Author: Andrew Sullivan

I have to say I think David Brooks gets the Internet all wrong today. I can’t put it better than Jeff Jarvis, so I won’t:

Maybe Brooks’ last view of the Internet was an AOL chat room, but in this Internet – this personal Internet of relations and reputations – long term certainly matters. And though this is an immediate medium – a helluva lot more immediate than a coupla-times-a-week column laboriously produced on paper – it’s also true that if you’re too “blunt and forceful at the moment” – you can and will reconsider it later… or others will reconsider it for you. On the Internet, this Internet, we’re not “loosely tethered, careless and free” – in fact, we’re making stronger relationships than many of us have in the world sometimes known as the real one. And we watch what we say because somebody’s fact-checking our ass. And we take on the responsibilities that come with all that.
Mr. Brooks: I’ll be happy to give you a guided tour of this Internet and show you how it’s the opposite of what you say and also how this new medium of strong relationships and of power rising from the bottom is – like or not – what has powered the Dean campaign and what will change politics as we – or at least you – know them.

Amen. If anything, the web will come back to haunt Dean in some respects, because his positions have been so fluid they’re eminently fiskable. But Jeff homes in on a key paradox of the new medium: it may promote anonymity, but it also promotes consistency. A blog, for example, is both one day’s posts – but it’s also the accumulation of days and months and years. It’s a very good indicator in the long run of the quality and variety of someone’s mind, and even, to some extent, their character. That’s why it’s easier to get a sense of who someone is from reading their blog than by reading a column once a week. It’s more real then the old media – not less.

WHERE HAS LIEBERMAN BEEN? Here’s the weirdest statement I’ve heard in a long while:

“I was caught completely off-guard,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore’s running mate in 2000 and a hopeful for the nomination, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show. That many of Gore’s positions are opposite to those of Dean made the decision a surprise to him, Lieberman said. “Al Gore has endorsed someone here who has taken positions diametrically opposite” of the former vice president, Lieberman said. “What really bothers me is that Al is supporting a candidate who is so fundamentally opposed to the basic transformation that Bill Clinton brought to this party in 1992,” moving it to a more middle-of-the-road stance on economic policy and other areas, he said.

Did Lieberman listen to his running mate in 2000? From the convention onwards, Al Gore remade himself as a left-wing populist. He renounced his previous positions in one bold stroke, making it impossible for people like me to support him. (I know it may sound hard to believe but in the spring of 2000, I fully expected to support Gore, if McCain didn’t win the nomination. The convention speech ended that particular aspiration.) Lieberman is either incredibly naive or was completely deceived three years ago. And he did his own major switcheroo on the issues last time as well. To my mind, the Gore candidacy was the beginning of the Democratic swing to the left. Dean is merely the natural progression. Dean-Gore is the left-wing synthesis. Only Hillary can stop them now. (Note to self: I wonder how Sid will spin this. It’s a tough one for him, I’d say.)

EMAIL OF THE DAY: Here’s a reader who understands exactly what I’m getting at:

Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention before, but Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000 is really what turned me away (possibly forever) from the Democratic Party. It wasn’t just that I found myself disagreeing with him on issues (I did), but it was primarily the rhetoric. It started with his statements on Social Security. He campaigned on fear and appealed to that basest of human instincts – selfishness. The “what’s in it for me” instinct. As I listened more carefully, I discovered that on virtually every issue, Al Gore’s theme was centered around getting people to think that someone else was profiting and they were losing out. Taxes: the rich are getting richer AT YOUR EXPENSE. Social Security: “YOU will end up in the poorhouse; “THEY” will be taking something away from you.” (Never mind that your children will not even have Social Security if we continue on this path – don’t look to the future; worry about yourself first.) On and on. Are YOU better off than you were four years ago? (Oh, how I despise that question!) It’s all about “THEY” versus “YOU”. It’s never “WE are facing this issue, and here’s what I think is the best solution for US.”
The “angry” Democrat wasn’t created when Bush was elected. He was already angry because Al Gore told him he should be – because someone else was getting something he wasn’t.

Al Gore and George Soros: a match made in heaven.

Sorry to be flip yesterday. On a more properly serious note: the Gore endorsement is, I think, a Very Big Deal. Above all, it reveals the real struggle within the Democratic Party. In 2000, Gore broke decisively with Clinton and the center. Some say this was pure expediency or just Shrummery. I actually think it was genuine. Gore has emerged in these last few years as a real left-wing populist. He wants to soak the corporations, enlarge the welfare state, raise taxes and stand up for minority civil rights. He’s also a Bush-hater for understandable personal reasons. A man who has spoken for MoveOn is a natural Dean supporter and his endorsement, when you think about simply the issues, is an obvious one. What you are seeing among the Democrats right now is therefore a classic right-left split, with the Clintons representing the right (and the party establishment) and Dean emerging as a left-wing threat to their power (using the web to foment his peasants’ revolt). Gore ran against Clinton last time (it’s what lost him the election, in my view); and it makes perfect sense for him to join the anti-Clinton insurrection now. Hillary’s positioning as a hawk might even have been a pre-emptive strike against Gore-Dean. So we have a real ideological split here, and the future of the Dems as a mainstream party is at stake.

