Author: Gatemouth

In trying to put together a column on the race for Attorney General, I followed my usual method of pulling up all the prior comments I’ve made on this topic from the web. Once I finished my study of the minor candidates in Part One, I deleted all those posts and was left with two piles of garbage; one talking about “Cuomo, Not the Homo” and the other about Freddy Ferrer kissing Al Sharpton’s ass; so much for the majesty of the law.

For the record, I think that both of these rattling closet skeletons amount to far less than meets the eye. However, since mention of one almost begs the question of the other, one wonders about the good sense of both campaigns for keeping these matters alive. And since a fish rots from the head, which seems to be the point in both purported scandals, the fact that these matters have sucked up so much air does not speak well of either of the competitors.

Thank to Robert Moses, New York has one of the strongest Governorships in the country. The Moses-created state budget process is actually designed to strip the legislature of its legislative powers. The legislature’s response has been to use the lemons it’s been left with to churn out the sour juice of obstruction, which is not quite the same as demanding accountability. There are, however, other places we might look for such relief. Ideally, the offices of NYS Comptroller and Attorney General are perfect opportunities to create oppositional institutions within the state’s Executive Branch which could be used for such a purpose. With that goal in mind, I became an early supporter of the Attorney General candidacy of the State Assembly’s in-house pitbull, Richard Brodsky of Westchester, in spite of the fact that he is a pompous and overbearing blowhard. My theory was that Brodsky, an unrelenting muckraker, was guaranteed to drive whoever was elected as governor stark raving mad, which they would undoubtedly come to deserve. Brodsky also plays a mean blues piano.

"I don't know just where I'm going, But I'm going to try for the kingdom if I can"

                                   Lou Reed

As I’ve noted in Part One, left-of-center blogger Mole333 has taken public issue with my DLC-tainted brand of neo-liberalism, essentially calling me outside to settle it in the streets. In response, I questioned  how far he’d evolved on the scale of  political evolution. Beyond my ideology, or lack thereof, Mole has also taken issue with my tendency to look at politicians realistically. “And some (like, it seems to me, our friend Gatemouth) simply think all candidates are pretty much the same and despair of finding excitement in supporting a candidate…in fact they seem disdainful of anyone who actually shows some enthusiasm for a candidate.”  He tends to conflate this criticism with my neo-liberalism, as if  they were one and the same, but my cynicism towards pols is a tendency I share with not a few of his friends on the hard left, while muddle-headed idealism tends to blind at least some who sit in my political corner, particularly those who refuse to look at Joe Lieberman in a critical manner.

“Not only has the left loudly pressured Democratic nominees into constant courtship, our ideological militants have also limited the Democrats ability to defend themselves from the Republicans…If you are a liberal officeholder, many of your hardest working supporters will tell you that you are “notsaposta” denounce the viciousness of those who commit violent crimes…or that America today continues to be one of the places in the world where political and artistic expression is the freest. In practice, then, the notsaposta is the passionately sincere but grievously mistaken view that acknowledging a troubling truth will weaken a party’s ability to resist the conclusions that its political opponents might draw from those truths" 

I have been recently been taken to task for my use of the phrase “the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party”. Given the use of the term “Michael Moore Democrats” by Republicans who’d like to tar us all, I think it is important to draw the distinction in my use. My usage is to make clear that while this tendency does exist, and exemplifies a strong and virulent strain of thought on the American left, it should not be used as a broad brush to tar us all. Frankly, the Moore group is smaller than it appears; unfortunately, the problem is twofold; its prominence among the media, which magnifies its importance to observers in the punditocracy and the heartland, and its malignant influence among other liberals who really do not believe in the same mindless kant. One reader said to me “I am damned proud to be a Michael Moore Democrat.”  However, I don’t think he really understands what he is saying.

