"MoveOn took a big hit today. What I would have liked to see is the entire Democratic caucus simply abstain from the vote using Barack Obama's rationale. That would have been a good way to show contempt for gotcha politics."

If they had done that, I wouldn't have been so angry.
but they didn't, which was stupid, self-defeating, and alienated a powerful part of the base.

like I said, I've washed my hands. they can go get fucked for all i care.

John Mccain Called his wife WHAT??

I'm more concerned with the other vote we lost today.  Who cares what the Senate thinks about a stupid ad?  Only 28 Senators had the cojones to fight Bush today.  Talk about demoralizing...

Latino Político | "We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit." - Octavio Paz

Unfortunately, MoveOn's childish, foolish and sophomoric ad became the story.  By running this ad, they became the story, and that was a tactical error.

I don't think they really understood how much respect General Petraeus has on the Hill. And they certainly didn't understand how much of a taboo they were violating when they accused our lead general in Iraq of betrayal.

Maybe their level of disgust has reacehed such a point that they no longer GIVE a shit what our craven representatives think of this two-faced, ass-kissing general.

TABOO!!!

Can we not quite justly call Butch a betrayer?

Cheney and his oil lords/warlords?

Then why not Petraeus?

Latino Político pinned it, here.

Only 28 Senators had the cojones to fight Bush today.  Talk about demoralizing...

Let us admit the obvious, BooMan.

The Congressional war is lost.

There is NO party to whom we can turn.

Only the people.

Let us REALLY "Move On".

To the NEXT phase.

ANOTHER party.

A party of, by and for the people.

If we survive in a practically functioning electoral system that long, of course.

It's been done before.

The Boston Tea Party.

Let us have an E Party!!!

And not cop out anymore.

"Not practical", you say?

Tell that to Thomas Paine

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

and

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Where and when do we draw the line, Booman?

Where and when?

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

As much as I might agree with your major points, I think as much of a hit as you think MoveOn took, I think the Democrats took a greater one with regard to this vote. People are reassessing their contributions--giving them to MoveOn rather than to the Democrats.

I am unbelievably disappointed in you and this site.   You should be supporting MoveOn, not attacking it.  If you disagree with the politics of their ad, send them a private e-mail.

If the Democrats had stood in unison today against this FoxNews/right wing attempt to divert attention,  they would have had most of the public behind them.  Instead, they (and you) got out-maneuvered by the right again.  I'm getting so depressed at the lack of moral spine in this country that I can't stand it.

I'm taking this site off my favorites list and sending more money to MoveOn.  

I'm not all that convinced that it was such a terrible thing. As Paul Krugman pointed out, the only people who paid any attention to Petreaus's testimony were the Beltway crowd. Sure, the Republicans are all worked up about it, and why not? They're desperate, clutching at straws.

Just as those hearings didn't budge the poll numbers, neither will this ad. It's too inside baseball - most people don't read the Times, and the ones who do are tired of listening to Republicans justify this war.

Using your marketing analogy, the WAR is the banana. The MoveOn ad said, "We think this banana dealer is selling rotten bananas!" People who heard about it ONLY NOTICED THE BANANA.

I'd bet my life on it.    

Please read Jane

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/09/20/hey-all-you-anti-war-crazies/

At least Rep. Stark gets it.

"Coach Leary, walking on water wasn't built in a day" -Kerouac

Over at Move On a commenter has said something like the following: "The Dems think all they have to do is give the Republicans enough rope and they will hang themselves. Instead they are looping the rope around the Dems necks!"
There are a lot of ways the Dems could have "handled" today's vote. They didn't choose to do anything but roll over. I personally think that the Move On folks probably overreached with the original Ad. In my opinion however, we are way past the time when keeping our powder dry at all costs is the operative strategy of the day. This inertia of biding our time has become a way of life for many career types inside the beltway. These are not "normal" times. Somebody has to stand for something sometime. It would be nice if it were the Dems doing the right thing(s) NOW!  

We need to push for Progressive change, now more than ever.

Petreuas lied in his testimony, has held briefings for Republicans only, encourages speculation about a political career

why are we calling for his court martial?

First, while Petraeus was dishonest to the extreme in the pursuit of his career, I'm not sure that moving the target off of Bush was productive.

Second, there are far, far better ways to attack. Tonight on Randi Rhodes I heard a bit (alleged comedy) that was so powerful that it needs to be a MoveOn ad: It said that the Republicans were going to BETRAY their own base, supporting the war until after their primaries, then switching. They admit to that! That means they are willing to sacrifice hundreds of our kids, and injure ten times that, in order to save their butts.

