Kissinger gone, Lott hanging on for dear life, the Republicans flinching for the first time in memory, it might have been a good week for the Democrats, if there were a Democratic Party. Instead, it was just a spectacle for the rest of us. On the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion page, Harold Meyerson, an editor for both the American Prospect magazine and the LA Weekly, makes some wicked sense of last weeks Lott-ery. Meyerson is an optimist on Lott’s departure.
Former Labor Secretary (and losing Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate) Robert Reich follows with a piece from todays British Observer on why there is no Democratic Party and what Democrats might do about it. He could have put the matter a little more bluntly, with Senate Majority leader Daschle’s comments on Lott in mind, and simply said, get mad. Tom
GOP Revisits a Sordid Past
By Harold Meyerson
The Los Angeles Times
December 15 2002WASHINGTON — On that dull gray morning after, when official Washington awoke to the news that Ol’ Trent had gone and shot off his mouth again at Ol’ Strom’s centenary toot, it just wasn’t no big deal. Official Washington had always known that the mental landscape of Trent Lott, like that of incoming House Republican leader Tom DeLay, wasn’t suitable for inspection by small children or swing voters, what with Lott’s loyalties to old-time Mississippi and DeLay’s periodic assertions that the United States was, love it or leave it, a Christian nation.
Now that Lott’s tenure as majority leader hangs by a thread, it’s important to recall the initial indifference of the bipartisan Beltway establishment to remarks that should have been met with instantaneous outrage. But Lott and DeLay were old news. Who really cared about their inner lives?
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and political editor of LA Weekly.
To read more Meyerson click here
WASHINGTON — On that dull gray morning after, when official Washington awoke to the news that Ol’ Trent had gone and shot off his mouth again at Ol’ Strom’s centenary toot, it just wasn’t no big deal. Official Washington had always known that the mental landscape of Trent Lott, like that of incoming House Republican leader Tom DeLay, wasn’t suitable for inspection by small children or swing voters, what with Lott’s loyalties to old-time Mississippi and DeLay’s periodic assertions that the United States was, love it or leave it, a Christian nation.
Now that Lott’s tenure as majority leader hangs by a thread, it’s important to recall the initial indifference of the bipartisan Beltway establishment to remarks that should have been met with instantaneous outrage. But Lott and DeLay were old news. Who really cared about their inner lives?
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and political editor of LA Weekly.
To read more Meyerson click here
The death of opposition in America
By Robert Reich
December 15, 2002
The ObserverThe recent US mid-term elections saw the rarity of a presidential incumbent’s party gaining seats in both houses of Congress. President Bush has gained control of the Senate and the House of Representatives and now appears even less constrained in both domestic and international policy.
The awful performance by the Democrats has led, as expected, to the kind of post-election hand-wringing that occurred in 1980, 1988 and 1994. Each occasion prompted the same tired question: Should Democrats move rightward to the Republican-Lite centre, or move back to the Golden days of FDR? We stand braced for endless conferences about “The Future of The Democratic Party”, after which everyone continues whatever they were doing before.
Yet, if political opposition in the US is not to atrophy, then real change is needed within the Democratic Party and American democratic culture more generally.
Robert Reich is former Labor Secretary to President Clinton. This article is draws from a speech given last week to the Institute for Public Policy Research
To read more Reich click here