A Fresh Ill Wind a' Blowin' (Part 2)

...OK, so now for the ill part.

What is so frickin' difficult about presenting a united front on the day your beleaguered, often despised political party actually gets its first whiff of power in years?

Those of us over 40 (or with any history of leftist activism in what my 4-year-old daughter calls "the old days"), well recall the sectarian hair-splitting that turned the left -- and the Democratic Party -- into a kind of academic exercise in intellectual gridlock. From the Port Huron Statement through the identity politics movements (each one of which was fractious and filled with venomous infighting over ideological correctness), and down to Ted Kennedy sucker-punching the incumbent Jimmy Carter in '76 and the Dukakis camp playing very public hardball with Jesse Jackson's people, the left has often brawled away while the Republicans kept their in-fighting behind closed doors.

It's difficult, in my opinion, to overestimate the cumulative effect that all this public fratricide has had on the citizenry's perception of the Democrats. Pundits have always attributed the electorate's historical disenchantmnent with the Democrats, and the fraying of the New Deal consensus, to the mere presence of so many "interest groups" in the party -- blacks, gays, union workers, etc. And no doubt there is some core of American voters who have been turned off by the very appearance of a party of diversity. But I believe thhat the Democrats' hubris, in electoral terms, has been their willingness to get down and dirty among themselves in full view of everyone they want to vote for them. Starting in the 1960s and stretching down through the 1992 primary, they have often seemed unable to control their bee-yatchinest instincts, smacking each other down in front of the hungry media and airing their soiled underthings for all to see and smell.

If the Democrats post-1980 could have played half as nice with each other as they did while they were falling all over themselves to kiss Republican booty, if they could have played half as rough with their opponents across the aisle as they did with their allies, then the electorate might not have turned so sour on them for so long.

Furthermore, since so many of the disputes seemed to be matters of really petty ideological or intellectual concern, they started to look like what the Republicans acccused them of being: a buffoonish caricature of Soviet-era ideological purity warriors. The party of FDR left itself open to the taunts. This red-baiting was more about the Democrats' STYLE of politics than their substance, in some ways. It played in the heartland, and it played in Dixie. It was a tarry brush, and it stuck to the Donkey's asses like sweet Southern molasses.

All of which is why a couple of news items from Day Numero Uno of the New Democratic Era feel so discouraging -- at least if, like me, you've been hoping merely that the Democrats can gain some political traction going into 2008.

One is minor and involves Charles Rangel, never a retiring type and now rapidly approaching an I-don't-give-a-shit-anymore dotage where he'll just say anything that pops in his head. Asked about his agenda for the new Congress, he replied that he would have to wait for Speaker Pelosi to get to him. "She's on a 100-hour agenda, I'm on a 2-year agenda," he said, and hinted that he thought her 100-hour pledge was a bunch of political bull. It's not a big deal, but c'mon, it's the FIRST DAY, how's about a little uniting behind the game plan here. What are you, the New York Giants?

Add this remark to Rangel's election-night gloating about kicking Dick Cheney out of some plum office in the Congressional building and returning it to the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman -- namely Rangel -- and finding Cheney some room in the basement. Look, it's funny, but let's get the party back on track electorally. The Congressman from Harlem is looking like a loose cannon, loaded with balls. It's funny and refreshing but it's also grist for the Republicans' media machine mill.

The bigger internecine bullshit wafts our way from the toxic fallout over Pelosi's smackdown of fellow Cali Democrat Rep. Jane Harman, who had lobbied hard for the House Intelligence Committee Chair, only to be rebuffed by Madame Speaker. Pelosi opted instead to give the chair to Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat and former border cop. Why bypass Harman, who was next in line? Because Harman is a moderate who equivocated on condemning the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. I say, Good for Pelosi; if the Democrats can't agree that it's both ethically right AND good politics to oppose El Presidente and his junta listening in on our phone calls and wiping their butts with the Constitution, well then there's not much to make them an opposition party. So Harman picked the wrong time to take the Liebermanesque rightward road, and it cost her. Now she's moaning and backbiting about how Congress has "lost its lustre" for her. Shut up and get behind the Mule!

All of which is to say: Make nice publically, all you donkeys, keep the fights around the proverbial kitchen table and get something done. One thing's for sure: many of us have such diminished expectations after the last 8 years thhat you all really should be able to look good rolling into 2008. Now smile for the camera.