i've been reading all day, in various village outlets, that the republicans have a lot of good ideas, and they've done a lot of good for us in the past [mankiw trumpets welfare reform as a for-instance], and we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, blah blah blah.

no we are not sick of partisan bickering, we are sick of republicans. i'm all for reaching out to republican voters and showing them how liberal policies will help them, but we need to marginalize the republican politicians.

republican politicians, i wonder if we can just buy them off, since we can't seem to vote them out. how much would it cost us if we convince them all to retire?

Obama et al have been pushing post-partisan unity since the beginning of his campaign. I don't think they are trying to scare Democrats as much as trying to convince voters that their overwhelmingly partisan vote was really for the opposite.

The Village to Obama-Democrats relationship is an ongoing conversation of agreement, not an argument. It's a consensus that just needs a good marketing plan. Villagers are just helping the new admin out by drafting the talking points ahead of time.

Obama ran on "bipartisanship" and "unity" and on working with everyone, and praised Republicans and treated them like normal people--just like the media always does.

and Congress just spent the past 2 years doing everything the GOP wanted--and calling it "bipartisan compromise".

and the media has always been this way.

and even today Democrats in office --and Obama's people--are talking up "bipartisanship" and agreeing with the media.

If the party and the candidate all fed and reinforced their narrative and view of things--which always benefits the GOP and corporate interests and the status quo--then complaining about it now is absurd.

And it's really saying something when Clinton's words are held up as any kind of example that Obama will follow or that he even gives a shit--he and the media agreed on the Clintons too--that they were trash --and "old politics".

there are no innocent bystanders here at all--and no indication that Obama believes what Clinton says, or will govern as if he does.

And out in DU Land and Kos Korner and other congregations of the less perceptive, there are PLENTY of innocent bystanders - innocent in the sense of not having a fuckin' clue.

"You'd better get this straight. Wise up before it's too late." -- Sister Sledge

After all, Obama bought the Deval Patrick Campaign Package from Axlrove Co. Is this the same way Patrick began his unstellar gubernatorial career? Can we expect a similar outcome?

she also does not at all mention Obama's role in reinforcing of their preferred narratives and desires--

"... All over television this morning the gasbags seemed convinced that Obama had been elected to stop the left from ruining the country. And when it turns out to actually be his supposedly cooperative new partners in governance --- the right --- that stands in his way, they will blame him for being too far left. It's a trap.

What these people really want is a wizard who can solve all problems without a fight, a leader who gives them tingles down their legs and an historic figure who makes them feel really, really good about themselves for being the agents of America's transformation from country to Nirvana. It's not the left who sees him as an apostle. It's the Village."

-- http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/t...

http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/11/v...

"... The Village feels itself violated already with the presence of people from the Clinton administration on the Obama transition team. They are worried that Obama will not be a sufficiently "New Politics" kind of guy, wisely governing from the center. They fear the wrong kind of people, people who might "trash the place," will take over. You know, people like the crazy radicals pictured here in the Clinton cabinet from 1993, who destroyed, destroyed, the amicable bipartisanship of the Reagan and Bush I years. They don't want the dirty Clintonistas near their Precious, trying to change things in ways not approved by the Very Serious People. It offends them that the wrong kind of people may get their hands on power.

They need to be offended a lot more, but it is unlikely to happen.
..."

"... The Obama administration will not pay a great political price in abandoning the pretense of moving the country in a progressive direction for two primary reasons. First, for Senator Obama's political base the symbolism of his election is the change they were seeking and not an idea or program based on a set of policies. The second reason is the political weakness of what passes for the left in the United States, ..." -- http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/11/sa...

if Bageant turns out to be correct.

"... The question is what measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice. ..." --Judith Butler (supposedly) -- http://www.judyhan.com/otherwise/?p=1036 -- “Uncritical Exuberance?”

there's still tons of illusion--and transference and avoidance--going on, i'd say.

Why does the other side think it lost?

This excellent article in the New Yorker, written last May, is prescient and informative. Here is a short excerpt but read the whole thing:

"When I met David Brooks in Washington, he was even more scathing than Frum. Brooks had moved through every important conservative publication—National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard—“and now I feel estranged,” he said. “I just don’t feel it’s exciting, I don’t feel it’s true, fundamentally true.” In the eighties, when he was a young movement journalist, the attacks on regulation and the Soviet Union seemed “true.” Now most conservatives seem incapable of even acknowledging the central issues of our moment: wage stagnation, inequality, health care, global warming. They are stuck in the past, in the dogma of limited government. Perhaps for that reason, Brooks left movement journalism and, in 2003, became a moderately conservative columnist for the Times. “American conservatives had one defeat, in 2006, but it wasn’t a big one,” he said. “The big defeat is probably coming, and then the thinking will happen. I have not yet seen the major think tanks reorient themselves, and I don’t know if they can.” He added, “You go to Capitol Hill—Republican senators know they’re fucked. They have that sense. But they don’t know what to do. There’s a hunger for new policy ideas.”"

Or here at minute 4:53 where Brooks says:

fundamentally the conservative movement failed, and I've been in it my entire life, because it hasn't addressed the fundamental problems of TODAY."

If I want to learn about the enemy (conservatives) I'll listen to them directly, rather than through the Village filter.

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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites