Feigned Disbelief and Political Theatre
Steve Hildebrand responds to critics in an interview with Greg Sargent:
“I don’t regret any of it,” Hildebrand told me when I asked him a few minutes ago by phone whether he regretted the tone of his piece, which many found condescending and finger-wagging.
“My intent was exactly what I wrote,” Hildebrand said, adding that the criticism had “surprised” him.
Hildebrand also confirmed that the Obama team had had no hand in writing or approving the piece. “This was not collaborated with anybody in the Obama camp,” he said, and a source close to the transition confirms this.
Perhaps Marc Ambinder and Ezra Klein are correct, and this was all just a Machiavellian attempt on the part of the Obama team (does anyone really buy Hildebrand’s hard-to-swallow contention that he called an audible with this play?) to shift the Overton Window via political theater. Sure would be nice to finally see imperative policy endeavors like withdrawal from Iraq, health care reform, and climate change firmly established as mainstream pursuits in the US public interest, rather than planks in a narrow communist socialist Marxist anti-American ‘liberal’ platform.
Still, even if this is, in Klein’s words, “a calculated messaging strategy,” I don’t believe Hildebrand should expect much online backup from the (unnamed) angry “left-wing” boo-bears unwittingly cast as foils in his Kabuki production if and when he makes a behind-the-scenes play for the (operational) DNC chair.
And maybe that was also taken into careful consideration.
h/t Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Silent Majority
In 1969, Richard Nixon invoked the “silent majority,” a socio-political concept that helped him in his 1972 landslide reelection against Democrat George McGovern. It was a well timed observation, one that would prove politically powerful and assist Republicans time and again during election years. Appealing to the amorphous silent majority demographic helped Reagan win two terms, and it helped his Vice President succeed him.
Eight years after George H. W. Bush was replaced by the charismatic, young Bill Clinton, the silent majority would again help propel then Texan governor George W. Bush to the Oval Office as he promised to return dignity to the White House.
But was the second Bush presidency the last shuddering gasp of the silent majority? Or is there a new silent majority forming right now in this election year?
It Really Is The Economy Stupid (Or Is It?)
Steve Benen produces the kinds of polling numbers that Obama supporters have been eagerly awaiting ever since the combination of Sarah Palin’s selection and the Republican convention shook up the state of the race. Of chief significance in my mind is the breaking of historical precedent; whoever is holds the lead following the second convention typically holds onto that lead for a month or longer. Not so in this case.
Greenwald: Right-Wing Hypocrisy is “healthy”
After surveying some of the right-wing opposition to the $700 billion Paulson bail-out (and acidly noting that such sentiments from these quarters are unfortunately “vital for having any meaningful chance to stop [the Paulson plan]” thanks to the sorry record during the Bush years of craven Democrats in Congress), Glenn Greenwald explains how the sharp, self-interested reversals on display are actually indicative of democracy in action:
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