Fineman Being Fineman
With every news cycle bringing to light another story of corruption, cronyism, or incompetence on the part of our country's ruling party, the GOP, Howard Fineman still has time to ask the important questions, like what's wrong with the Democratic party? It's truly amazing. If George Bush, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani were simultaneously arrested for treason, Fineman would be on Hardball the next day talking about how the Democrats don't seem to have any "new ideas."
Fineman's latest offering is entitled Why can't the Democrats capitalize? With the White House on the ropes after Katrina, Dems waffle and wheeze. That's a little premature, isn't it Howard? Katrina was only a few weeks ago. Are we already writing off the Democrats chances? Unless I missed something, there haven't been any elections between then and now, so how exactly were the Democrats supposed to have "capitalized" anyway? Bush's popularity is at an all time low. Does that count for anything Howard?
Look, everyone knows that the Democrats won't automatically be the beneficiaries of the GOP's recent troubles. There is, after all, quite a bit of time between now and the next election cycle, and a lot can happen. The Democrats need to put together a compelling platform, among other things, if they want to be successful. But how silly is it to be excessively scrutinizing the Democrats at a time when the entire governing philosophy of our ruling party is looking increasingly incoherent and unsustainable? Isn't that a more important story? And it's not as if Fineman offers any sort of new insight or analysis. He merely regurgitates every stale bit of Washington press corps conventional wisdom that he can fit on the page.
If I have to hear Fineman and Chris Matthews talk about how the Democratic party is lacking in "big ideas" one more time, I think my head is going to explode. Find something new to talk about, will you? There are plenty of things to choose from.
Fineman's latest offering is entitled Why can't the Democrats capitalize? With the White House on the ropes after Katrina, Dems waffle and wheeze. That's a little premature, isn't it Howard? Katrina was only a few weeks ago. Are we already writing off the Democrats chances? Unless I missed something, there haven't been any elections between then and now, so how exactly were the Democrats supposed to have "capitalized" anyway? Bush's popularity is at an all time low. Does that count for anything Howard?
Look, everyone knows that the Democrats won't automatically be the beneficiaries of the GOP's recent troubles. There is, after all, quite a bit of time between now and the next election cycle, and a lot can happen. The Democrats need to put together a compelling platform, among other things, if they want to be successful. But how silly is it to be excessively scrutinizing the Democrats at a time when the entire governing philosophy of our ruling party is looking increasingly incoherent and unsustainable? Isn't that a more important story? And it's not as if Fineman offers any sort of new insight or analysis. He merely regurgitates every stale bit of Washington press corps conventional wisdom that he can fit on the page.
If I have to hear Fineman and Chris Matthews talk about how the Democratic party is lacking in "big ideas" one more time, I think my head is going to explode. Find something new to talk about, will you? There are plenty of things to choose from.
posted by A.L. at 11:05 PM
4 Comments:
"Katrina was only a few weeks ago. Are we already writing off the Democrats chances?"
Yes, I'm afraid so. We all know the GOP is much better at propaganda and damage control. That, coupled with the fact that Americans have memories about as good as mosquitos, means that in eight months this will all seem like ancient history to the average voter. The GOP will characterize the Dems as spiteful, angry, fanatically partisan, and obsessed with sordid details. And people will believe it. And let's not forget the whole "liberal media" spiel. Until the president is caught on tape pissing on the flag, I don't hold much hope for the Democrats' chances.
As much as it hurts to hear what Fineman is saying, he is absolutely correct in doing so. While on Joe Scaraborough's program last night, Fineman listed the current administration's problems with popularity and inefficency, as well as the charges and accusations facing Delay, Frist, and Rove. Immediatly the subject of the democrats impending lack of response caused vigerous laughter from Scarborough, Fineman, and Buchannan. and I the good democrat got a chuckle as well. Face it, our party is without any alternatives, we have criticism yet no leadership. As the saying goes, "Republicans are the party of bad ideas, while the democrats are the party of NO ideas."
We must not hide from this problem; we must address it. Fineman's comments were appropriate.
Fair enough. I think some of Fineman's points are valid. My point was just that I'm sick of hearing him make them. He's a bit of a broken record on this topic, and his analysis always seems very stale and unoriginal to me.
Plus, it's a little simplistic to say that the Democrats aren't the party of ideas. There are countless liberal policy ideas floating around Washington, but with no power whatsoever, it's pretty hard to get any of those ideas on the table. And the notion that the Republicans are brimming with ideas is a little strange as well. Other than tax cuts, it's not at all clear to me that the GOP has any big ideas about anything. So being the party of lots of little good ideas is preferable to being the party of one massive bad idea.
But I agree, the Democrats have a lot of work to do if they are going to retake Congress and/or the White House.
The biggest problem with the Republican party is they failed to see what Ronald Reagan was really doing. He became so popular throughout most of his terms because he had a vision for the country. He wasn't just about saying he can do anything the Democrats can do, only better, which was what we got from Richard Nixon (even if Watergate had never happened).
Since Herbert Hoover was voted out of office, we had a string of five presidents who actually had visions for this country and did everything possible to move forward with them. They were not without their faults, but they showed leadership and the belief that certain things needed to be done and pushed for them.
With Nixon, we got mixed signals, and after that, only Reagan actually demonstrated having a vision. Ford, Carter, Bush and Clinton just didn't have that, or they didn't push hard enough to see to it that ideas were put into place, even if evidence showed they may not work.
Bob Dole failed against Clinton because Dole failed to provide a vision. John Kerry failed to do that as well, hence why George W. Bush got elected.
Fineman may be sounding like a broken record, but the reason he harps on this is because it does no good for the Democrats to just point fingers at the Republicans. They need to come forward with new ideas and have a vision for this country, and they need to push hard. If it's a Democrat whose voice is small, that Democrat needs to push even harder, so his voice becomes loud.
Remember: Several historians will tell you that the Republican party wasn't really willing to get behind Reagan in the first place because they were more interested in keeping the status quo, only trying to show "we can do it better."
And in my opinion, history has shown that many Republicans have not actually learned the lessons Reagan was teaching.
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