From his June 18 WSJ column:
The comfortable course of action for Democrats will be merely to pocket the coming windfall, to burble about how they have lifted the curse of ideology from the land, to replace the current gang of free-marketeers with their own gang of free-marketeers, and to resume the merry triangulations of eight years ago. The ins will give way to the outs, and they will rule happily ever after . . . until the next culture war takes them by surprise and sweeps them again from their contented perch.
Another route is possible, though. If they are willing to go beyond the regal rhetoric of post-partisanship, Democrats might find that they are, for the first time in decades, running against a philosophy of government that has utterly discredited itself. Should they choose to make 2008 a referendum on conservatism itself, they might deliver the knockout blow. They should start with the bad ideas that have delivered such disastrous consequences.
This is precisely the danger we face with a big Dem victory: complacency–See, the system works!–and so while the Dems get fat and lazy and accomplish little, the movement conservatives and buccaneers who dominate the GOP regroup to plan their next assault.
This will happen unless the Dems find a way to de-legitimate movement conservatism in the public imagination. This is an educational project that has to be effected by end-running the MSM whose principals have no interest in supporting such a project. Can it be done? I don't know, but Obama has the rhetorical tools and the pulpit to do it if he decides he wants to. There will be a ton of pressure pushing him away from taking such a project on. Is there some way to exert counter-pressure on him to do it anyway? Maybe, but I don't see it.
Given everything we know now about how the GOP works, I still find it amazing that he and his party are taken seriously by anyone except those who benefit from the continued perpetration of this fraud? The GOP retains this legitimacy only because the MSM bestows it for its own self-interested reasons and because the Dems are so afraid to vigorously hold the GOP accountable for perpetrating it.
The crisis we face is not about the struggle between right and left; it's a crisis of accountability. It's about whether a system of governing that is publicly accountable is possible for us anymore. At the moment it simply is not.
P.S. More here at TPM on why Evan Bayh is a sign that we're in for at least four years of complacency and business as usual. And it should also be noted he was one of seven Dems to vote to confirm Mukasey.
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UPDATE: From Frank's column today:
If he is to prevail in November, Mr. Obama cannot allow the right to profit from the discontent stirred up by their own misbehavior. Talking about "hope" is very nice when you're leading by 20 points, but what the Democrat has to do, now that John McCain has evened up the score, is take control of public outrage. He should not recoil from the bitterness that's out there. He should speak to it.
At the very least Mr. Obama must begin to offer an explanation for why things have gone so very wrong over the past seven years. He should tell us how, say, the failures of Iraq reconstruction were made inevitable by the conservative philosophy that "government should be market-based," as Mr. Bush once put it.
Besides, attacking Mr. McCain himself is pointless. The man no longer stands for anything. He has transformed himself from a maverick into a cipher, a hood ornament on a hit-and-run machine. He has no more political content now than the constantly changing cast of cynical right-wingers aboard his campaign plane.
That's why this election must be a referendum on Republican rule and the destructive doctrines behind it. It is a contest to put the blame where it belongs.
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UPDATE 2: On a related note, Digby:
found to be sending private emails directly to Karl Rove, they will be
accused of "partisanship" and there will be a volcanic wingnut hissy
fit. The safest jobs in the US government are now for right wing,
social conservative non-political appointees and civil servants.
The
Democrats have achieved the worst of both worlds: conservatives will
pay no price for the blatant politicization of the government during
the Bush administration and the Democrats will be powerless to clean
house once the government is in their hands. That worked out well.
The infrastructure for a future right-wing government is in place, and it's not going away unless the Dems and sane Republicans actively work to dismantle it. Letting sleeping dogs lie might seem like an attractive strategy in the short run, but that's an example of what I mean by complacency. These dogs are going to wake up and they're going to be vicious, and they know who their masters are.
Better to deal with them now while they're sleeping. What dealing with them now means is up for discussion, but I think a simple evaluation of credentials and competence might be the starting point. It doesn't have to mirror the ideological template imposed by the Monica Goodlings of the past regime.
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