Democrats need to grow some balls

I’m not usually a prayerful sort of guy, but I’m falling on my knees for this entreaty: “O blessed Tao, dear God, compassionate Buddha, send us some Democrats with balls. Big ones. Clanging ones. Hurry!”

It was painful, and also hilarious, to watch the Daily Show last night. Paul Hackett, the Iraq war veteran who ran for the House in a solidly Republican district and almost defeated Jean Schmidt in an August 2005 special election, was featured. Hackett has balls.

Thus naturally he was unceremoniously dumped by the Democrats after he announced that he’d challenge incumbent Ohio Senator Mike DeWine. The Daily Show skewered Dem ballslessness by contrasting Hackett’s blunt straight talk with the circumlocutions of a pollster who blathered on about all the reasons Hackett wouldn’t be the best candidate.

I can’t stand it any more, this Democratic reluctance to stand up for anything other than being Republican-lite. A Daily Kos rant I ran across today, “Being Liberal Means Having Balls,” captures my disgust perfectly. I too am ready to vote for anyone with a progressive leaning who has some big ones.

If that means voting for an Independent like Ben Westlund, who’s running for Oregon governor, so be it. If that means voting for a Green party candidate, so be it. If the Democrats aren’t going to run on a ballsy platform—saying it like it is and sticking to their guns—then screw them. They deserve to lose.

As the Daily Show pointed out, that’s just what the Democrats have been doing: losing. Yet their reaction to being a powerless political party is to act even more powerless. They seem to believe that if they do nothing, Bush and the Republicans will self-destruct.

That’s delusional. Karl Rove and company are too smart to let that happen. They’ll pull some balls out of the bag before November and smash the Dems over the head with them. Again.

It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Grab the political football, Dems, and kick it as hard as you can. Don’t worry about rules, goalposts, strategy, or playing nice. Just kick the damn thing! For once.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd sounds much the same theme in “What’s Better? His Empty Suit or Her Baggage?” I’ll include it as a continuation to this post for those who don't belong to Times Select.

I don’t know much about Barack Obama, but on the basis on Dowd’s column I’m willing to place him in the lightly populated “Democrats with balls” group. Hillary Clinton? Nope. She’s ballless. And not because she’s a woman—these sorts of balls aren’t physical.

Like so many Democrats, Clinton moves in whatever direction she senses the political winds are blowing, not where her own moral compass tells her to go. To do that, she’d need balls.

What's Better? His Empty Suit or Her Baggage?

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

There's only one reason I continue to brave Washington's dreary formal press dinners, which are so calcified they're a bad cross between a zombie movie and those little Mexican Day of the Dead sculptures.

I find it highly instructive to hear politicians make humor speeches. It's difficult, and few pols do it well.
It took Bill Clinton almost two terms to make a funny speech. He kept letting a petulant tone creep in.

Even though W. would probably rather spend the night in Baghdad than go to a banquet, way past his bedtime, where he's getting lampooned by reporters still able to drink, he was a master right from the start.

Lynne Cheney is a practiced speaker, but a bit tone-deaf on humor. At the Gridiron dinner here on Saturday, she said of her husband: "He has a great sense of humor. Just the other day I asked him, 'Do you know how many terrorists it takes to paint a wall?' And he answered right back, 'It depends on how hard you throw them.' "

People laughed, but it felt creepy, the kind of humor that makes more terrorists.

Everyone was curious to hear Barack Obama, the Democratic speaker. He arrived last year as a star, then lapsed into a cipher, even getting punk'd by John McCain last month. In the capital's version of "Dancing With the Stars," Senator Obama won, turning in a smooth, funny performance that lifted him from his tyro track.

He tweaked fellow Democrats, telling the white-tie crowd: "Men in tails. Women in gowns. An orchestra playing, as folks reminisce about the good old days. Kind of like dinner at the Kerrys."

He mocked the president's unauthorized snooping, saying he'd "asked my staff to conduct all phone conversations in the Kenyan dialect of Luo." He advised W. to "spy on the Weather Channel, and find out when big storms are coming."

After saying he'd enjoyed the Olympic biathlon of shooting and skiing, he, deadpan, turned to Dick Cheney: "Probably not your sport, Mr. Vice President."

It may be true that Americans, as one Democrat told me, "will never elect a guy as president who has a name like a Middle East terrorist." And it may be true that Democrats are racing like lemmings toward a race where, as one moaned, "John McCain will dribble Hillary Clinton's head down the court like a basketball."

But the clever, elegant performance by Mr. Obama — who is intent on keeping his head down in the Senate until he, too, can be a tedious insider — underscored the Democratic vacuum.

Not only do the Democrats "stand for anything," as Mr. Obama semijoked, but they have no champion at a time when people are hungry for an exciting leader, when the party should be roaring and soaring against the Bushies' power-mad stumbles. They should groom an '08 star who can run on the pledge of doing what's right instead of only what's far right.

The Republicans won with Ronald Reagan and W. by taking guys with more likeability and sizzle than experience. They figure they'll win in a McCain-Hillary duel by running a conservative beloved by the media and many Democrats against a polarizing Northerner who can't win any red states despite pandering to conservatives.

The weak and pathetic Democrats seem to move inexorably toward candidates who turn a lot of people off. They should find someone captivating with an intensely American success story — someone like Senator Obama, Tom Brokaw or some innovative business mogul who's less crazy than Ross Perot — and shape the campaign around that leader.

Barack Obama is 44. J.F.K., who had a reputation as a callow playboy and lawmaker who barely knew his way around the Hill, was 43 when he became president.

With seniority comes dullness. And unless you can draw on it in desperate times, promise is merely a curse.

Democrats think Senator Potential's experience does not match Senator Pothole's. Much of hers is as a first lady who bollixed up chunks of domestic policy. They also suspect she may be more macho than he is. They fret that the freshman Illinois senator would wilt against the Arizona senator's foreign policy experience — and he probably would.

But Mr. McCain, a big hawk on Iraq, has talked of sending more troops, and his mentor was Henry Kissinger. These are not recommendations.

W. had the foreign policy "dream team," and it shattered our foreign policy, ideals and self-image. Despite hundreds of years of combined experience, the Bushies rammed through cronies and schemes that were so destructive, it will take hundreds of years to straighten out the mistakes.

The Democrats should not dismiss a politically less experienced but personally more charismatic prospect as "an empty vessel." Maybe an empty vessel can fill the room.

Comments

[Rain]

I agree with what you are saying, but we have got to vote for the party that can beat the republicans next time-- ball-less or not. There were too many votes wasted by voting for Ralph Nader in the election that brought us Bush to begin with. It's time to get practical. I wish the democrats offered more (Obama could be promising for '08); but if in the coming election, you vote for an independent-- as things stand now-- you are putting back in the incumbent-- which is fine if he/she was a democrat but if it's a republican, you are talking about the next supreme court nominee. So think hard on that thrown away vote.

[Brian]

Rain, I hear what you're saying. And I'll probably draw in my balls, grit my teeth, and vote Democratic in the end. But I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing "grow some balls" sentiments to the Dem leadership. The real threat of progressives defecting has to be there before they'll change their wussy ways.

[Rain]

no, i agree with you totally. They irritate me right now and I would like to see them get some backbone too. I would also love to see a viable third party, but right now it's not going to happen, and it's only going to take away from the votes that could get the party in power out... It scares me if they get more years of absolute control-- which is what they appear to want.