The Democratic 'Machine': Gearing Up Incredulity Once Again

I apologize for ridiculing the Democrats so often, but gosh darnit, they can just be so lovably ridiculous. Man for man and woman for woman they're tops, perhaps; but lump them together and one will not find a more backward, self-defeating, incomprehensible assemblage of institutional incompetence.

On that much, I submit, we can all agree -- especially after reading a piece like this, from the Politico: "Anti-McCain groups lag in fundraising."

This was to be not merely a Democratic year, but the Democratic year. Right? After the most wretched presidential tenure in American political history, the Dems would prime themselves for an executive comeback that the Republicans would never forget. They would shake hands, organize, educate and advertise. They had learned the regrettable lessons from their immensely incompetent past, so this time would be different. Much different. Because it has to be.

Now the Dems are finally met on that great battlefield, but only to receive dispatches like this, so disturbingly reminiscent of wars and battles lost: "Democratic talk of an early, hard-hitting campaign to 'define' and tar Arizona Sen. John McCain appears to have fizzled for lack of money, leading to a quiet round of finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and donors as McCain assembles a campaign and a public image relatively unmolested."

Well, the finger-pointing should help. It always has.

The chief complication appears to be that "Many of the people who would normally be involved in such an effort are overly focused on the primary." That alert came from a "spokesman for George Soros, who is the largest individual donor to the Fund for America," which at one time anticipated raising roughly $100 million with McCain as its singular target and is now roughly $100 million shy of that goal. A spokesperson for the Fund itself has now been reduced to disclosing, curtly: "We're not focused on the 2008 election."

The Fund for America did, however, before folding its anti-McCain tent, "[pass] on at least $1.4 million to what was expected to be the main attack group, an organization called the Campaign to Defend America." And what has become of this "main attack group" to defend America against the developmentally arrested? From what I could gather from the Politico's dark, byzantine and almost indecipherable account, the C.D.A. seems to be largely out of the electioneering business already -- which may be more than just an appearance, since it's "not respond[ing] to requests for comment on its activities."

If those two megacomplications aren't enough for you, here's another: "[One] operative noted that the group that attacked President Bush in independent television advertisements in 2004 was run by Harold Ickes, now an aide to Hillary Clinton." And this lays the foundation for what larger point? You got it. According to the same operative, "A lot of the big Media Fund people were Hillary people, and [they're] just not going to write a check unless she's the nominee." So, not to disappoint Democratic expectations, this third complication may indeed be chronic.

But there's always the Democratic National Committee, which, being well trained in defensive maneuvers out of necessity, sure enough "dispute[s] the notion that an opportunity has already been missed in the two months since McCain effectively secured the nomination."

Said DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney in all seriousness, I kid you not: "We wanted to have solid research first." She went on to gladden anti-McCain hearts everywhere by "not[ing] that the DNC has been conducting focus groups and polling on McCain and finding" -- guess what? -- "that voters know little about his policy positions and identify him strongly with the unpopular Iraq war."

You just can't make this stuff up. And you don't need to.

Ms. Finney, let me help you out with that research; permit me to spare you all that polling and focus-grouping and running this or that up this or that flagpole. John McCain, you see, is on the record as an economic nincompoop. He has said so himself, of himself. It's on tape. And voters likely identify him strongly with the unpopular Iraq war because -- yoo-hoo -- he has bellowed repeatedly that he's strongly in favor of the unpopular Iraq war. Again, Karen, this is on tape. The man is trying his unbalanced best to save you millions in opposition research and message framing, and you're, like, so ignoring him.

As for piecing together a television ad? -- something with a bit of an anti-McCain kick to it? Again, your work is already done, Karen. For example just yesterday morning Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economist who now estimates the war's cost at around $3 trillion, appeared on MSNBC. I watched him break down that cost in about 60 seconds: all the money accelerating there and not here; the exploding debt with interest attached; wounded veterans' long-term care; the opportunity costs we'll never recoup. 

That's an ad, right there. Those are the facts. They're on tape. The research is already done. You don't need to poll it or focus-group it or determine in any alternative way if those facts resonate with voters. They do. And they have, for years now.

Responds Ms. Finney: "'We're getting there. People are starting to understand the urgency' ... adding that new polling would be released next week."

Well that's a relief.