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 Ickes asked, adding that out-of-date voter information is “worse than having no database at all.”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.
