The Democratic Party doesn’t need cohesion. It needs better marketing.

The Democratic Party’s “lack of unity” has become an oft-cited criticism of conservative pundits. The Republican right has successfully exploited intra-party dissent—primarily regarding the Iraq War—and cultivated the image of the Democratic Party as weak, faltering, and therefore ineffective. Republicans have artfully crafted a fear of uncertainty, and suggested on no uncertain terms that a divided party accomplishes nothing, and the divided Democrats would run the Iraq War and America into ruin if given the opportunity. As we all know, the Democrats have finally begun to recover from the GOP’s fear-mongering tactics, but the complaints of lacking cohesion remain nearly as strong as ever.

Analysts say that the Democrats need to create a new image, and they need to do this by creating a unified front. A few gained House seats won’t last if the Democrats continue to look weak and vulnerable. The talking heads seem to see cohesion as a wholly beneficial aim, something to achieve and advertise on the part of the Democrats.

Let’s inspect that assumption for a moment. Polls throughout the decades have indicated that most voters don’t fully subscribe to a party; they instead tow-the-line in the moderate middle. An independent “American Moderate Party” exists on the fringe, but allow us to face reality: most Americans feel they have but two choices when they go to the polls. In most cases, they really do only have a Republican and a Democrat candidate from whom to choose. And when an …

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Mission (really) Accomplished – puppet-master Bin Laden successfully completes his mission.

How can you deny success?  It's reported here by the Associated Press: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district Friday in a massive show of support for Hezbollah in its battle against Israel.…

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Just What Does THAT Mean?

I’m a writer.  As such, words and their uses are important to me, and it bugs me when I hear them used inappropriately or in ways that I know are wrong or intended to mislead.  It’s like an itch I can’t scratch.  Most of the time, I let them slide, because I know there’s nothing much to be done and I don’t wish to sacrifice what little sanity I have complaining about Other People’s Ignorance and/or Language Abuse.

But the other day I listened to an essay by Jeff Nunberg.  He’s a linguist and I usually catch him on NPR on the Frech Air  program.  This piece was about the word–the term–Lifestyle.

Nunberg has a new book out about the way in which the Right has stolen language in politics in the last couple of decades, and he lays it out clearly the way in which a masterful job has been done by those not liberal to take the “high ground” linguisitically in our national debate.  The book is called Talking Right  and it’s on my list.  I’ve been listening to Nunberg for years on this subject, so I think I know what the book contains.  I recommend it to all and sundry.

His piece on Lifestyle centered on its use as a substitute label socially and politically for discussions about choices and the way in which the word has come to denote everything about us.  Our politics, our spending habits, our taste in clothes, even our personal hygeine and …

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War is Peace

As reported by Think Progress, President Bush is now arguing that war is a healthy catharsis: President Bush proudly declared that American foreign policy no longer seeks to “manage calm,” and derided policies that let anger and resentment lie “beneath the surface.” Bush said that the violence in the Middle…

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