Please, No...

Interesting article in The New Republic from Jason Zengerle on how the "Left Wing Media Conspiracy Didn't Emerge." The article does a survey of attempts by some so-called "liberals" to create a left-wing analog to the FOX News, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, New York Post, etc., etc. coordinate media machine. One of his big sources is David Brock, which some of you may remember as a Scaife-funded anti-Clinton zealot from the mid-90s. The idea that the liberal movement needs wingnuts poached from the margins of the far-right to make itself electorally viable is an insult.

Sure, the left takes some bruisings from bizarre episodes like the Swift Boat Veterans. But I can't think of a worse fate for America than to be captured between the conflict of two equally repulsive movements. According to David Brock:

"The disadvantage is in how you deliver your message," says Brock. "Rush [Limbaugh] reads their material on the air regularly. That's fifteen million people hearing that. I do go on Al Franken's show [on Air America] for half an hour every Wednesday, and [the nationally syndicated liberal talk-radio host] Ed Schultz's show for an hour every other Friday, but the reach isn't the same."

And this is a problem? Do we really want millions of people listening to slimeballs like David Brock?

If anything, the Democratic Party (certainly American liberals) need to double-down on the concept of "the national interest." The Democratic Party's a giant mess of an organism right now, but the inflow of anti-Conservatives to the party is a wonderful opportunity to break the special-interest death grip that has rendered the Party near obsolete and reorient the party to face the challenges confronting America with an eye to the broader issues. Lord help us if it becomes the moment the party sells out to the most cynical narcissistic firebrands who failed to cut it in the right-wing machine.

But if elections can't be won against the Republican Party without imitating it, then the nation's in grim trouble, indeed.