New Dauo Report -- SCANDAL FATIGUE, CATNIP & THE 'ANGRY' LEFT

[emulatorloo]

Not Kerry specific, but wanted to make sure you all saw it.

saw a link to it over in GD -- very good/short read

Much on the endless scandals of Bush admin, and how Bush/Cheney knows they can count on the shear amount of things overwhelming and distracting thier opponents

DU thread here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x379453

Dauo Salon link here:

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=e3466497-752a-490e-aff4-f2e0b3bc7765

<snip>

This half-decade tsunami of scandals has had the intended effect: overload the senses, short circuit the outrage, dizzy the opposition. How many times have Bush's opponents simply thrown their hands up in disgust, overwhelmed by the enormity of the administration's over-reach? How many times have bloggers railed against reporters for going about the business of burying scandals and muddying waters? How many times have Americans watched in amazement as a missing girl in Aruba receives weeks of blanket coverage while lies that led to war and law-breaking at the highest levels of government get a yawn from the media?

From a purely sensory perspective, it's natural to chase the flak. We're conditioned to respond to incoming fire. It's reflexive. But when the fire is coming from all sides, and coming relentlessly, the urge is to stop defending and curl up and give up. This is a process the Cheneys and Roves of this world understand all too well. It's no accident that the scandals get more and more outrageous - after all, the whole point is to have the opposition frantically racing around, chasing stories, distracted and exhausted, wearing itself out like a kitten in a catnip-doused, mouse-filled room.

The amazing thing is that so many of Bush's opponents continue to play along. The sheer inability to put on blinders and drive one scandal home, to take it to its ultimate conclusion, is a failing of magnificent proportions. The warrantless spying fiasco is a perfect example. The day the NSA story broke, it should have been the only issue discussed by Democrats and progressive activists, the only one. Day in, day out. No matter if thirty other scandals intervened.

<snip>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x379453

[sandnsea]

1. We need a wildfire strategy

You can't use just one strategy when putting out a wildfire. You dump retardent directly on the fire, build fire lines, set back burns, protect buildings, wrap and coat irreplacable buildings, put out dangerous spot fires, watch smaller spot fires. Not only do we not have a strategy, we have Incident Command bickering back at base camp while the firefighters are out on the line looking for leadership. So I disagree with Pete that we need to pick one thing and focus on it, we couldn't let Alito go without a fight, or the Patriot Act, tax cuts, the budget, Katrina, and all the rest of it. But we do need a strategy and when a strategy is chosen, everybody needs to be on board. There is a Senate bill that has been passed on the Patriot Act, the ACLU supports it, and that should be the focus of everybody on the left. Unfortunately, half the left is still ranting about defeating anything called Patriot Act, despite the fact that even Russ Feingold supports the revised version. That's what happened with Iraq and everything else. The left sits out here and acts as if some of these things can just wait forever, when the voters are wanting to see action on terrorism. The left sits out here holding out for single payer health care, when the voters want action on health care. Until everybody on the left figures out how to move a degree or two in order to build concensus, we're going to continue to be ineffective and the fire will continue to burn right over top of us. We won't even agree on where to set up the fire shelters.