THE POLITICS: What’s in it for Gore? As John Ellis points out, a lot. You have to remember that just because almost everyone else on the planet thinks Al Gore’s political career is over, Al Gore doesn’t. By endorsing Dean now, he stands to get a major job in a potential Dean administration. Secretary of State? Supreme Court Justice? Who knows what elaborate scenarios Gore has been contemplating in his own mind. And if Dean goes down in flames (which must surely be the likeliest eventuality), Gore has allied himself with the energized, leftist Democratic base, and could position himself in 2008 as the real soul of the party – unlike that centrist opportunist, Senator Clinton. In fact, the minute after a Bush re-election, the Gore-Clinton struggle for control of the party begins again in earnest. To my mind, this is somewhat delusional of Gore. No sane political party would ever give him another chance at the presidency, after he threw it away with such spectacular incompetence in 2000. But all politicians have to be a little delusional; and Gore is nothing but a politician. For Dean, this kind of endorsement helps build momentum toward inevitability. And it also marks the first time that a major establishment figure has essentially blessed the new forces of web-based anti-war upper-middle-class activism that has propelled his candidacy. Gore, of course, helps with blacks, for good measure, a group now indispensable to any chance the Dems have next year. So there you have it: the left-wing take-over of the Democrats continues apace. And only the Clintons can stop it.

Of course, one problem with the Gore-Dean juggernaut is that it makes an anyone-but-Dean candidacy more likely to emerge at some point. Clark was the obvious option, but he’s so bad a candidate I can’t see him pulling through on a centrist message (especially since he’s been getting shriller and shriller on the stump). Kerry … oh, never mind. Lieberman could have done it, but Gore’s knifing him in the front rather knocks that scenario into the delete file. Edwards? He’s run by far the most appealing campaign to my eyes, but he cannot hope to compete in the big leagues yet, especially with the kind of flattening momentum Dean now has. So Gore manages both to set himself up for 2008 and dent a few potential rivals at the same time. Smart and bold.

THE EMAIL SCREW-UP: TNR gets sent a pitiful email from the Kerry campaign, with an aside meant for campaign staffers only. Can they get any more pathetic?

INDYMEDIA STRIKES AGAIN: A new design for the American flag.

“The decision by Mr. Gore seems likely to help Dr. Dean rebut what has been one of the biggest charges raised by his opponents: That he is a weak candidate who would lead the Democrats to a devastating defeat next year. Mr. Gore has repeatedly said that his top priority next year is helping the Democratic party defeat Mr. Bush.” – analysis from The New York Times.

If that doesn’t stop the Dean campaign in its tracks, what will? Did Gephardt put Gore up to this? Did Kerry? Did Soros?

Here’s an enterprise that obviously needs some pork.

He may have killed 61,000 people in Baghdad alone. The moral calculus for intervention was always overwhelming. It still is.

PEACE-LOVING, LIBERAL EUROPE: Just chock-a-block with hate crimes and violence.

It’s that time of year. Most of you have heard the spiel before but it’s actually very simple. This website is reader-supported. 95 percent of all our income comes from you. We don’t have an advertizing staff or marketing team or a big corporate sponsor. But the flip-side of this wonderful independence is that we depend on you to keep us afloat. Every year we make a pitch for the next year’s funding – an appeal that last year managed to pay all our debts and provide a modest way to support me, our Letters Page editor, and all the expenses of a blog that now has the traffic (and also the costly bandwidth) of many well-funded political magazines online. It takes an enormous amount of work – around the clock, day in, day out – to keep this site full of content and links; and you’re our only means of support. If you visit here regularly, we ask for $20 for the next twelve months; if you come every day or more than once a day, please consider giving more. Without it, the blog won’t survive. With it, the next year – with an election at home and a critical transition in Iraq abroad – could be a bumper one. So please, please give what you can. All the details are here. The future of this site, in the last resort, is up to you.

RUGBY 1. CHOMSKY 0: You want to know what a big march in London looks like? Check this out. Forget war and peace. This is what red-bloeded Englishmen and women really care about.

New York Magazine picks up on a theme pioneered by the blogs.

QAEDA SHIFTS TO IRAQ? An interesting piece in Newsweek suggests that bin Laden has decided to pull some troops and resources out of Afghanistan and deploy them in Iraq. Newsweek, natch, spins this as bad news. In fact, it’s a good development. Right now, Afghanistan is more dangerous and unstable terrain than Iraq. We have the military resources in Iraq to counter al Qaeda. Bin Laden understands the fatal threat a successful democracy in Iraq would pose to Islamo-fascism. A second front helps us and weakens the enemy. Flytrap may be working, after all. (Hat tip: Lt. Smash.)

LEAVE THE CONSTITUTION ALONE: A new website for conservatives opposed to the religious right’s Federal Marriage Amendment.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman doesn’t buy the idea that the ceremonial turkey story aspect of Bush’s visit to Iraq was up to scratch:

I don’t think the story made the case that this was “a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact” of the trip. Maybe it was planned, maybe not. It would have been better just to record the known details of the saga and let the reader figure out whether it meant anything.

But then Mike Allen wouldn’t have been able to have a bash at Bush, would he?