A couple of notes on "Fighting Dems"

I'm usually cautious about articles trying to observe broad cultural or political trends through movies or TV programs. But it can make sense if it's done in the right way. And I think Ezra Klein achieves that in this article about the West Wing series. Okay, if we want to get technical, he's giving an impressionistic reading, not one based on marketing data. But still, what he's saying about the real world here I like:

The Clinton era, which provided the inspiration for The West Wing, should not have proved a notably tense period. After 12 years of Republican presidents, Democrats had elected a leader who promised to banish that which was most controversial and inflammatory from the party. It was precisely the sort of performance that The West Wing’s [honorable] Republicans would have cheered. And yet it was Clinton, after exiling Jesse Jackson and eschewing so-called “class warfare,” who gave rise to the ferocious Newt Gingrich and the hardliners of the Republican Revolution. Whatever goodwill and good faith he initially displayed was met with corresponding increases in partisan rancor and contempt. What explanation is there save that they smelled blood?

It’s counterintuitive, to be sure, but it may be that the only way to ratchet down tensions is for both sides to come [psychologically] armed. And that can’t happen so long as liberals believe that, deep down, conservatives don’t really want to fight. For now, however, rapprochement is a decidedly second-tier consideration. I’m certainly a typical liberal softie who thrilled to The West Wing’s world of comity and compassion. But nowadays, I’m also a post-Bush liberal: As much as I want us to all just get along, I’m much more interested in seeing us win.

Duncan "Atrios" Black addresses the "press corps" conventional wisdom that the Democratic base is opposing Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary because of his support for the Iraq War. That's part of it, of course. Atrios writes:

Look, people, opposition to Lieberman isn't just about the Iraq war. It's about him "compromising" Democratic principles when he didn't have to, it's about selling out women, it's about thinking "bipartisanship" involves selling our your party so that Tim Russert will pat you on the head for your bravery, it's about dishonesty on things like the Bankruptcy Bill, and now it's about his contempt for the Democratic voters in his own state. And, yes, it's about the fact that the senator has indeed "lost the plot" on the Iraq war.

| +Save/Share | |