On the Imus program this morning noted right wing mouthpiece Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said the same thing that Chris Matthews has been pilloried for: in the recent tape Osama Bin Laden was parroting Michael Moore.
Let the beatings begin!
On the Imus program this morning noted right wing mouthpiece Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said the same thing that Chris Matthews has been pilloried for: in the recent tape Osama Bin Laden was parroting Michael Moore.
Let the beatings begin!
I’m not sure that there need to be beatings: it seems pretty self-evident to me, just from reading the translation, that
a) a-Q is hurting badly, particularly in Afghanistan, where their attempt to resurge violence has not, to put it mildly, gone their way;
b) bin Laden sees the Western (particularly American) Left as his best hope for victory, or at least survival, and thus has increasingly adapted their rhetoric while leaving typical jihadi rhetoric to subordinates;
c) bin Laden thus has at least 3 more years to ride out the storm of American persecution, and it’s not entirely clear that a Democrat administration would be any less aggressive (I believe that Hilary, in particular, would be in regards to al Qaeda);
d) Michael Ledeen is wildly misinformed, or goes well beyond his evidence and presents his speculation as evidence;
e) the Left will not be taken seriously outside of its echo chamber until it denounces bin Laden and his followers for their acts, rather than denouncing “Republican dirty tricks” for trying to link bin Laden’s rhetoric with that of the Left;
f) since the Democrats have been essentially co-opted by the Left, their odds of winning national elections are slim until the DLC reasserts itself and marginalizes the Left (particularly the unaccountable, arrogant part of the Left that claims, primarily on the grounds of blog noise and fundraising, to be the true arbiters of who is pure enough to be in the party; I’m talking here of Kos, Atrios, etc.).
The “beatings” I’m referring to are condemnations of Alter comparable to what Matthews has been undergoing for the last few days at the hands of the Left Blogosphere (or what Deborah Howell at The New York Times has been through).
The most recent polls on a McCain vs. Hillary Clinton match-up are 52% McCain/36% Clinton. Or, in other words, Hillary Clinton can’t turn a state that went Red last time Blue. Her support for the invasion of Iraq and her aggressive stance will, I believe, also make her damaged goods with Democratic Party activists and primary voters who tend to be more “progressive” than Democrats, generally.
As I noted in a comment I left over on The Moderate Voice, the question of how which party is hurt the most may depend on who most people find scarier: Chris Matthews (and Joe Lieberman and Deborah Howell and …) or Markos Zuniga and Duncan Black and their acolytes.
BTW, Jeff, your comment over on Winds of Change has gotten nearly as much good press as the post itself.
Every once in a while I get in a good point. Not often, but every once in a while. 🙂