Why Are The Democrats So Fucking Incompetent at PR and Debating?

A whipped-dog-democrat assumes proper fighting stance!

An interesting point was brought up on a politics board I frequent: why are Democrats doing such a TERRIBLE job of debating/PR, with regard to the health care debate?

They should be ALL OVER this debate. They’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the human interest, hell they’ve got the fucking BLOODY SHIRT to wave.

America’s health care system is rated #37 in the world by the World Health Organization, yet we pay FAR more than any other country for health care. There. That number is the bottom line. The Democrats should have been beating the Republicans over the head so vigorously and repeatedly that everyone in America would know the statistic by heart. It is a fucking awesome club for beating Republicans and conservatives over the head on health care policies, especially in tandem with the rising health care costs most Americans are experiencing in their personal pocketbooks.

The Dems have the option of “waving the bloody shirt” (a term coined to describe the practice of waving the bloody garments of downed partisans to incite crowds to more violence in revolutionary times, now watered down to mean any emotional rhetoric concerning victimized people inclined to incite listeners/readers on their behalf) thanks to the insurance companies. The pro-health-care position’s bloody shirt consists of all the people who have lost health care benefits along with their jobs, or who have been denied health care benefits because of the infamous “pre-exiting conditions” and have been dropped from the health care rolls because they got sick, and who’ve died and/or lost all of their money as a result. People are dying because of the way health care is run in this country, and the Republicans/conservatives don’t give a damn about it. It’s a simple and effective bit of rhetoric that should be used constantly by Democrats.

Americans by and large hate these perils of modern society, and only now that the reconciliation bill is under debate are SOME of the Democrats actually using their most powerful rhetoric. Not for the purpose of promoting single payer or the public option, mind you, just to justify passing the current bill via the reconciliation process (which requires only 50% of the vote as opposed to 60 percent) watered down and crippled though it has been in the Senate.

Instead of seeing the Republicans endlessly mugged by Democrats while defending a hopeless position , what we saw was the Republican beating the damn stupid Democrats over the head with the made-up issue of “death panels.” (It’s made-up because there are no “death panels” or anything remotely resembling them in the new legislation.) The Republicans’ made up outrage was more effective as a rhetorical fighting point than the real outrages of our present system.

This is just the latest in a long line of Republican rhetorical victories stretching all the way back to the “Contract with America,” the most infuriating and telling example of which was the “swift boating” of John Kerry. Kerry was indisputably the braver man than his opponent Bush II (I.e., Dubya) during the Vietname War era, as he fought in the very dangerous swift boat campaign and was shot at with real bullets by North Vietnamese troops, and wounded, receiving a Purple Heart, while Dubya did nothing but take a safe post in the National Reserve (it was considered a “safe” way to avoid the draft) flying over the skies of San Pedro Island, Texas, undoubtedly on pussy patrol most of the time.

The Republicans were able to dredge up a bunch of drunken old reprobate swift boat sailors who never sailed with Kerry who were willing to say that Kerry didn’t get wounded as much as the medical papers claimed and that he didn’t get shot at as much claimed either, though they never disputed that he was in action, or that he did get wounded to some extent. They couldn’t deny that because they weren’t on the swift boat with Kerry. And the guys that WERE on the swift boat with Kerry all said Kerry did perform bravely under fire and deserved a Purple Heart.

Didn’t matter. It worked. The made-up story about Kerry not truly earning a Purple Heart allowed the Republicans to say, “Well BOTH men had dubious records during the Vietnam War. On the one hand, Bush got a cushy post in the National Reserve, from which he may have gone AWOL and certainly never was in any danger of serving in combat, on the other hand, the severity of the wounds Kerry received in combat may not have merited a Purple Heart.” To a sloppy, timid or lazy journalist, this constitutes “balanced reporting.” And there were an awful lot of sloppy, lazy, timid journalists back in the build up to the election of 2004.

And the Contract with America worked. And the incredible string of lies and chicanery that constituted the Presidential and Congressional campaigns in 2000, 2002 and 2004 worked. They worked, they fucking worked, and they worked BEAUTIFULLY, and the only reason we STILL don’t have a Republican President and a Republican Senate and House is that the Republicans fucked up so incredibly badly that their lies couldn’t cover them up any more. Doesn’t matter what Fox News analysts say when you or people you care about have lost your job and/or your house because the economy is in the toilet and your health insurance got taken because you got sick.

As I said before, I don’t think the people who lead the Democratic Party don’t know how to fight rhetorically. They’ve been doing it since they started in politics, and for the most part, they’ve been in politics for decades. Real veterans, they were probably fine rhetorical wrasslers in their time.

But I think the particular experiences that these Democratic leaders have had over the last couple of decades, rather than honing their skills and cranking up their abilities at rhetorical fighting, they’ve learned that when a public debate gets hot the thing to do is not strike back but give ground and shield yourself as best you can, because you are gonna get hammered.

The Democratic leadership fails so thoroughly now that they are in a position of strength relative to their Republicans because they STILL don’t have the ability to attack the Republicans when the Republicans tell one of their blatant lies. The Democratic leaderships’ reflexes are all to cover up and protect themselves, what punches they do throw are timid feints and jabs, not the devastating haymakers that the Republicans’ blatant lies and misrepresentations call for.

To be more specific, I’m sure that at one time Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House were tough, hard-bitten rhetorical fighters who knew how and when to relentlessly hammer an opponent for a blatant lie, but those days are long gone. Now all they are really suited to do is count votes and proceed only if the tally indicates things are absolutely certain to go their way.

Considering all the beatings they have taken, you can kinda understand it, but still they are an anchor around the neck of most Democratic initiatives.. The whipped dog Democrats aren’t doing the progressive cause any great favors, any more than the blue dog Democrats are. What we need are some biting-dog Democrats … or at least some barking ones.


"C'mon! You want a piece of me? Hunh? Hunh? Hunh? You wanna mess with me? I'm right here!" A whipped-dog democrat sends out her traditional challenge. By the way ... she's not facing her opponent.