Lott vs. the Wimpocrats

Posted on December 15, 2002 in Liberals & Progressives Scoundrels

Just finished watching The Manchurian Candidate, a favorite of ours. I can’t decide if Senator Islington resembles Jessie Helms, Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush the most. (I could see Nancy Reagan in the Angela Lansbury role, but not Laura Bush, to tell the truth.) Came back to find lots of comments about Trent Lott.

Karen Zipdrive commented:

Anyone surprised to find out Trent Lott was a closet racist is naive.
Of course he’s a racist. He’s a Southern Republican, for Chrissakes.

Blogging as she does from San Antonio, Texas, I would defer to her expertise on the subject. I’ve not liked Lott for years. I’ve been dismayed to watch his rise to the Senate leadership. Bet we won’t ever see him run for president, though. He knows he could never stand the test of an actual majority of voters, much less a Senate elected by a true majority of voters. (The majority of the Senate is elected by about 35 per cent of the nation’s population. This is not a representative body.)

What gets me is how the so-called liberal media handled the booing of Lott at Wellstone’s funeral. “How mean of them to disrespect the Senate Majority Leader,” they said, without discussing why his face on the big screen upset them so. As I said in an earlier article, the Wimpocrats missed a golden opportunity when they apologized for the crowd’s behavior. The proper response would have been to validate the crowd’s response and jump on the media for not investigating and exposing the reasons for its anger.

Earlier I wrote:

The Democrats can win if they validate the just anger that people feel about the stolen election, the war against our will, and other follies of the Bush Administration. The Republicans have not been nice and apologetic. Neither should we be.

Remember, Democrats: Depressed people don’t vote. You need to inspire some controlled militancy as the Republicans have done with their fundamentalist minions. Seize on the righteous anger, Democrats, and you will win by a landslide in 2004.

Were I to formulate a plan of attack for 2004, it would include the following points:

• The Republicans do not rule by the will of the popular majority in the Senate, the House or the White House.
• The press owes the Democratic opposition fair and full coverage of their grievances, such as the choices the Republicans keep making for their leadership. Trent Lott’s history of lies and distortion should be probed and exposed.
• They should fall back on the tried and true methods of canvassing and getting out the vote
• They should demand the publication of the computer programs used to count the votes. Nothing affecting the public weal should be secret. No vote should be allowed that is not hand countable.
• They should have exit pollsters in place.
• They should demand an open, fair, and full public investigation of the events leading up to 9-11, dramatizing the failure of the BUSH Administration to heed warnings from the Clinton Administration that something big was coming down.
• They should clearly and cleanly break with the ACLU on the campaign financing issue. The ACLU is wrong. Free speech is based on one person, one voice, not a million dollars, the ability to shout every other voice down. It should stop pandering to certain of its donors and stand for true democracy. Personally, until the ACLU drops this stand, I am donating to other civil rights groups such as Common Cause instead.
• Press for more moderate Republicans such as John McCain to bolt.

So do I stand. If the Wimpocrats don’t start showing a little backbone, I shall follow the example of free New Zealanders and vote Green.

Another thing I said:

Anger need not have violent expression for an outlet. An election is a nonviolent civil war which we agree to hold every two years instead of maiming each other. Those who booed Lott had just cause to be angry. The Democratic leadership effectively invalidated the feelings. The result was that the anger turned to depression and people didn’t go to the polls.

Lott’s people used to lynch those they didn’t like. He got out of Minnesota with only his pride a little hurt. The media should stop equating citizens using their free voice to express their dislike of the man with the murders that have been committed in the name of Lott style segregation. Boos are not blows. Get it?

I hold the media’s failure to discuss the reasons for the boos as both the cause of the Republicans’ victory and Lott’s cockiness this last week.