of the methods the new Left would use from now on, especially when their ideas failed to catch on as spectacularly as they did with the fall of the USSR.

Further back, the rioting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention can be seen as the prototypical "netroots" effort to swing the Democrats farther left. Minus the Net, of course -- mimeoroots, perhaps?

It's become more vicious these days because the Net allows extreme and dispersed wingnuts like Moulitsas et al to connect the way more reasonable (and thus ubiquitous) people used to do with more conventional means. That, and of course, the fact that it brings the riot right to your desktop.

RKKA - when did Newt say that, exactly? It sounds a bit more like it's your exaggeration of what he meant. So enter yourself as exhibit A in this.

I may be older than most here (53), so my perspective extends back further than 1994. Fevered comments are nothing new. It pays to differentiate between mainstream comments of one side - speeches from the Senate floor, campaign statements, honored guests at party events, writings in high-circulation media - and the fringe characters brought out by the other side to show how crazy the opposition is.

"Kos and company want her gone as a "Lieberman in a pantsuit.""

I recall that Kos' targeting of Lieberman resulted in his repositioning, re-election, and re-emerging with a stronger voice. Hillary's people may have noticed this as well.

Part of the problem is that both extremes feel an entitlement to power, especially on the Left. The Left is the party of Government and State power, the Right is much more interested in private pursuit and personal gain. It's not for nothing that most Republican leaders come out of private business.

What has changed on the Left, and why the Centrists (aka, Hillary's people), won't be able to stamp them down, is that, quite unlike thirty to forty years ago, Kos and his people are a monied left. George Soros is very left wing and he has gobs more money than the Clintons ever will. He is quite willing to underwrite any of MoveOn.org's efforts.

The Centrists can't outspend the Kos Kids. That's what's changed. And there are loads of wealthy, "progressive", Sugar Daddies who made their mark in the Dot Com and Software businesses who will underwrite Progressive (read "Left") political activity.

All this has had the effect of moving candidates like Hillary Clinton towards the Left. That's where the rhetoric is, and that's where the Money is. That's where Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards are, as well, because they understood that this campaign was being run in the 21st Century, and not in 1992 (something Hillary forgot).

All this has the effect, combined with Congressional Democratic effects to move left on the Iraq deployment, to move the Democratic Party off the Center and to the Left, where it was in the early Seventies. This is what we in the Republican Party anticipated, as the D's could only keep up their "centrist" mask for so long (there are only so many Jim Webbs and Heath Schulers to go around...) before their party's nature had to reassert itself.

What you see before your eyes is the slow failure of Bill Clinton's effort to make the Democrats the Centrist, Majority party the way Roosevelt was able to. The Netroot extremists are too powerful, too active, and too monied.

Meantime, Republican leadership is apparently wising up real, freaking fast and looking at those rank and file polls that show Rudy out in front of everyone else. And what's happening to us is that the Evangelicals are being real pragmatic when faced with the prospect of President Hillary deciding SCOTUS picks.

The entire Democratic game plan was based on the assumption that Republicans would never nominate a centrist like Rudy because there would be an evangelical revolt. They never figured on two things: their own Left extremists would begin a blood purge within the party, and that Republicans would actually want to win in 2008.

Oops.

As someone who spends WAY too much time looking at the Daily Kos website, I can certainly share the frustration. For example, they recently have been running far more posts attacking Hillary Clinton than any Republican candidate. I didn't see their posts about Tauscher but I can imagine what they said. (By the way, Kos has some ideological peculiarities, such as being extremely pro-gun, so he probably considers an "F" from the NRA as a strike against her).
Getting beyond the frustration, I like to put this in perspective. Kos reminds me a lot of a character in Trollope's Barchester Chronicles novels, Tom Towers, a "journalist" who went off on self-righteous campaigns against "corruption" that destroyed a lot of good people and were really only about personal agrandizement. Read 19th Century newspapers - they'll remind you a lot of DailyKos/Free Republic, same sort of partisan gutter-sniping. I'm not too concerned about Kos being the next Stalin. I'm more concerned with him being something like the next Williams Jennings Bryant. If the Democratic Party follows the Kos lead by embracing "populism" (what I like to call "the opiate of the Left"), then this election will be like the election of 1896, when the Republican Party lined itself up as the pro-business party, mixed with a dash of pro-business responsibility added by TR, and as a result left the Democratic Party eating their dust until the New Deal. I still have more faith in today's Democrats, and I don't see a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama going that way. If they're smart (and they are) they'll do a "Sister Souljah" on Kos, which will guarantee a Democratic victory in '08.

