A post over at the Seminal is taking “liberal elitism” to task for not taking the Tea Party people seriously, and that that will lead to the election of Sarah Palin and other such ilk.

To quote our vice president, malarkey.

While I have long argued that there is too much elitism on the left for my tastes, there’s a wide gulf between holding your nose in the air for no good reason and dumbing yourself down in order to appeal to the lowest common idiotic denominator. Suck is the case with the Tea Party group and their leaders like Palin.

Far from the liberals in the ’70s who were clearly not responsive enough to the middle class, leading to the rise of Nixon and resentment politics, today’s left has gone to great lengths to be a big tent. So much so that some of our biggest fault lines are internal and don’t involve the Republicans at all. But far from the pre-Clinton great society types, todays liberals understand that without blue collar people on our side we don’t advance as a movement.

The problem is that the vast majority of the issues brought up by the tea party types and Palin are idiotic. These aren’t people with the traditional lower-middle class concerns of Americans (which is my family background) but instead these are people who largely believe the conspiracy du jour, whether that involves secret armies, the president’s “true” nationality, or Nancy Pelosi’s “death panels” that are set up to pull the plug on Grandma.

While the concerns of many white, middle-class people are worthy causes and should be addressed by liberals (and are), it is not elitism to treat this roving band of conspiracy nuts for the cretins they are or associate with. This would be akin to President Johnson in 1964 undertaking a federal committee to study the mind control powers of fluoridated water. That would be asinine.

Liberals have in the past allowed the ivory tower set to exert too much control over the Democratic party. That resulted in a narrow focus and deserved electoral losses. But the idea that the tea party movement represents any sort of rational discourse deserving of recognition and outreach is absurd. These are, by and large, the same band of stupid people we have always had in this country, whether they were in favor of submission to the British empire, secession from the union, alliance with Hitler, or decrying the president a “half breed Muslim terrorist”, we owe them no recognition or inclusion in the important discussion about the direction of American society.

It always sort of amuses me when we hear the familiar refrain from the right that the liberal blogosphere doesn’t have any accomplishments under its belt, except maybe the ouster of Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party. But of course, this is rooted in unreality.

Liberal bloggers were key in helping along public perception of Bush as one of the worst presidents in history. We can’t take a lot of credit for this, because Bush was one of the worst presidents in history.

We wouldn’t have a President Obama without the liberal blogosphere. They – we – provided a way to reach past the mainstream media filter that no Democratic pol has ever had. Conservative bloggers, along with his own sloppy reporting, got Dan Rather fired. I will trade Rather for Obama any day.

But would the election of Obama cause the liberal blogosphere to turn into a mirror of the conservative one, nodding heads along with the party in power then expressing shock years later when the yes man act resulted in a mess?

No.

The public option — to the extent it was saved (and that’s yet to be determined) — was saved by taking a sober look at the legislative playing field, identifying where the cracks in the dam would appear, and building the best bulwark against it that an ad hoc network of advocates could build, working it, grooming it, and maintaining it. Vote pledges were sought early on, lined up and reinforced in advance of the committee markups, with a special emphasis on seeing those pledges through all the way through conference.

We’re not going to win every fight, but we’re having good, serious fights that we need to have.

And the President speaks in front of crowds that look like America.

Now apparently Air America plans to ask its listeners for donations. This is ridiculous. They are, theoretically, a talk radio network. After all these years, they should act more like one. How about some talk radio programs and not NPRish content. NPR entertains and informs but it doesn’t often drive people to political action – that was supposed to be the reason, as well as business, behind Air America – and it has failed at it several times now.

P.S. I should note that if, six years ago, you had told me that the random idiots on computers would be light years ahead of the multimillion dollar liberal talk radio effort, I would have laughed my ass off at you. That said, its not all annoying.

On balance of course I feel that for every 1000 good things the administration does there is one they screw up. For instance the foot dragging over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is kind of hard to understand. It isn’t the cultural hot-button it was back in 1993, and if anything its simply a national security issue – well qualified military members are getting kicked out solely for their orientation and that’s whacked.

So far we’ve got an administration that values common sense and science over ideology and a perverted view of religion and that’s cause for hope. While personally I would rather congress not be such an impediment to enacting the President’s agenda, the idea is that he and his people get challenged to do the right thing and not just be given a rubber stamp like the GOP congress gave to Bush.

The biggest test on this is likely to be health care, where the Obama team’s apparent moderation needs to be pushed to be more ambitious from the left and not just incremental change for p.r.’s sake that accomplishes the right’s mission of leaving the system broken as it is. If for no other reason than national pride we shouldn’t have a second rate health care system.

