The Democratic catch-and-release program

On MyDD, Matt Stoller has a good post asking (again) why not just powerful media figures, but Democratic party leaders, persist in enacting a charade. A charade that Bush is a strong, good man who loves his country and is well-liked.

None of those things are true. They are provably untrue. That is not my opinion, it is documentable fact. But go find a Democratic leader who will say so, and keep saying so, and say so loudly enough for anyone to hear, in simple, clear plain language.

This president has lived through scandals for which, if he were a Democrat, the GOP would have had him impeached, tarred and feathered, and run out-of-town on a rail. But we keep letting him go.

I find myself reviving a lot of things I wanted to say to or about the Democrats last year today. Now I'm remembering that when I thought about the one piece of advice I wish I could have given John Kerry, it was this. What Spencer Tracy famously said was the secret of good acting: Just stand on the balls of your feet and tell the truth.

BTW, should we nominate another John Kerry in 2008, I'll be able to tell Spencer Tracy how much I like that quote myself-because I'm putting a shotgun in my mouth.

Here's Matt.

Powerful actors, like the top-down media, will not attack the President unless they think he's weak. But to make the case that he is weak, he must be treated with contempt, and that cannot happen when party leaders like Barack Obama simply refuse to act creatively and risk driving up their disapproval ratings. I ask, for instance, why in speeches is Obama saying that Bush is not a bad man? Why is he saying that Bush loves his country? How does that help us make the case that Bush is a liar and a fraud? It doesn't. It in fact undercuts our case, and the fact is, we are right and he is wrong, and it is important that our case base be made....Politics is about character, and George W. Bush and the right-wingers who support him simply don't have much. It's that, and not policy differences, that separates the two parties.

ETA: Shakespeare's Sister links to and expands upon the same post.

While Republicans increasingly envelop and reward rightwing extremists, the Democrats distance themselves from the left. It’s not just that they have moved to the center and expected us to follow; they show disdain for us. Stoller is quite right when he points to Obama’s comment as being little more than an attempt to dissociate himself from “the lunatic left,” which anyone who vehemently opposes and dislikes the president is automatically presumed to be, never mind that our numbers include not only Nobel prize winning scientists and fed up professionals, but also working poor, unionists, disenfranchised voters, appalled students, and former Republicans, just for a start. People who don’t think the president is a good man who loves his country do not just exist on the fringe. Yet smart progressives with genuine disagreements and fact-based dislike and distrust of Bush have as little welcome within the Democratic Party as reactionary wingnuts do have in the GOP.