That's Betrayal--that needs to be advertised in every medium in this nation. No Republican should be allowed to switch that way without being hung!

Michaela

The military didn't betray us.  Petraeus betrayed us.  KO got it right.  Why couldn't the Congressional Dems?

How hard is it to say that Petraeus has become a politician, and that in pursuit of politics he has betrayed his troops and the national interest?

Oh, it was the tone of the ad.  Well WTF were those purple heart bandaids in 2004 or the accusations that Max Cleland did not support America in 2002?

It's time to stop second-guessing those folks who are causing Republicans some political pain.  Cornyn struck back because the ad had traction with ordinary people.  The Republican spin machine had a hard time spinning this and still will despite the caving of the Senate Democrats.  Ordinary people are not fooled by the kabuki anymore.  But they are beginning to say "if the Democrats won't stand up to Bush, how can we be sure that they will stand up to al Quaeda?"  The ad had the practical effect of stopping the Petraeus charm offensive dead in the water.  And for this service, MoveOn gets punished by the likely beneficiaries of this ad.

If you don't like MoveOn's tactics, try your own.  Dollars to donuts, if you are effective some wingnut Senator will introduce a resolution to condemn you.  Move over MoveOn and Michael Moore.  Who's next?

50 states, 210 media market, 435 Congressional Districts, 3080 counties, 192,480 precincts

Boo, this is the most sadly asinine argument I've ever seen you make. You sound like a Clinton consultant. Cong. Pete Stark is one of the few who gets it:

"I commend MoveOn for their ad and for speaking truth to power," said Stark. "Up is not down, the earth is not flat, and the surge is not working. General Petreaus betrayed his own reputation by standing with George Bush in opposition to the timely withdrawal of all of our brave men and women from Iraq. I thank MoveOn for their patriotic ad and call on Petreaus to help Bush end a war the President should have never started."

This was only a stick of dynamite for a gang of frigging morons who couldn't win a debate against 3-year-olds. Stark knew exactly what to say. A large majority of Americans believe Petraeus was probably lying. Petraeus's old boss thinks he's a sniveling asskisser.

MoveOn is not an arm of the Democratic Party, thank gods, or they'd be cretins, too, just by association. I worked my ass off doing what I hate most in the world: cold calling strangers to get out the vote for craven incompetents like McCloskey, Webb, Tester, and even -- holding my nose -- for Casey. MoveOn's thousands of other volunteers gave control of the Senate to the Dems. That's simply a fact. And yet the effort was all for nothing at all. We got a new boss. Same as the old boss.

The issue is not whether the ad was tasteful enough or aided Dem political outlooks. That wasn't its purpose. The issue is that the craven Dems had to GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to wave their goddamn flag and do their time-honored dance of shame and horror about nothing. I agree with you on only one thing: the response should have been to say, this resolution is too trivial and stupid for us to even dignify with a response. It is beneath the dignity of the Senate. We are just going to ignore it. And then use some party discipline just once to make that happen. Or they could have stopped the thing from reaching the floor in the first place.

I don't think you understand what has happened here. The Democrats just blew their chance for a long-term national majority. MoveOn and a very few others won them the last election. That won't happen again. Not from MoveOn, and probably not from PFAW or anybody else that now knows what happens when you sleep with snakes. Do you still think you're gonna get that blowout next November when all the Dems have going for them is the DLC? Lotsa luck with that.

I give up. Nader was right and I was wrong. If I ever bother with party politics again it will be for the Greens or somebody else. Not one more dime or phone call or kind word for the Democratic Party. They have yet again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It just makes me sad that the likes of Feingold and Stark have no place better to go than this nest of syphilitic weasels.

FDR's response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."

...that you're taking this position.

you are, along w/clark, most of the dems and all the repubbbs, getting stuck on the dumb headline instead of the actual ad.

gee, instead of worrying about a headline with a bad rhyme (as i've said elsewhere, they're just lucky the guy's name wasn't general buckhew), why not focus on passing some legislation to, oh, i don't know, let the troops have some time off between deployments?  or cutting off the funding of the war?  or any goddamn thing that actually had to do with reality and not pr?

pr is only important if you let everyone in the room demand that it is.  as much as everyone loves to say that perception is reality, if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth, etc etc etc, the real reality is, the laws of physics, economics and human interaction will trump good and/or bad pr everytime.

you can say a headline to an ad taken out by an organization of private citizens was a bad move, but that doesn't negate the reality that the war is going badly and our continued presence in iraq is destroying any good will america has among the arabic peoples of this world.

you can say an ad is more important than a war but that don't make it so.

i'm sick of these namby pamby dems trying to pussy foot their way thru the minefield of rightist anger, as if what a bunch of conservatives think about them really matter.  

because you can fucking well bet that the conservatives don't give a flying rat's ass what we think about them.

so, as i say on my blog, no more $$ for dems (tho i did contribute to stark, as i believe in rewarding good behavior).