The right will be galvanized to action by the theft of the free enterprise system. What will the left be galvanized by?

Me: A competent and consistent well working government in the tradition of the American people.

One of the only reasons George W. Bush won the electoral college in 2000 (while losing the popular vote) was that the Democrat in office had done such a good job the American people figured that there was a limited amount of harm a conservative Republican president could do – we had surpluses for Christ’s sake – and even under those circumstances the Republican had to run as a “compassionate conservative” and not the fringe sort of Palin/Limbaugh conservative that the Republican base now thinks is a normal person. Seriously, how could you not look at the Republican leadership and prominent Republicans like Jindal, Palin, etc. and not laugh your ass off?

The Republican party is now in “crazy base world” and has no way out for the near term. Even if they knock off a few Dems in conservative districts next year, they’re likely to react to McCain’s loss by picking a diehard “savior” who’s likely to have the same sort of electoral luck when the Republicans tried that strategy in 1964 and when the Democrats tried the liberal version in 1972 and 1984.

Should that happen, 2016 is less likely to be 1968 or 1980 as they so badly want, but rather, its likely to be a 1940.

The logo is instantly recognizable because it mimics the logo of the Interstate Highway system.

As most students of American history know, the Interstate Highway system was a product of Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike was the kind of Republican that doesn’t exist anymore – interested in using the strength of the government to improve lives and commerce across the country without being beholden to the radical fringe.

Let’s go to the tape:

In 1956 the pieces finally fell into place. Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 contained many provisions affecting the Interstate System, the key legislative phrase in section 108 is breathtakingly simple and direct: “It is hereby declared to be essential to the national interest to provide for the early completion of the ‘National System of Interstate Highways,’ as authorized and designated in accordance with section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944.”

That simple phrase–”the national interest”–is all the justification the legislators who created the bill thought was needed, perhaps because they believed the interest was obvious, widely understood, and shared.

Well, clearly Eisenhower was some kind of communist.

After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

Ah, right.

So what kind of claptrap does Sean Hannity, who uses the icon of the largest public works program – all 46,876 miles of it – say about now investing in our infrastructure and building up America in a manner similar to Ike?

“Hannity dubs USA “United States of France”"

So, that’s your modern conservative movement.

The Observer has learned that MSNBC president Phil Griffin is in discussions with syndicated talk radio host Ed Schultz about possibly joining the network on a full-time basis. It is unclear what exactly the job would entail should Mr. Schultz and MSNBC come to an agreement.

I’m really glad we liberals hitched our wagon to these bloggy things over putting all our eggs in the talk radio basket.

To Rush, Ann, Huckaboom, Chuck Norris and the rest of you screwjobs on the behalf of everyone on the left side of the aisle I say: THANKS.

Brainless populism on the left is no better than anti-intellectualism on the right.

Seriously.

Obama has nominated four blacks for cabinet positions, including Eric Holder – likely to be the first black attorney general ever.

Oh, also…

BARACK OBAMA IS GOING TO BE THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT.

(that, in theory at least, should have been one of the major goals of a Congressional Black Caucus)

Furthermore, Obama isn’t about some sort of payback for black people. He’s nominated a diverse group of people in order to shake up the monochrome thinking that has dominated Washington for so long.

Jesus H. on a bike, I’m about up to here already with so-called allies throwing slings and arrows at Obama.

And he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. We win the White House and it’s like we don’t even need the Republicans around to make life difficult.

The current GOP is a shell of itself, wandering around in the wilderness questioning its core values. In 2000 we Democrats had the advantage of losing on a technicality, and even in 2004 if Ohio had flipped we would have won, but the GOP got their rears handed to them a month ago and are coming off of one of the worst presidents in history.

Democrats on the other hand are at an almost New Deal level of power. Even if Al Franken and Jim Martin fall short (as I suspect), Obama has the capital to bend Republicans to his will on top issues – especially economic ones. But the left flank of the party is already grumbling some on the cabinet appointments, and while it hasn’t broken through people who invested more liberalism in Obama than he has are likely to make some noise. Now, if you actually listened to what he said rather than what you want him to say, you would have heard a progressive pragmatist who at the end of the day will have been one of our most progressive presidents – certainly post-Nixon – but is not in the Kucinich/ Nader world (and he wouldn’t have had the support of folks like me if he was).

After Clinton won, the left went after him in a way I believe softened him up for the later assault by the right (and the Clintons didn’t win any friends by trying to ram things like that version of universal healthcare through). I hope we don’t repeat that same mistake, but I’m still expecting those misguided concerns to burrow through anyhow.