RKKA's out proving people's points for sure.

I just don't think the points he's proving are the one's he thinks he is.

-SG

Do you really mean it when you say that "the Net Roots thing is becoming such a huge disappointment to me. Instead of encouraging broad, thinking participation, it just comes off more and more like some unblinking mob that scary people manipulate"?

So it seems that "connectivity" cuts both ways--and in more ways than one: not only making the "core" more vulnerable to external threat, but also operating as a mechanism to facilitate and magnify internally generated "perturbations."

How does this internal risk of connectivity fit your grand theory? Could it be that greater risk is not from without (i.e., from the gap), but from within (i.e., from within the core itself), that the core cannot hope to manage its relationship with the gap unless the core first learns how to manage its internal relationships?

I think you've entirely missed the point of the article, RKKA. Ellen Tauscher is not a Republican.

Tom,
I'm sure I would completely disagree with you politically, but your post is spot-on. Let's hear it for sane discourse (even disagreements) instead of vitriolic homilies!

I think DK's problem is ultimately one that the netroots in general with have to confront. DK's point was to develop media architecture that would act as a counterbalancing force to centrist democrats and the centrist media. It was intended to be a decentralized force, using the internet as its base of operations. However, as it became a source of power in itself, a hierarchy developed and earnest political activism developed into ideological zealousness. And because of that hierarchy, there was no chance for a "correction for below," as William S. Lind might have said, and because of that a many-sided and diverse political network becomes a monomaniacal platform for an individual (kos).

The question the netroots has to face is whether its decentralized structure will survive as they gain political influence and media fame, and whether they can prevent themselves from repeating this mistake.

RKKA,

As I understood it, it's not really about "making nice"--it's more about deciding what kind of political conversation you want to engage in and what you want your contribution to be. If one party/side/politician is going the ad hominem route rather than arguing issues, it does everyone a disservice for opponents to adopt the same tactics. Republican attacks on Clinton in the 90's and Kos's calls for purging "apostate" Dems are both examples of the assumptions of bad faith that are, unfortunately, pretty common. A lot of people are getting tired of that kind of nonsense, and I think Tom's point was that assigning sinister motives to people you disagree with and focusing on ideological uniformity makes it impossible to have a serious discussion about how to move forward as a country.

ry, I'm not sure Tom is a member of the "mushy middle". It is possible to have radical beliefs and be out of the "mainstream" ideologically, but to also understand that reasonable people can disagree with you. He could agree with Kos on every substantive point, and still think he is an unintelligent and arrogant creep based upon the way he writes and behaves.

RKKA... I think that red herrings like yours are part of the problem. Even if we all agree with your assessment of Gingrich, your point is irrelevant to this post and doesn't change what Kos said. Kicking the can to the other side of the aisle, back and forth and back and forth, is completely unproductive.

good discussion--agree with most of what is being considered here. and, Bread, is correct to point to the 2000 election as the breaking point for the left: there's your Y2K perturbation.

but, you have to put that entire drama into context: a decade of whitewater and monica, then 5-4 vote, Tom Delay, missile defense, 9-11, WMD, oil wars. now the crazies on both sides feel legitimated and there are schisms in both parties. though, most of the dems who won in november were centrist and as the article points out there are now 60 New Democrats up from 48.

RKKA,

know one is saying to make nice--it's like big-time college athletics: it's a filthy business in many ways but you are not forced to cheat in order to win.

Compare two regions of the brain-
neocortex, for high level thinking

Limbic system, ancient emotional center created long before the neocortex...

let's see...fear of Bush, fear for our future, protests marked by shouting and hatred...

methinks the 'emotional side' of libs removes their ability to think rationally-producing ideas like removing Lieberman from their own primary, only to see him elected in a general election...favoring the emotional plan to get out of Iraq, without any plan or vision of how it will affect the country and the region.

