Grovel Pit

What a contrast between the Republican candidates groveling before the organized social-issues conservatives Sunday night and the complete reversal of roles among Democrats where the base is expected to grovel before the politicians. While the Republicans have to justify themselves and defend their career compromises before a knowledgeable, stiff-necked and exacting crowd of anti-evolutionists, we in the reality-based camp have to defend our lack of enthusiasm about another decade of Clintonoid triangulation.

I’m already bored with all the arguments about why we should not expect more of Hillary or the rest of the candidate pack, not demand that they put an end to torture, nor go to bat for the separation of powers nor even cynically promise to restore our civil liberties. The reasoning follows just a few, endlessly repeated mantras, which I will intone below:

One: The Republicans are an imminent danger to the republic, so we must stop demanding a fabulous or perfect candidate (note the straw man) and settle on a middle-of-the-road moderate who can actually win. For example, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2000. These are appealing, safe, centrist candidates, albeit a little bland, and even if they lose, they’ll leave a powerful movement for change behind them ready to sweep into power later.

Good thing we listened to that wise counsel—otherwise, we might have been saddled with Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W Bush respectively. And we might also have ended up with a weak Democratic opposition that could never have mounted the effective challenge we’ve just witnessed to two decades of right-wing social, cultural and political trends. Whew, that was close!

Two: Hillary has to sound tough on Iraq because she’s vulnerable as a female and has to run to her right to neturalize the yahoo Nascarites, nervous Jews and confused suburbanites buying duct tape. Although the Iraq war is a disaster, she shouldn’t be faulted for voting to authorize it because she had to shore up her conservative New York base. And she HAD to vote to rattle sabres at Iran for the same reason. We can’t indulge ourselves and be one-issue voters because that would play into Republican hands.

Three: We need Clinton in office to protect the Supreme Court. Without a Democratic majority we might have ended up with a reactionary court majority eager to dismantle judicial review of the Unitary Executive. Lucky for us that didn’t happen!

And so on. Where the right wing has a social movement with organizations, resources, strategy and troops, the amorphous liberals rely on—the Democrats. Instead of demanding that Democrat potentials meet us on our terms, we’re browbeaten into accepting theirs, based on flimsy promises that they’ll do the right thing later. Given the vast evidence that they won’t, these tails attached to the Democratic Party’s rear end are just as faith-based as the Dobson-Robertson gargoyles.

The irony is that I hardly disagree with the proposed tactics nor with the world-class disaster posed by the Republican machine. I’ll probably do what’s necessary when and if the time comes to choose between the two horrors. But the furious reaction I get when expressing distaste for these sound-bitten, fleabag politicians is highly suspect. It suggests to me that the same things many of the Bush-hating Democrats are so up in arms about now won’t bother them much when done by a certain lady in the Oval Office.

[Update: I wrote that last night, and lo and behold read the following in New York magazine two hours later: “Far from Bush’s policies being repudiated in a Clinton presidency, they might in fact be continued with a different paint job.” –John Podhoretz, neocon extraordinaire and the new editor of Commentary.]