{"id":853,"date":"2006-02-23T07:49:48","date_gmt":"2006-02-23T12:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/left-out\/"},"modified":"2006-02-23T07:49:48","modified_gmt":"2006-02-23T12:49:48","slug":"left-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/left-out","title":{"rendered":"Left out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Galt has a nice post on the “message-vacuum” of the Democratic party<\/a>. Here’s a piece:<\/p>\n

Democrats have been blaming the candidates: the wooden Gore, the hapless Kerry. But it seems to me that the problem is that the fissures on the left are so deep that it takes a political genius like Clinton, who zeroed in on symbolic wedge issues with the daring precision of a World War II ace, to cover over them long enough to get elected. Neither Gore nor Kerry were particularly good candidates, to be sure, but it’s not like George Bush is a stunning rhetorician or a dazzling political strategist. His main skills (and weaknesses) lie in dogged determination and keen administrative abilities. Yet he defeated Al Gore, who should have walked all over Bush, given that he was running as the incumbent’s successor in the sunset year of America’s longest postwar economic expansion. Kerry couldn’t beat Bush even though the guy had been caught in bed with a naked economic recession, suffered through a subsequent jobless recovery, and got the country into an enormously expensive, and prolonged, conflict in Iraq. Is that really a problem of the candidates, or the party?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read all about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Galt has a nice post on the “message-vacuum” of the Democratic party. Here’s a piece: Democrats have been blaming the candidates: the wooden Gore, the hapless Kerry. But it seems to me that the problem is that the fissures on the left are so deep that it takes a political genius like Clinton, who … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Left out”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-dL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1617,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/gore-smash","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":0},"title":"Gore Smash!","author":"Gil","date":"August 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"At City Journal, Harry Stein has an entertaining review of Al Gore's aptly titled Assault on Reason: But Al Gore is like one of those guys at a party with whom, once you get a few drinks in him, you never know what\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s coming. He\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s liable to strip to his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1594201226","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":843,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/grouse","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":1},"title":"Grouse!","author":"Gil","date":"February 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Because I wasn't the guy who got shot, I think the Cheney hunting accident is pretty funny. Maybe not as funny as Bobby Knight plugging a buddy while grouse hunting in 1999, nor beating up his son on another hunting trip (broken nose, dislocated shoulder), but still pretty good. What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6926,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-cartoon-character","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":2},"title":"Podcast: Cartoon Character","author":"Gil","date":"March 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories - season 3 episode 6 Matt Wuerker - Cartoon Character \"Political cartoonists have it easy: we turn on the TV or computer and Sarah Palin has said some inane thing . . . and the cartoons can write themselves. In the world of cartooning, we're the lazy bastards.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B0006H92QK","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5145,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-i-think-about-when-im-walking-the-dogs-at-530-a-m","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":3},"title":"What I think about when I’m walking the dogs at 5:30 a.m.","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Three of the last four Republican nominees for president got blown up in wartime: Bush I, Dole and McCain. You'd think they'd smarten up and look for luckier candidates.","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":435,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/waffling","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":4},"title":"Waffling","author":"Gil","date":"December 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"That cathedral I mentioned a few days ago? It really does look better at night.I took a couple more pictures of the Christmas setup at Grand' Place on Wednesday. My publisher, associate publisher and I took our European sales rep out for dinner near there, and meandered around in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brussels"","block_context":{"text":"Brussels","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/brussels"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":346,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/those-are-my-options","url_meta":{"origin":853,"position":5},"title":"Those are my options?","author":"Gil","date":"September 24, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrew Sullivan on Kerry: Kerry also suffers from the fact that he's been a senator for twenty years. If you're not a logorrheic, indecisive ponderer after two decades in the U.S. Senate, then you're probably a cocaine addict. Read on.","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}