E Pluribus Unum

Okay, my instincts initially were with Young Media Matt -- without the pretentious prose.

It's not until your comment in the KOS thread that lies half-way down the page is the unstated nightmare clear.

It's not the blame, it's the power-grab.

Fair enough, but I don't get Hillary still. I don't know that she's even implying what you said, and I'm not confident that she'll scream "Bullshit!" any louder -- or more effectively, without nuance or hedging that she's known for when spades need to be clearly labeled as manual dirt removal devices.

Gravel and Kucinich can be counted on for straight talk in the even of another 9/11, and I think (based on recent performances rejecting GOP framing) that John Edwards will point the finger clearly too.

Unfortunately, again based on my take on their personality and my perception of their methodology, Obama -- not so much; and Hillary -- not at all.

Her statement left me shaking my head. Your spotlight on the dynamics of that "post-attack environment" clears up what she might have been talking about, but I cannot connect the dots and conclude that she would handle the ensuing Executive/GOP power-grab -- or stand against it let alone call it for what it is.

At best, she confused me. At worst, she's trying to delude me.

Mark:

I'm simply giving Hillary credit for "thinking around the corner." She's asking the most difficult question of all: "What if...?" And for some reason that infuriates her opposition in the party.

Why? Because the Republican playbook has nothing else in it but that.

But does that mean it's against the rules for a Democrat to ask the same question? How crazy is that?

Look: we already know that the likes of Osama bin Laden have loooooooooooooved the Bush years. What a recruiting bonanza! An entire generation of fighters have been created by Bush's insane policies -- you and I both know that.

So, for them, what could be better than President Giuliani?

Think like the other guy for a moment.

Think like a terrorist.

What can you do to bring about the election of President Giuliani? I think the answer is all too obvious.

That's what I believe Hillary is getting at and I give her a lot of credit for saying it out loud.

P.S. I'm assuming, of course, that Bush/Cheney would even allow the elections to happen. And if they don't, then the terrorists have hit the Trifecta.

And anything Kucinich and Gravel (and Edwards) say at THAT point would be ludicrously irrelevant.

Better to start talking about it NOW.

Whether or not any of the candidates talk aobut it, we lie at a critical point in our country's history. The next president, if we get another one, will hold in his/her hands our nation's entire legacy.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September, 1787, Benjamin Franklin emerged from the final meetings and was met by a Mrs. Powell. She asked him the question that was everyone's mind:

"Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic if you can keep it," responded the good doctor.

Will we keep it, Mark?

Franklin's "real" existential question, I know.

You have to admit some things though. The perception that the GOP is better at security is not born out by the facts. They have been effective pushing the perception, not making us safer.

Hillary has internalized that perception and perpetuates it -- which infuriates me when she speaks like Rudy -- and ignores the considerable blame and backlash.

If we lose the republic in the next 16 months via some presidential coup, her contribution to the discourse is no more relevant than Cicero witnessing, opposing, but unable to prevent the fall of a great republic into empire:

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."

And I fail to see where she made the case that she is the candidate most likely to stop the warmongers. She does not stand diametrically in opposition when she adopts the GOP spin, nor does Obama when he looks for the non-confrontational approach.

This is not a place for a negotiated settlement. In this existential battle for the continuation of the republic, we do not need to solved a problem -- "Get to Yes", as it were. We need to bury the extremists' conservative and neoconservative ideology, with their transparent partisan scare tactics and incompetent, partisan cronyism as a failed and discredited cult of personality.

If K-Lo from The (F-ing) Corner can twist Hillary's words to say this, and yet the essence of this spin cannot really be denied, Hillary did neither herself, nor our cause much good:

It's hard to tell from the Washington Post piece, but Senator Clinton appears to be acknowledging the fact that Republican frontrunners appear to more fully understand the jihadi threat America is facing tha the Democrats and the American people know that full and well and that another attack on the United S ates will only make that clearer. And she seems not to have offered a persuasive reason why that's a wrong train of thought -- unless she's straight-on going to blame Republicans (Bush/Cheney/'neocons') for the next attack. Anyway, seems like a dumb remark, but not for reasons other people are outraged.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The perception that the GOP is better at security is not born out by the facts.

