Glenn Greenwald on what’s been missing from the Democratic Convention:
The GOP’s attacks on Kerry in 2004 were mocking, scornful, derisive, demonizing and deeply personal — in speech after speech — and they were also highly effective. They weren’t the slightest bit deterred by the fact that Kerry was a war hero who was wounded multiple times in Vietnam while George Bush and Dick Cheney. . . . weren’t. Has there been anything remotely approaching those attacks on McCain by any of the prime-time Democratic speakers?
The GOP assaults on Barack Obama will be — have already been — even more vicious and personalized, which means by the end of their Convention next week, John McCain will be, by all accounts, an honor-bound, principled and courageous patriot (who, at worst, is wrong on some issues), while Barack Obama will be some vaguely foreign, weak, appeasing, super-ambitious, exotic, empty-headed, borderline un-American liberal extremist. Democrats seem to be banking on the fact that the agreement which most Americans have with their policy positions, along with widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of things, will outweigh the effects of this personality war — a war which they, yet again, have allowed to be one-sided.
It really is as if the Democratic Party is specifically trying to take the high road. Thinking, maybe, that the broad swath of people in the middle have had enough polarization; that chiding their opponents for being wrong on issues, but nice as individuals, will play to that moderate demographic, which will subsequently be appalled when the Republicans resume their character assassination approach next week.
Do you think that’s going to happen?
I don’t. Let me tell you, instead, exactly what’s going to happen:
Lots and lots (and lots) of those “moderates,” who’ve had fainting spells about the partisan rancor bedeviling our politics, will listen to the character attacks on Obama - who will be described exactly as Greenwald notes. And then they will vote Republican, because the partisan rancor will have had an effect, will have helped convince them that Obama, at some level, is borderline un-American or too exotic, too black.
This the truth about politics that so many in the mushy middle want to pretend doesn’t exist. You can be inspired by high-minded ideals and rhetoric, and we’ve had plenty of that this week. You can try to stay out of the mud. But the mud’s going to be slung at you regardless. You can let it go splat all over your clothes, your candidate, your message, and keep hoping that Americans will heed the better angels of their nature, and rise above it.
Americans aren’t going to do that.
Americans - though they may claim otherwise - want the mud. Like the mud. And that’s why the mud sticks.
Politics ain’t beanbag, as the saying goes. One of these days, the Democrats will stop pretending it is. And that day may be the one when, finally, they win.
