Jokes, Blokes, Tokes and Ghosts

None other than that darling of political punditry, David Brooks, fires the opening salvo at those "Blog Pleasing" politicians who want to do nothing more than see the United States of America be consumed in the fire of appeasement and receive our just deserts as the country which deserves to die. Brooks pulls out his secret stash and fires up that 100 cubic meter gravity bong he keeps in the closet (he only it pulls out at the beginning of the election season) and pulls a big long toke on today's NY Times opinion page. Greg Sargent (who's quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers) claims bullshit on Brook's claim that those who want to leave the Iraq party while our military is still intact are pandering to a small minority of the American population - that small population being the American hating leftist blogs.

Dude.

And such is the surealness of today's politics. Someone like Brooks, who has a podium of such public visibility as an opinion column of the New York Times can spout such obvious nonsense and not be laughed out of the profession. Rather, everyone starts clapping and nodding their heads in agreement. Myself, I think it's the clever turn of phrase that this Rastafarian Prognosticator manages to twist at the end of each of his columns. Today's tag line was particularly witty: "There are no optimists among my gurus. But there is no hopelessness either. After three years, I've learned to trust the pessimists who refuse to panic." You can almost smell the smoke rolling out of his mouth as he spoke that sentence on his regular Friday night slot on PBS' News Hour With Jim Leher.

But then, smokin' the good stuff with the likes of David Brooks seems to be all the rage. Peter "why don't you like me" Beinart has been toking with the best of them on his whirl wind tour promoting his book explaining why being wrong on Iraq shouldn't preclude him from preaching the good faith of the long lost '40s - the golden years of the Democratic party when men were real men and Islamists had the good sense to be Communists. Yep, Peter is the flash back kid of the new 21st century Democrats. Following Biden's lead (or is it Biden following the Wunderkinds lead?), we see how cleverly Beinart's title fits with the theme of the new Democrats: Faith, Fighting and the Freedom to Bomb. Which, as a slogan goes, is significantly less attractive than the Republican's consistent theme of Richness, Wildness and No Taxes.

Still, you got to admire the man. Wrong on pretty much everything, he has the courage to write a book which says that, yea, he was pretty much wrong about everything but that he was right anyway. Proving the adage that one is always fighting the last war, Peter's entire argument seems to be "we were good fighting the Communists, so let's pretend that the Islamists are Communists and we'll be swept back into power yet again." A theory that pretty much puts Peter square on the "Crack Heads" page in my Big Book of Political Idiots.

Like Swopa, the biggest problem I have with Beinart is not his overt message that Democrats need to be real he-men and stand up like a thrusting penis for liberal values. The problem I have with Beinart and Biden and Lieberman and the whole stable of jack asses that pass for leadership in this party is that they keep wagging their finger at people like me and yet they can't seem to come up with a concrete alternative to what Bush is doing. They can't - for the life of them - articulate a model for using force.

The fundamental motivation for the liberal-hawk pose is to avoid being called "soft" for not supporting a particular war or military action. So to articulate any principles for when the U.S. should use military force to achieve its goals risks the awful day when Republicans recommend an armed action that doesn't meet those guidelines. Thus, no principles can ever be endorsed.

And so the only thing that these jokers accomplish is to piss off the base and make the Democrats look like a bunch of spineless wimps who are simply lapdogs of this administration. Really, it's quite the stunning accomplishment for those who would "lead" us poor Democrats out of the political wilderness.

But then, these guys are professionals.

But then, we're the party of the underdogs - or something. In fact, the Democrats are so desperate that the eternal third party of American politics is offering up their services to see if they can help. Yep, the libertarians are now poking their wet fingers in the wind and seeing if they can extract some promises out of the party which they collectively despise.

Which makes absolute sense, of course, in this strange political landscape we find our selves in, half way through the first decade of the 21st century.

But what strikes me as perfectly obvious - but for some reason, apparently striking no one else as obvious - is that the Libertarian votes in this country that are "up for grabs" can probably be counted on one hand. "Not so says noted Libertarian spokesman, Jim Henley. Henley believes that the number of Libertarians up for grabs in '08 will be on the order of 3% to 4% of the voters in that upcoming presidential election. A number, quite frankly, that I think is completely delusional.

Exhibit A: the vote totals from the 2000 presidential election where Harry Brown - the Libertarian candidate for president - received a stunning 0.36% of the popular vote. Contrast this with that evil boogieman from the far left, Ralph Nader who only received a whopping 2.74% of the popular vote.

Exhibit B: The vote totals from the 2004 presidential election where Michael Badnarik - the Libertarian candidate for president - received a truly mind blowing 0.32% of the popular vote. Ralph Nader did only marginally better, pulling ahead of the Libertarian candidate to scrape up 0.38% of the popular vote.

Now, the really interesting thing about 2004 - remember, that was just two years ago - was that the entire total vote for all of the independent candidates was 1%. That's right. The entire sum total of voters who didn't vote for either Bush or Kerry was 1%. So, where on earth does Jim pull out this 3% to 4% of the total vote as Libertarians who's vote is up for grabs?

Who knows. Call it the "Ghost vote" block. That block of voters who pretty much keep all political pundits in business. Some years they're the "Soccer Moms", other years, they're the "Angry White Males". I guess in 2008, they're the "Disaffected Libertarian Who Might Vote Democratic If You're Really, Really Nice To Them". In fact, it's really just a big subjective view of the political landscape as seen through the almost indescribable visual processes of the Libertarian mind.

I know we all like to be important, we all like to be courted by the political types - hoping to extract some kind of political price for our support. But, Libertarian delusions aside, it's pretty obvious to everyone paying attention that today's political landscape is as polarized as it can get - there is no one sitting on the fence.

And the master of this "Divide and Conquer" strategy is the spider sitting in the middle of this web is none other than Karl Rove - the divider in chief. Now that he's squirmed free of becoming a gift under the Fitzmas tree, he's back in action making sure that the Democrats are - to the dismay of Beinart and Biden, and Lieberman - painted as the "Cut n' Run" party. Traitor Joe Klien just can't seem to figure out how the Rovester continues to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic.

Again, stunning how a Democrat can completely make Rove's case for him while he's trying to figure out how Rove is doing it. But then, this is Traitor Joe- Rove's stitch in Time. Traitor Joe goes on to answer his own question by pulling a Friedman on us

In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."

Rove, of course, is laughing his fat ass off, because six months is all he needs. In six months, he'll have saved the Congress for the Republicans and it's off for another two years of beating up on the Democrats until the elections in '08.

And as the smoke clears the day after the '06 elections, the Democrats will be walking around with that atomic wedgie up over their collective heads, crying into their beers and begging - just begging - for Traitor Joe, Tom "Snake Eyes" Friedman, Fighting Joe Biden and Peter "Prime Fighting Age" Beinart to come save them from themselves.

Love to see how the Libertarians are going to take that (all three of them). By this time next year, my guess is that the '08 candidates for the Democratic nomination will be running on a platform of Torture, Invasion of Iran, The Gay Marriage Amendment and The Total Destruction of the Fourth Amendment.

Who says politics ain't fun to watch being made?