Pith and pathos.
The Buffalo Beast has a wrap-up of the 18 January march on Washington, DC (and when someone from Buffalo says it’s cold, it’s cold), and in and amongst the wonderfully snarky gonzo metamedia coverage, we get this piercing insight:
The second thing that was striking about this crowd was that, despite the fact that it was comprised of largely middle- to upper-middle class whites, there was no name politician from either major party there to address it. Given that a Pew survey taken this week showed that a majority of Americans (52%) felt that President Bush had not yet made a convincing case that war was necessary, one would have thought that at least some opportunistic politician from the Democratic party would have decided to attach his name to the anti-war effort. But the only politician of any stature at the event was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a doomed candidate for president with too much political baggage to really be an effective champion for anything.
Put two and two together and what you get is the amazing realization that this crowd, perhaps the largest to gather in Washington in the last thirty years, has no political representation whatsoever in today’s America. Almost certainly representing a vastly larger number of people in the general population, the anti-war crowd has simply been excluded from the process. The 80 nitwits at the MOVE-OUT event could reasonably claim one sympathetic US Senator per demonstrator: the 200,000+ at the ANSWER event couldn’t claim even one between them. The only real clout it could claim was its own physical presence at that particular moment.
If you still demand to know why the anti-war folks don’t seem to you to be quibbling overly (but they do, you know, quibble) about marching in a protest organized in at least some small part by what might or might not be a WWP front, well. There you go.
(The rest of you might also want to remember this pith, when 2004 rolls around and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out how the Democrats could have fucked it up again. —I’m just sayin.’)
In other news: Oregon is officially gung ho about the brave new world of massively overmandated states with pathetically underfunded budgets. We are so screwed.
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I find it amusing that you pay more attention to Buffalo than I, who grew up there, do.
Just the Beast, man. They're hip, hot, and happening. Check the link farms.
Oh, c'mon, Kip. Every time Alterman or one of his wannabees rains down another volley of abuse on my head, all I can think about is how very, very grateful I am that if I'm really, really, really, good, I can rejoin the Democratic Party and vote the Lieberan/Generic Southern Boll-Weevil Running Mate ticket.
I mean, don't you ? :p Doesn't everyone ?? :p :p