Nor did she say it was...or wasn't.

[another incident] will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world...

Seems a pretty straightforward observation to me.

And, after all we've seen from the Republican noise machine, how do you refute it?

How do you refute even the remotest possibility that, post-attack, Bush would actually cancel the next election?

I think he'd do it in a heartbeat -- he's even got the Executive Order to back it up.

What are you going to do? Fight him in court? Good luck with that.

I'd say that scenario definitely ends with "an advantage for the Republicans." Wouldn't you?

Luckily, we have a couple of things going for us:

1) No attack, yet.
2) Voters are still receptive to Democrats.

But to make this work for us, we have acknowledge that a winning campaign is about more than facts. Just ask President Gore.

This campaign will be about the perception of toughness and judgment and vision.

Which candidate is perceived as being tough, as having sound judgment, as having the vision to see the entire chess board?

Concurrently, which candidate can be made to look not tough, but like a bully? Which candidate can be made to look not visionary, but messianic? Which candidate can be made to look not pragmatic but self-serving?

That's how I see it. I could be wrong.

But I doubt it.

[Note: I made this into a diary at Daily Kos. Check it out.]

Uh Oh, you engaged the wrath of Iddybud's snark machine over at KOS.

;-)

I still don't get how arguing over who's best at the political power game helps anyone when the game will be over if it get's played out the way you envision. This really is a nuclear option you're talking about.

If the elections are canceled, there are no more politics the way we know them. No power to be gained or lost that matter since there no longer will be any stage on which to play, no votes to be case, no decisions to debate, no democratic institutions that matter.

You don't vote a true despot out of office, you don't run an opposition campaign urging people to vote against a dictator, you don't run attack ads against the King.

You're talking about who wins the revolution, not who is worthy of the Democratic nomination.

The question then will not be who leads us, but do we as a people "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them."

You are pondering the republic's suicide, and Bush is merely the hand that wields the knife.

With apologies to The Bard: to Vote, or not to Vote, that is the question. Who we vote for comes later.

What you speak of does not even reach the threshold of deciding whether to participate in the system since the system will no longer make such choice available.

If Hillary really is talking about this (and I still believe you are reading much more into her statement that deserved) her answer is pointless until and unless she leads Congress to act as they should have years ago, and impeach.

You're right: I'm talking the end of days.

But, as I said, we're not there yet. There hasn't been an attack (on, say, Iran) and the public still has some faith in the Dems.

But it has to fall to someone to reveal how close we are to letting it all slip away.

Can Edwards do it? Clinton? Obama? Biden? Dodd? Kucinich? Who?

Someone needs to say (not perhaps in so many words) that Bush (and the Republicans) would be willing to suffer another attack because they would gain ultimate power.

Not talking about that NOW is far worse than granting the Republicans their talking points.

You can talk about it and take their talking points away ... if you do it and do it right.

Hillary took her cuts at the ball; who's on deck?

Ara! Who gives a damn about GOP talking points, designed merely to win elections -- if there's no more election?

BTW, Kucinich has been talking this way since he was Shirley McClaine's roommate. That's only part of the reason he's seen as a crackpot. Personally, I consider him a hero, but I'm a nerd.

Kucinich is a true conspiracy theorist who also happens to be right and who would agree with you about the danger of continuing under the current regime.

You could lay out your Doom's Day scenario and he'll tell you two or three reasons why you underestimate the situation -- particularly when it comes to how Iran will be involved in this electoral coup. He's an alarmist, imprudent, F-ing hates "dick" Cheney, and is absolutely visionary.

I agree with Dennis on almost everything he has ever done or said. Yet I would never vote for him.

Why? Because he simply lacks that intangible quality that you taught me how to put into words. No one stands up and falls in line when he says, "follow me." A vote for him is wasted unless you live on the south side of Cleveland and you're looking at the Congressional part of the ballot.

Oh, and BTW, the "follow me" thing isn't the same as the "doing beers with" thing.

I drank a beer with Dennis. (Okay, I drank a beer while he ate lunch at the student union sitting at the table next to mine back around 1984.)

Dennis Kucinich was Shirley McClain's roommate? What is it with this guy??