I just read through the Michael Moore thread and was about to post a long screed, but maybe it belongs here instead. Anyway, here it comes (as I deftly click on "paste").

The problem with the Democrats is that too many of them don't have a clear idea of what they are about, whereas the Republicans (under the thumb of the neo-cons) know exactly what they want, and are willing to stop at nothing to get it. And that the Democrats are much too polite for the current political climate. But there are people like Michael Moore who don't mind being a bit rude now and then. Therein, perhaps, lies our hope.

When this harsh political climate blew in, I'm not too sure, but I think it happened during the Reagan years. Reagan was determined to return the United States to the conditions that existed prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration back in the Thirties. Roosevelt brought the country out of the worst depression it ever had (25% unemployment) and averted a possible Russian-style revolution that was looming due to the vast discrepancy between the rich and the poor (the middle-class had dwindled to near non-existence). He did this by initiating regulations stopped the most flagrant abuses of corporate corruption, initiated a social safety net (things like Social Security), and put people back to work directly, on government projects such as building infrastructure (WPA)—rather than letting them starve while waiting for tax cuts for the wealthy to "trickle down." He also established the SEC to oversee and prevent the kind of insane speculation that led to the 1929 stock market crash, and the FDIC to keep people from losing their savings when banks went broke. Opponents cried "socialism!" But if one understands what socialism actually is, one would realize that what Roosevelt did can hardly be called socialism. It was (and still is) a handy epithet. But be that as it may. Roosevelt did save the country from sinking into the chaos that the prior twelve years of Republican administration had allowed to grow unrestrained.

But what has rankled in the right-wing conservative craw for the past seventy years are those pesky restrictions on corporate robber-baronism. And the fact that the social safety net was not allowing the weaker or less fortunate members of society to fulfill their Social Darwinian destiny by dying off and thereby improving the gene pool (And some of these folks keep insisting that this is "a Christian country." To them I say, see Matthew 25:35-41).

Somewhere along the line, a coterie of right-wing extremists managed to take over the Republican Party. These people are so far right-wing that they even find many of the policies espoused by the late Barry Goldwater, considered to be the quintessential American Conservative, to be much too liberal. They were not all that happy with George Herbert Walker Bush, because he, too, was not sufficiently right-wing for their purposes. He did do much of their bidding, but it was a bitter disappointment to them when he stopped the Gulf War once the stated and legitimate goal of driving the Iraqi invaders out of Kuwait had been accomplished and did not go on to conquer and occupy Iraq as they intended he should.   

But determined to maintain their grasp on the tiller and hopefully bend George Herbert Walker Bush to their will, it was another bitter blow to them when Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 after he had served only one term. This would never do! To try to insure that a Republican puppet (preferably more malleable than G. H. W. Bush) would be elected in 1996, or at least by 2000, they began a campaign of character assassination against Bill Clinton. And when it became obvious that she was going to be an active participant in his administration, Hillary Clinton became a target as well. Despite that fact that Clinton was at least a halfway decent president and left the country in good financial shape (by the way, many of the better presidents had trouble keeping their flies zipped, so I don't consider his little peccadilloes in that area to be relevant) and that Hillary is popular enough to have won a Senatorial election in New York state, there is a residue of unreasoning hatred for them, even among some Democrats, based on nothing more than accusation and innuendo—never any actual proof of anything.

Conservative interest groups, commentators, and self-appointed investigators (among them, undoubtedly Karl Rove, the right-wing's Character Assassin-in-Chief) went to work with a right good will to make the life of the Clintons as miserable as possible during their whole time in the White House, relentlessly and remorselessly firing accusation after accusation at them. None of them ever amounted to anything, but on the principle that "to be accused is to be condemned," which Joseph McCarthy used so expertly, and the belief that most people have that "where there's smoke, there's fire," they blew vast quantities of smoke. The truth of the matter in this case is "where there's smoke, there's a smoke-making machine."

George W. Bush has had a very cushy go of it so far. He and his supporters cavil at any criticism of him (often with accusations of lack of patriotism on the part of the critic, another tactic used by McCarthy—and people far worse!), but bitch though they might, Dubya has had it really easy compared to the ride he would have had if the Democrats and the liberals (they're not quite the same, you know) had in place an organized effort to pick up on the plethora of gaffs, goofs, sub rosa wheeling and dealing, promises without funding, ripping up the social safety net, outright lies, and general malfeasance that has been the main leitmotif of the Bush administration and call them to the attention of a press that is receptive, not just an administration lap-dog.

There are a few people who get occasional media coverage (often negative), such as Michael Moore and Al Franken, who level blasts at the Bush administration, generally couched in bitter humor. The only person in the media of any prominence that I can think of who could qualify as a serious critic is Bill Moyers. And he's pretty low-key. He quietly reports on stories that the right-wing would prefer that the public not know about, and let's you make up your own mind. But he's on PBS on Friday nights, competing with Hope and Faith on ABC, Ed on NBC, JAG on CBS, not to mention Stargate SG-1 on the Sci-Fi channel, Powder Puff Girls on the Cartoon channel, Celebrities Uncensored on E!, 100 Hottest Hotties on VH1—and, of course, Special Report with Brit Hume on Fox News Channel. Neither Democrats nor liberals have anything as nearly well organized as the right-wing propaganda machine that fired all those bon mots at the Clintons—and who are already at work on whoever emerges to oppose Bush in 2004.

Already there have been articles published in national newspapers attacking the Democratic candidates, particularly Dean, because he's the front-runner right now. The one they keep repeating like a mantra is that Dean is "unelectable." Don't they wish! If they can convince enough people that it's true and they succumb to defeatism, then that's one very dangerous candidate out of the way. Other cute comments involve referring to the broad base of Dean supporters as "Deanie-weenies" or "Dean's Internet Gestapo." One article accuses Dean of "shameless disregard of the First Amendment" because of the way he's gained support on the internet, but I'll be damned if I can see how that accusation applies. But Dean, apparently, is not the only one they regard as dangerous. There is one article (and this is a lulu!) that likens Kocinich's somewhat unruly hair to Hitler's. Get it? Dean=Gestapo, Kucinich=Hitler. Interesting, when you stop and consider. Pots? Kettles? Hmm? That's pretty much the level of political discourse that we can expect for the coming ten months.

Politics has always been a matter of push-and-shove, give-and-take, a system of arguing, bargaining, and reaching compromises. A cumbersome, unwieldy system all in all, but it does have the virtue of making sure that in a system that at least works some of the time, changes that could screw it up totally are not going to occur without lots of discussion and debate. That's government. But the right-wing cabal is not interested any of this. They don't want discussion and debate. They don't want to compromise. They are not interested in governing. They want to rule.

Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. 2004 is gonna be one nasty campaign!

Don Firth