I suppose we shouldn’t be suprised. The Clintonistas want nothing more than to be well-liked versions of Republicans, so why should we be shocked by reports that:
The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles.
Part of the reason this story is out there is to continue the lazy beltway media’s narrative that the Democrats are at war with each other, that Dean isn’t trusted … the usual sort of story that surfaces everytime the news turns gloomy for Dear Leader and Quicks Draw McCheney. However, there is always a little cadre of Quisling Republicrats eager to see their schemes highlighted in the morning paper.
As Harold “Petain” Ickes is quoted:
“The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march,” said Ickes, whose political technology venture is being backed by financier George Soros.
“It’s unclear what the DNC is doing. Is it going to be kept up to date?” Ickes asked, adding that out-of-date voter information is “worse than having no database at all.”
Of course, lets forget that the Republicans have used those technologies to advance an actual agenda. Lets forget that they’re not constantly stabbing their activist wing in the back or shitting down its throat. Nope, it’s all a matter of the right tech, a quick solution … you know, the same kind of lazy thinking so beloved in twenty-first century corporate America. Change a name, do a survey, sereptitiously gather personal information on a desired demographic group in order to “sell” your “message”. Of course, all that hard work, all of the skulking and peeping-tom-like inquistiveness could be undermined by loose cannons, by actual vital grassroots-fed local parties. Better to maintain control, and how else to do that than a big massive database to bend, spindle and mutilate the numbers to keep those fat consultant fees (and corporate checks) coming in?
The Republican database has allowed the party and its candidates to tailor messages to individual voters and households, using information about the kind of magazines they receive, whether they own guns, the churches they attend, their incomes, their charitable contributions and their voting histories.
Completely missed by the Vichy Dempublicans so beloved by Bill-and-Hill is that those databases have power BECAUSE THERE ARE ACTUAL ISSUES AND GROUPS THAT ARE OPEN TO CLEARLY DEFINED GOALS AND ISSUES. A list of rich and almost-rich suburban white professional voters will do you little or no good if you don’t know or care what matters to them. You can’t know what matters to them, or to other groups (no matter how undesirably dark, gay or non-male they may be) if you don’t debate or talk about actual issues, do the hard work of politics and actually take some chances, make some statements, advocate some positions … it doesn’t do any good to preserve the buildings of Paris if you help the tanks roll right over the SPIRIT that makes Paris … PARIS.
None of this matters to Ickes and his fellow parasites though, because they’re not interested in a real political party. They’re not interested in real change, in the growing lower caste of permanently indebted indentured servants toiling away in the cities and on the corporate farms or in the back hallways of those beautiful glistening corporate campuses. They want only to inhabit the Big Robot shell of the old Democratic Party, pulling the levers and pushing the buttons and feeling the POWER of this second tier enabler to the One Party Rule of the Republicans. As long as they get to bask in the thrill of crushing a few things under the party’s big outmoded robot feet, who the hell cares about really working for change?
It’s good enough to have a little slice of the power, and controlling information about the few voters the party still has enables you to maintain control, which is so much more fun than actually leading.
You are on a roll, Madman!
I disagree. I’d like to see some more choices on that “poll.”
Indeed, I think this diary could just as well have been written by Ken Mehlman or Drudge.
Bill Clinton was one of the all-time greatest U.S. presidents. He’s a real intellectual, a real fighter, and a passionate man who really cares about helping the country including all of its citizens. I like Clinton.
And I also like Ickes and Hillary. If they think this is a good tactic to attack the Republicans, I’m in favor of it.
Sorry, but I think this diary is shallow and reactionary.
and I think Clinton, Ickes and Hillary are the spittin image of Mehlman and the Republicans … shallow people who trade on fear and envy.
In a bi-polar system like ours, you get basically one question: the people, or CONTROL of the people. The Clintonistas are fully in favor of the control Clinton traded on fear and demogoguery of the poor as surely as Reagan did. People are sinking below the waves now thanks to him. He’s merely a nicer Republican, less objectionable than the Republicans, but still a nicer, friendlier Republican.
