DANCE HALL OF THE DEAD:

A New's Year Resolution for the left? (Charles Murtaugh, 1/01/03)

Must...get...our...own...cable network... Matthew Yglesias thinks it's not a terrible idea, but first things first: "I find it baffling that the left can't come up with an equivalent to Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings of conservative activists, lobbyists, think tankers, journalists, and government officials. Liberal groups can't possibly be so hard-up for cash that they can't afford to hold meetings for Christ's sake."

Mr. Murtaugh notes several problems with this proposal, but misses the big one: what ideas would they talk about?

Take some of the major issues of the day and then imagine the agenda for this Leftist conclave:

Item One: How can we keep the Administration from deposing Saddam Hussein?

Item Two: How do we stop the Administration from confronting North Korea?

Item Three: How do we stop Missile Defense?

Item Four: Many of the arguments against cloning work against abortion too, so how do we stop the administration from banning or restricting cloning?

Item Five: Republicans are on the defensive about race, but if we push our race issue--like quotas, slave reparations, and the like--we'll doom ourselves with white voters, so how do we keep the topic on the 1948 presidential campaign and away from the issues people care about in 2002?

Item Six: The one issue where Bush himself could be really vulnerable is the economy, especially turning the surplus into a deficit. Unfortunately, because of our constituencies we can't propose any budget cuts and if we propose a tax hike we'll go the way of the Whigs. So we need to come up with a tax cut instead, but one that the Republicans can't possibly embrace and take away from us. Any ideas?

Boy, that'll lift your spirits, eh?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 1, 2003 11:42 PM