The number of phone calls I’ve gotten urging me to support Chris Owens for Congress because he is the most “progressive” candidate, has gotten me thinking (always a dangerous activity). The term “progressive” is obviously meant as a shorthand, but shorthand for what? Earlier this year, WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor said Eliot Spitzer would be the most progressive Democratic governor since FDR, ignoring the fact that Roosevelt’s immediate successor, Herbert Lehman, was clearly more progressive than FDR. Moreover, depending upon how the word is defined, Spitzer might also be said to be less “Progressive” than Charles Poletti, Averill Harriman, Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo. Mario’s WORDS were certainly more progressive than Spitzer’s; Mario’s DEEDS (to the extent he ever did anything but blame his complete lack of accomplishments on a Republican Senate he refused to expend any of his political capital, monetary or otherwise, on trying to alter for the better) may not so qualify.

So, in the Independence Party court battle over whether the constitutional right to free speech trumps the constitutional right to free association (for the all the gory details, click here), a Brooklyn Court has punted, deciding that what really matters is blind adherence to the plain language of the state’s pernicious election laws, which allows a party the right to attempt to dis-enroll its voters, but only at the request of a county’s local party chair. Since the county parties in question were all controlled by the Fulani-Newman anti-Semitic cult, rather than Party Chair Frank McKay’s ragtag coalition of fast-buck opportunist and tin-foil hatted nutcases, this would appear to be game, set and match. In an incidental and accidental victory for free speech, the Fulaniite zombies will still be able to exercise their First Amendment right to regurgitate whatever hateful bile Fred Newman instructs them to chant, without being deprived of their ability to belong to the Party of Fred's choice. Another defeat for the imperialist, Zionist, running dog lackies of International Capital. "But", in the words of Bob Dylan, "you who philospohize disgrace, and criticize all fears, take the rag away from your face, now ain't the time for your tears".

Call us Neo-liberals, New Democrats, Clinton Democrats. Call us Peter Beinart Democrats. We’re in a battle for the soul of our party, with what might be called the “Michael Moore Democrats” or the “Chris Owens Democrats”, and the perception is that we’re losing.

To cop from the dust jacket of Beinart’s recently published “The Good Fight: Why Liberals  – and Only Liberals – Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again”, we believe the that “America must lead the world by persuasion, not command”, George Bush believes the opposite, and American and the world are suffering as a result. By contrast, Michael Moore Democrats believe we should not lead, and when we do, we are invariably a force of evil. Moore not only believed this in Iraq; he believed this in Bosnia and Kosovo as well (apparently, stopping genocide is morally heinous). In contrast, Clinton Democrats, exemplified by Beinart, believe “that liberalism cannot merely define itself against the right, but must fervently oppose the totalitarianism that blighted Europe a half century ago, and which stalks the Islamic world today” and  “an unyielding hostility to totalitarianism – and a recognition that defeating it requires bringing hope to the bleakest corners of the globe. And it means understanding that democracy begins at home, in a nation that does more than merely preach about justice, but become more just itself.”  To Moore Democrats, the one word definition for a Clinton Democrat is: “Republican”.

"We’re a left wing Zionist Movement, and we believe Israel has the right to defend itself, We’re not pacifists. Unlike in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel isn’t occupying Lebanese territory or trying to control the lives of Lebanese. The only occupier is Hezbollah, and Israel is trying to defend itself.”

Yariv Oppenheimer, General Secretary-Peace Now

I’m going to stick my neck out here and predict that, ultimately, the continuing saga of the possible computer tampering at the NYC Board of Elections will turn out to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying very little.  Not that  I’m entirely dismissing the concerns expressed by Maurice Gumbs in his 83 part series posted elsewhere on “Room 8”, but a criminal conspiracy seems to me an unlikely scenario. I'd be more scared if I believed that anyone competent worked at the Board (of course, it's also kinda scary that there ain't). The Board is where the County Organizations bury their neediest cases (right up to the Board's Counsel's Office); the best and the brightest go elsewhere. In general, the Board of Elections couldn't organize an orgy at a convention of nymphomaniacs