Until they can distinguish the rational from the emotional, they will continue to act like an angry mob of 5 year olds, chugging koolaid, munching on jelly doughnuts, and chasing the 'soccer ball', without any cohesive strategy.

If you're so concerned about extremists, why are you going on Hugh Hewitt's show? Granted, he's been obsequious toward you (which I'm sure is flattering), but he's as hard right doctrinaire and partisan as they come.

As to what's behind Markos' attack on Tauscher (and Lieberman before)... Many Democratic netroots activists are advocating a new kind of response to the methods of the Republic Party, to simply fight fire with fire. That means: a coordinated message, an insistence on party orthodoxy in elected officials, and a concerted effort to "work the refs" in the media. This is pretty well laid out in Markos' recent book so it should be no surprise.

Tauscher perhaps doesn't deserve it, but I understand what Markos is doing and it comes with the territory these days. You (TPMB) are not going to be able to get party extremism to end by simply complaining that you don't like it. If you really want it to end, cut the extremists off. You could start by staying away from Hewitt.

As a blogging, right wing, knuckle-dragging, Neandertholic conservative, I'm proud to say that I totally agree with your post. I have seen however some of the same vitriol on the right, but the left is, as you have noted, after souls and maybe lives if they don't get the souls. s

Perhaps the answer is all of us stand up and yell "Enough!!!" And, having said that, I still love razzing the left, I just try not to be nasty about it.

Would that be the same Bloggingheads that had Alterman calling for a blogging commission to oversee content and make sure it was acceptible?

If that's what passes for rational lefist thought I'll do without, thank you.

Sorry, since when did organizing to defeat a candidate that does not represent her district become 'mob rule'? Presumably, some time after Toomey challenged Specter or Laffey challenged Chaffee in their respective GOP primaries. The difference in those primary challenges is that Tauscher's seat could easily elect a more partisan candidate while the challenges in PA and RI were dooming the GOP to defeat.

Your attempt to portray 'take her out' as having a violent subtext is a little weak.

But honestly, what role does ideology and partisanship have in your world if it isn't actually used to evaluate candidates deserving of support? Should we support Tauscher because she is 'nice' or 'pretty' and ignore her voting record?

Have faith! Take heart in the dismissal of the Bobbit Twins from Edwards' campaign, after they had left their jobs and moved across the country to join him, no less.

Like their right-wing counterparts, the more lunatic netroots are doing an outstanding job of discrediting themselves.

"Why do these guys like Kos and Ralph Reed and the rest of them always get so drunk on themselves and start acting so creepy and intolerant the minute they gain the slightest pull over others? Where does their humanity go?"

Why do you ignore the obvious answer: they are just being who they are. I've always been less than enamored with the old saying "power corrupts." I think a more accurate rendering would be "power attracts the corruptible." In a way reminescent of Marx (the great one, Groucho), it often seems that anyone so desirous of power shouldn't have it.

I may be suffering a bit from the mote/beam syndrome, but contrary to all the warnings and treachings of the great left I really don't see the same level of vitriol, hate and disimenation from the right that you have so well remarked upon. The next time you see the "right" piloried and hoisted upon a petard I encourage you to consider the source before judging.

Brad, I don't think KOS is a rabid partisan. I have a feeling KOS doesn't like the Democratic Party either. He's just an extremist who has no other choice but to work through and transform them.

RKKA, read up on the New Left. "Students for a Democratic Society," the Black Panthers, the Weathermen...and then think of viciousness.

With regard to the call for a third party: Unless this third party were immediately able to obtain majority support, or something very close to majority support—which is highly unlikely—the emergence of a third party would tend to engender more faction and fractioning rather than more unity and moderation. This is rather simple arithmatic, since division of the electorate into three parties means more and smaller factions than division into two major parties. The advantage of a two-party system, as opposed to a several-party system, is that in order to obtain ruling power, a party must fashion a true majority (or something very close to a majority). So in a two-party system, the successful party will be the one that makes its policies more compatible with voters in the center. (Thus, the proverbial "race to the center" as the general election draws near.) Yes, things do get out of whack sometimes, but the two-party system, because it quickly punishes a party that loses sight of the center, tends to be self-correcting.

