two-sided demonization

karl rove was on “meet the press” and various sunday shows yesterday. i didn’t watch any of them, as i’m still on my news fast. getting over the overload.

i did see a clip of him on fox news. i wasn’t watching fox news; some other channel ran the fox news clip. just to clarify.

and, of course, he claimed his mandate from 51% of americans and proclaimed that mr. bush would be hotly pursuing the passage of the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment. it’s a priority.

you could have put money on that. but we were getting screwed by the democrats too.

newsweek has a story this week, which i’ve only seen excerpts of, behind the scenes of both campaigns. they got free range access with the promise not to run the stories until after the election.

here’s one choice bit that salon took from newsweek. it caught my eye:

first, for any of us tempted to be nostalgic for the clinton years — and there’s probably a lot of that going on this week as republicans further tighten their grip on government, here’s something to temper our longing for the ’90s. “looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the red states, former president bill clinton, in a phone call with kerry, urged the senator to back local bans on gay marriage. kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, ‘i’m not going to ever do that.'” being more clintonesque on gay marriage may have won kerry some swing votes, but that comes with a price, and one kerry wasn’t willing to pay.

goddamn clinton. i knew he sold us down the river with doma, but i chose to ignore it as the price of being practical for a greater good.

no longer will i be pragmatic if it means selling my ideals for cents on the dollar.

and god bless john kerry for at least having the moral cojones to stand up and not descend completely into the sell-out quagmire on this issue. flip-flopper indeed.

really, though, this is going to be the struggle over the next few months. is it going to be the democratic leadership council types who seize control of the party? i sure hope not. this clinton crap is just one example of how they’ll sell out any ideal to win a vote or two. at least he had a bit of an excuse with doma, however feeble, in that he was cornered politically on the issue after gays-in-the-military. and i’m not so sure i buy that excuse. but now, all these years later, there’s absolutely no excuse.

i know people who voted libertarian. i’m going to look into that, although i’m pretty sure i won’t like what i see. i agree with their logic at the start, but then they so stridently extend that logic. it makes sense intellectually, but i’m not sure that they make sense practically. one more thing to investigate; one more option to weigh.

i could still be a democrat. but not if that call from clinton is a harbinger of things to come.

if that’s the case, i’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater and not feel a bit bad about it.

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