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Nightly Ramble: The Banannas, Split

In hunting around the ‘shere, tonight, I stumbled across a comment from McGehee, which got me to thinking about David’s earlier post [1] as regards Cindy Sheehan making a show of quitting the Democratic Party, and the party faithful’s response….

McGehee’s comment: [2]

…. lest we forget, Matt Drudge was generally regarded in D.C. as an internet gossip reporter before he broke the Lewinsky story.

OK, granted, the story that the game he likes here, has to do with Hillary Clinton, and the protection thereof, as regards for political missteps.  But you know, it got me to thinking… I really have to wonder if Kos’ reaction to this Sheehan story isn’t exactly the same thing; Protection of Hillary Clinton from her political missteps.

It’s one of many possibilities, and one of the two most likely of possibilities… but it’s a conclusion that’s not very difficult at all to draw.  After all, the biggest problem that Hillary Clinton has had with the left, was her initial support for our actions in Iraq.  It is one of the few things that she managed to do right while representing my state of New York.  No surprise, then, that the far left would have such problems with it.

The other most likely possibility for the reaction, is one that I’ve alluded to, in the comments to David’s post, but did not hit square on; that being that she has been an embarrassment to the left for some time now, and they’ve been looking for an excuse to get rid of her.

Either way, the Kos kids clearly see an advantage to getting the woman to finally shut up.  It becomes apparent even after the most cursory of examinations, that the left as usual, being prone to latching on to whoever happens to be making the right noises at a given moment, finally figured out that they backed the wrong horse.

The trend of backing the wrong horse because they happen to look fairly good at a given moment, is one the left has long been prone to; one of the more recent examples would be there being in love [3] with [4] Ron Paul, [5] just now. [6] As has been pointed out elsewhere, they clearly have no clue what the man stands for.

The left’s tendency of giving their political hearts away too easily, is troubling enough, particularly for anyone who considers themselves to be driven by principle.  But being less than honest about it, as we have seen Kos in particular do over the course of this war… and the resulting anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-America tirade, is a genuine cause for concern for all Americans.

That general concern aside, we are left with either the impression that the far left was being opportunistic when it embraced Sheehan, or that it is being opportunistic now , when it rejects her, or both.  Under no circumstance in any scenario I have seen offered for this happening, can they be considered honest, forthright, or principled.
Interestingly, the left having rejected Sheehan, now faces a choice; they have to decide just what they rejected her for. The reactions that I have seen, are by no means uniform, except by their lack.
For example, did they reject her for saying that America was evil?  No.

Did they reject Sheehan for saying that it was all George Bush’s fault?  No.

Did they reject she and for saying that the warship and at all cost?  No.

Did they reject her for being an attention whore?  The answer again, clearly, is no, so long as her grabbing attention served their purposes.

So why did they reject her?

They rejected her, because what she was saying, and how she was saying it, we’re becoming a lightning rod to use against Democrats.  In short, she was to correctly representing their position on things.  Dangerously so, for Democrats.

And yet, we come back to the question of whether some of the reaction we’re seeing isn’t to protect such people who voted for the war as Hillary Clinton did.  If we answer yes, as I did originally, that logic would seem to fly in the face of much of the rest of what I’ve written here.

The answer to that seeming dichotomy, is both harder and easier to answer than one might think, on the surface.  The easy part of the answer, is that there is a serious ideological split occurring within the Democratic party, which this election will bring out in some force.

There are some within the party, who recognize that that part of the party that she and represents, is more likely than not to alienate the party from the majority of American voters.  Even, Democrat voters. They look at the polling data, and recognize that their antiwar actions, have been unpopular in the extreme; for one thing congressional numbers have been plummeting far faster than have President Bush’s.  Most of that drop , the pollsters say, has been directly on the strength , or weakness, of the anti Iraq war position of the Democrats.  Apparently, you only have to hit them over the head a few times, before they get the message.

The remainder, such as Sheehan, do not recognize this. Apparently, with this bunch, no matter how large a baseball bat you use, you’re not going to get their attention.  Trouble is, these idiots constitute a little over half of the Democratic party.  One now, perhaps, has a better understanding of why David Obey has been blowing gaskets with some regularity, of late.

As further evidence of the Democrats and their split with reality, I point with some amusement to their Fox news problem [7].  (BBCT: Cap’t Ed [8]) They’d still like to regulate the network to death, for the damage that fair reporting has done to democrats, yet some of them, recognizing that the network is in the number one position to stay for quite some time, have been forging connections with Fox.  If you want a demonstration of just how deep the split is on the democratic side, one need to know more than simply raise that issue in a Democratic dominated chat room, and white excrement take flight. Believe me when I tell you, you’re in for an entertaining evening if you try that.  After dropping the initial line, you need not say anything at all.  The result is a feeding frenzy the likes of which would make for a great horror flick.
Thus are the battle lines drawn.  The ring has been constructed, the tickets to he event are sold, the networks engaged, the broadcasters hired, the date set, and away we go.

The only possible outcome from such a split , is the defeat of Democratic candidates, regardless of who they manage to nominate. The comedy sidebar to all of this, is the amount of duct tape which we will see run over what splits occur in the party, while it’s leaders, sorta like Baghdad Bob, insist there’s no problem.

Addendum, next morning: 

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, after writing this, I thought of a couple of points that I probably should have added to the original text.  First of all, the question; are the democrats antiwar, or simply anti Bush?   The same question, apparently could be asked of the media.  I say that because the media has basically ignored the story.  At least, until this morning.  I see where Fox news [9] has picked up on it, as has the Guardian .  [10]

But frankly, even including these the coverage of the event is less than stellar, and certainly less than when she was serving the Democrats as an effective foil to GWB.

Second point; make no mistake about this, the timing of this announcement was not haphazard by any stretch.  Sheehan chose Memorial Day to launch this story, for both symbolic and news coverage reasons.   Granted, the latter half of that idea didn’t work out so well, but that’s not a function of timing.
* Not much time for music tonight; I’m headed for an interview in the morning. I suppose I oughta write a few of those longer music writeups I do, and store them for later use. I’ll look at that.
* I note Powerline’s been online for 5 years now. [11] I’m amused; Bitsblog has been on for seven years, now come the first weekend in June. But congrats are due to the Powerline guys. They clearly have been  able to gather more in the way of readership; no small task.