By contrast, in a multi-party system where a faction can obtain ruling power with a mere plurality (often with a plurality substantially less than a majority), and can obtain substantial influence with only miniscule popular support, there much less incentive toward moderation. In a multi-party system, if a party can create and win the support of a radical third or fourth of the electorate, it can pretty much ignore the moderate middle. Indeed, it is more likely that a moderate third party, unable to form its own majority but skimming moderate voters from the other two parties, would thereby ensure victory for whichever of the other two parties had the greater number of blindly devoted zealots. The formation of a substantial and long-lived third party would both entail and require within our polity a grave and fundamental crisis, which we should prefer more to avoid than to inspire.

...and you all are only NOW realizing that netroots have gone nutty? Peel the layers, and stop when everyone agrees, "nah, that's just a conspiracy-I don't really buy into that."

I think a lot of people confuse political extremism with political hyperbole and vitriol.

The former isn't necessarily a bad thing, IMO. Some would say that our founders were extreme, for example. Their ideas were certainly radical in their day.

My two political mentors were Milton Friedman and Wm. F Buckley -- both of whom many considered extreme, particularly back when they first came on the scene.

But even their ideological and political adversaries found both Friedman and Buckley polite and agreeable. One of Milton Friedman's closest professional relationships was with JK Galbraith. And there was nary a soul of the left who wouldn't jump at the chance to discuss politics with Bill Buckley on his "Firing Line" show.

I'm not sure that the problem you're pointing out is one of ideological extremism -- though it does certainly involve a kind of intolerance of ideological variance.

Rather, I'm just taken with how crude and nasty the rhetoric and attitudes at these sites are.

Of course, sites like these do tend to appeal to more ideologically extreme people. But you still can't equate the two.

There are some very polite, cordial, engaging, and thoughtful people at all places on the political spectrum.

Netroots is pretty much the same as the John Birch Society. They don't have any real power now and they won't have any near power in the future because they are as attractive as herpes.

I don't think you or your kids have anything to worry about. The vast majority of democrats and republicans I have met are decent people who don't agree about everything.

Love the comments, and the replies prove my point. Republicans of Gingritch's stature can and will exploit a tragic child-murder for political advantage. And When it was revealed that Ms. Smith was from a Republican family, no
Democrat of comparable stature tried to exploit that. And people who point out that national-stature republicans are nastier than similar Democrats, and have been for years, are less than well-liked.

Rovian Republicans tried to make the Democratic Party into a powerless irrelevancy. They failed, but nothing about recent developments shows any change of heart or intention. Rep. Tauscher is making a strategic error by reaching out to those who intend nothing but the political destruction of her and her Party.

"Well, lets see. Its been about 15 years since Newt Gingritch said that the solution to mothers like Susan Smith strapping their kids in a car seat, dropping the car in a lake, then lying about it was to vote Republican. He and the Republican Party paid no price when it was revealed that Ms. Smith was from the family of a pillar of the Republican establishment whose idea of Christian Conservative Family Values incluses incest and adultery, and he was Speaker of the House before the year was out"

This seems like a nitpicky thing to get exercised about, and a terrible example of behavior similar to Kos and friends.

Excellent post.

I stopped reading Daily Kos about five minutes after I started.

There ain't a thin line between analysis and partisanship -- there's a big, fat one.

Thank you for this post!!!! It's good to know I am not the only one who is astounded\dismayed at the depths to which we have sunk.

Vote for bill Rouck for president, I'm the center of everything!

I would appreciate a link to the alledged Eric Alterman comment. But, I doubt one will ever be forthcoming.

On the other hand, interest in the Dailykos has been sparked. I guess I will check it out.

Tom-

IMHO, this is an example of distortion through selective quotation--Kos clearly means "take her out" politically. What do you do when you disagree with a politician, contribute to their campaign?

While some of the comments here are insightful (including some of those I disagree with, most of them are masturbatory, again IMHO. Very disappointing...