alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

February 20, 2006

He Who Shall Not Be Named

by AltHippo @ 10:35 am. Filed under Pennacchio

A very silly post by Jonathan Singer at MyDD, where for a site that’s named for Direct Democracy, there’s an awful lot of deference paid to the centralized authority of the party. A brief quote:

Some of us in the progressive wing of the blogosphere have contemplated staying home on election day rather than supporting the eventual Democratic nominee in the state. Why, if my candidate did not gain the party nomination — for whatever reason — should I go to the polls on election day, let alone try to organize or work to get out the vote in the coming months?

I haven’t heard anyone suggesting we should stay home on election night The only thing I’ve heard is that the Democratic party shouldn’t be choosing candidates. Instead, the voters of that state should. That’s umh… watchamacallit… democracy.

What I would support, though, is a donation boycott of groups that are supporting this practise.

The candidate Singer doesn’t want to talk about (or for that matter, name) is Pennacchio, who, unlike Casey, isn’t a DINO.

What’s weird is that Singer uses a possible Supreme Court vacancy to scare the grassroots into supporting Casey. But Casey said he would have voted for Alito. How much scarier could he be?

Update: Toned down the snark. Something was eating me from the weekend, and instead of whiping my metaphorical shoes at the door, I brought it into the blogosphere with me. Hopefully no one picks up anything.

Second Update: KCinDC writes: “To be fair, Singer addresses your point about the Supreme Court nomination in his next-to-last paragraph.”

Yes, I saw that in the original post, and this one of the reasons I call this a silly post. Here’s what Singer said: (emphasis mine)

Will a Bob Casey vote to stop the nomination of an extreme conservative to the Court? It’s not entirely clear, though his track record of voicing support for Bush’s nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito does not provide much hope that he will vote to uphold a woman’s right to choose, for instance. But with Bob Casey in the United States Senate, along with Democrats in red states like Missouri, Ohio, Montana, and maybe even Arizona, Virginia and Nevada, Patrick Leahy could chair the next hearing on the nomination to the Supreme Court. Without Bob Casey and other moderate or conservative red state Dems, Arlen Specter could have yet another opportunity to prove that he can cave to the Bush administration when push comes to shove.

This is a very good example of twisted logic in persuassive speech.

Consider instead the following sentence: It’s not clear how Achilles feels about the Trojans, but his role in the sacking of Troy suggests that he may vote against funding the Trojan Arts Council, for instance. It’s just too silly to comment on.

And I don’t buy the as long as it’s a Dem argument. If Santorum said he’d run as a Democrat, would Singer consider that a viable option?

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