The poll was slanted on purpose, but I know that you’re part of the religion uber alles contingent here, so irony and a rejection of conformity would be lost on you.
Ickes program is objectionable b/c this kind of technology is a way of managing and manufacturing consent, a way of driving people to continue to work against their best interest by feeding back their behaviors back to them in a way to encourage behavior that those w/ power prefer. That you find this admirable only demonstrates that you prefer the group over the individual, the herd over the person, conformity over individual development.
that Hilary is secretly a Revolutionary mole, just luring them, roping them in, only to reveal her True Purpose when safely installed as the warlords’ official on-camera talent. ;->
Well, I want you to know that I consider your arguments with much care and respect.
However, to say that I’m part of a “religion uber alles contingent” that does not understand irony and a rejection of conformity–that shows that you are being a prick in violation of this community’s rules. The “uber alles” calls me a Nazi. The other parts are just false.
In fact, I’ll just betcha I’ve been rejecting conformity for decades longer than you have, and once upon a time I even wrote a paper on irony (riffing on Kierkegaard).
I think your last paragraph above is just words. I don’t recognize it as tied to reality.
I didn’t say I found any particular technology to be admirable. And it’s really nuts to make a grand leap of logic and conclude that I have demonstrated that I ‘prefer the group over the individual, the herd over the person, conformity over individual development’.
You are literally talking like an insane person. You’re boxing with shadows. You have no idea who this human being here is who you are addressing. I have always stood for exactly the opposite of what you accuse, probably for decades longer than you’ve been alive.
“religion uber alles contingent”? Geez. Do you have a sense of humor?
and I bet I’m a lot older than you think I am. Of course, those who choose conformity and control always reassure themselves that such beliefs are part of “growing up”. I chose to open my eyes.
Clinton was the best Republican President that we’ve had, though much of what he accomplished was lucky timing. He destroyed the welfare system, completely blew a historic opportunity to create a national health care system, sold out environmental laws and labor to the demands of so-called “free trade”. The media we all complain carries Bush’s water was enabled by the media consolidation he championed. He’s a whore to the corporate dollar and a fork-tounged phoney who places profits over people. He traded on racism with his Sister Souljah stunt, which he got away with b/c hip hop made older blacks as uncomfortable as it did whites.
These people, the Clinton contingent, have enabled one right-wing policy after another. They are not our allies, not our friends.
I registered mild disagreement with the ideas in your diary, which is part of what happens on discussion groups. You responded with a nasty, ad hominem attack, projecting all kinds of false charges and even calling me a Nazi. That’s not a wise way to advance your point of view.
And to say that I “choose conformity and control” is just ridiculous. Carl Jung would say that your charge is proof that that trait is a key part of your own Shadow; it has nothing to do with me.
You compared me with the odious Mehlman and Drudge, which is far from “mild disagreement”. The ad hominem started there, my friend, and I responded in kind. You bitched about my poll, as though I’m some kind of media company and have some responsibility to be “scientific” … the poll was plainly meant as a reinforcement of the disgust I feel toward Ickes and the rest of his fellow hacks. Of course, if everything everybody writes doesn’t pander to the so-called “centrist” views of “reasonable” people (of which your are some kind of paragon, no doubt) then it is to be dismissed.
I notice that your modus operandi is to go after the words people choose, the way in which they make their arguments or present their point-of-view, rather than engage with what they say. You did that in your first comment … you offered no real counterpoint, but rather criticism of the method of my piece.
This is how Republicans argue. They demand that others follow THEIR vocabulary, THEIR “rules” for discourse.
I remember you posting under your old name. You were a bullying asshole then, too. You’re another Republican seeking to take over what should be the party of the left, another “centrist” who’s okay with the rightward drift of the politics of this country, only you think the bushies pushed it too far, too fast. Go back and help Spector fight for the party you really belong in.
This is false from start to finish. Every sentence is an example of you projecting your own disturbance outward. You should investigate the concept of projection.
you make me laugh, does that count?