about the "we are eating our own" comments [View all]

[DonCoquixote]

There is a concern voiced here and elsewhere that we democrats are helping the gop when we denounce one of our own for doing something that they should have known was racist or sexist. I can understand the fact that we have a disadvantage: we demand our politicians actually hold to a set of ideals, whereas the GOP will elect Lucifer if he promises that gives the churches more power and cut taxes. There are talks "Al franken got screwed!" or "purity police!" There are even people who say "I do not care what this person did, we gotta win!" Then there comes the people who say we democrats lost due to "identity politics", which very often means that if brown and black people don;t want to be oppressed, they have to sit in the back while the good white liberals keep driving the bus.

Well, I will be the first to say that the rush to judgment has turned the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" into roadkill, especially as the Media flexes more and more muscle to prevent use of the brain You can see the media doing its best to make things a "horse race", so that Trump can slither in by the squeakiest of margins, and the media can enjoy a Renaissance of popularity as the newspapers and Tv stations make easy profit from misery. Yes Al Franken was screwed in the sense that Gillibrand demanded his head rather than actually force the investigations machinery to actually be used, even though he was willing to submit to it.

However, when all is said and done, the truth is, if we cannot maintain enough of a moral compass to actually defend what we claim to be, we will be run over flat. Yes Northam may be , as one person who yelled at me said "protecting blacks from the GOP", as if doing what those black voters elected him to do was some sort of medal. Yezs I do say blacks, browns, and women because those are the very people that put Pelosi back as speaker of the House. We can try and tray to appeal to those "whote working class" people that the media sings off, and guess what, while some can get disenchanted with the GOP, many many more will gladly vote themselves into the poorhouses because their identity is to negate our identity. If you want totalk realpolitik, the one thing we cannot do is treat minorities like it is their job to stay in the back of the bus so that we can somehow sneak past the gop. We need to protect our bases, our values, because THAT is what will actually resist the GOP.

Am I saying to just toss out people when they get ratfucked, hell no! If anything, we need to go ahead and rebuild the love of that good old fashioned, boring process where we actually investigate what happened. By the same token, when politicians who have had YEARS to address the skeletons in their closet hold a press conference, and offer sloppy, mealy mouthed half explanations of why they did not address an issue BEFORE it could have become ratfucking ammo, then we need to say "sorry, you goofed, and we are not going to let you be a loose tooth." If there is one thing politicians have, it is that they have the tools and resources to properly cean their houses, be it consultants, media exposure, or the simple ability to say "I screwed up, and I own it, and I will make it up to you" instead of the cover ups that only make the matter worse.