Charles P Pierce- Things in Politico that make me want to guzzle antifreeze...

[n2doc]

On several occasions, I have broken out the vintage Prestone, not about something that was written in Tiger Beat On The Potomac but, rather, about the substance of a story contained therein. Today is one of those days. Now, to be sure, it was inevitable that TBOTP would go looking for this story because, every time the Democratic party loses an election, it finds itself inundated with suggestions that it stroke its inner Lieberman until the party sighs deeply and reaches its happy place. It happens like clockwork. It's like the McGovern campaign ended 20 minutes ago. The single most degrading experience of my professional life was covering the 1982 Democratic "Midterm" Convention, where everybody blamed "the left" for Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980, and you could see the party start sipping that sweet, sweet Wall Street money in a search for "common ground" with what appeared to be the ascendant Republican party of the time. (The late Billie Carr, a great Texas liberal and friend of Molly Ivins, told me in abject frustration that the new Democratic platform had become "we'll sell you weapons and we don't like crime much.&quot I needed a Brill-O pad in the shower for the entire three days.

So, naturally, the kidz went in search of the party's "centrist" intelligentsia because the most important thing in Washington now is to find enough Democrats who will go along with Republican ideas so everybody can "get along" and "gridlock" will end and the dinner parties and cocktail hours won't be so uncomfortable. So, come on down, Joe Manchin (D-Anthracite), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-GunsNAmmo), the maitre d's of the Appomattox Bar And Grille.

The centrists, like Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp...

Stop right there. Neither one of them is a "centrist." They're both very conservative Democrats.

...could use their influence in the next two years to score bipartisan achievements on issues like energy and health care that could be central to their own future prospects.

"Bipartisan achievements" = the Keystone death-funnel and the further undermining of both our pathetic attempts to cope with climate change, and the Affordable Care Act. But it might get Joe Manchin elected governor of West Virginia, so what does he care if the water in Nebraska gets poisoned, or if south Florida gets washed into the Gulf. He doesn't live there. But it will get him on Squint And The Meat Puppet a lot, so there's that.

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http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Turncoat_Blues

[bvar22]

1. LOL... DURec!

"every time the Democratic Party loses an election, it finds itself inundated with suggestions that it stroke its inner Lieberman until the party sighs deeply and reaches its happy place."




Lot of that goin on here lately.

[Old Nick]

2. Republitico