Would that others would be so direct in their speech.

It's exactly what we need right now. Much more of it.

And direct action to challenge both parties.

Just ignore what they do. A very simple statement:  MoveOn is not part of the democratic party.

It's all about moving the debate forward.  Sometimes others have to do that because you can't.

I'm not suggesting that MoveOn is immune from criticism or that people can't disagree with their tactics.  I am saying that by not backing up their right to speech and by joining the right wing chorus in the tone and timing of your criticism you are helping the right wing cause.   There are excellent posts by digby and Robert Borosage at Huffington Post that express this problem more eloquently than I have.   Unless true moderates and progressives stick together against these right wing ploys, the right wing will keep winning.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage

In the end, I still think the Democrats made a far bigger mistake than MoveOn in this entire fiasco.   In 2005 and 2006, I remember reading hundreds of e-mails and websites arguing that it was useless to try to elect Democrats because they were spineless.   MoveOn managed to help motivate millions of people to ignore this conventional wisdom and become active in politics, in some cases (as in mine) for the first time.   Yet, when faced with the predictable right wing attack on an ad that did show some spine, the Democrats didn't just express personal disagreement, they helped pass a god damned Congressional resolution condemning it.  I'm sorry, but MoveOn did not deserve that and the Democrats are wimps for allowing it.    I suppose I'm hopelessly naive, but I do want supposed allies to protect my back.   So I will continue to look for candidates and commentators who will do that.  

I came back to this site today to check on others' reaction to your comments yesterday about MoveOn and before removing the site from the favorites list on my work computer.   I certainly saw nothing in the tone or content of your later comments to me and to others to make me change my mind.  

What you have basically done is take the position that the military cannot be criticized, that it is okay for Congress to attempt to squash dissent by phony resolutions and that anyone who uses tactics with which you disagree should be left swinging in the wind.   As I indicated earlier, the appropriate response to this kind of right wing/Fox News motivated campaign is to stand together in alliance or at least remain silent.

Like some of the other commentators here, I spent time with MoveOn calling voters during the last election trying to elect Democrats to Congress.   It really appalls me to see so many members of the party turn on them and join the right wing.

It's too bad.  I used to check into your site 4 or 5 times a day.  No more.

When Four Media Heavyweights Attacked a GENERAL

Four of the heaviest heavyweights in the entire Media - Jennings of ABC, Brokaw and Russert of NBC, and Broder of the Pentagon Post, the annointed "Dean" of the Washington Press Corpse - all attacked Clark.

Why? Because Clark refused to attack Moore for telling the absolute truth, that Emperor Bush, the Conqueror of Mesopotamia, had no clothes!

At the time, there was absolutely no debate about the propriety of blow-dried media millionaires who never served a day in their collective lives attacking a 4-star general. In fact they all got up on their highest horses and declared it their sacred duty to attack Clark for something he didn't even say.

And why was it not only acceptable, but their absolute duty?

Because Clark was a Democrat.

The Corporate Media has two competely opposite sets of rules - Republicans can say and do the most vicious things and associate with the most evil people, but it's just a good game of "hardball." But Democrats are not allowed to say or do anything even remotely "mean" or associate with anyone even remotely "bad" without coming under savage and unrelenting attack.

It's been this way since Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew moved into the White House in 1969. It's what destroyed the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and the campaigns of Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry. But the leaders of the Democratic Party have never figured it out...

Bashing MoveOn just reinforces this double standard. Instead, we should be bashing the corporate media and the stupid, cowardly Dems.

Republicans will attack former military, but they would not have attacked Wesley Clark while he was serving in Kosovo.

That's a very good point. I hadn't thought of that. That makes the post by Bob Fertik I quoted disingenuous, I guess.

I admire your continuing to defend your position, in view of the onslaught you've received on this. I guess people like me are responding more emotionally, while you are thinking about this more coolly.