Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I mean, look what Gillespie highlighted in reviewing Bai's latest book, a book that details what Bai believes to be the intellectual shortcomings of the Democratic Party and the American left in general:

"The Argument" provides plenty of reasons to think that the Democrats, owing to an off-putting mix of elitism toward the little people and glibness toward actual policy ideas, are unlikely to go over the top anytime soon. Or, almost the same thing, to make the most of any majority they hold. The book describes Soros, after Bush's victory in 2004, coming to the realization that (in Bai's words) "it was the American people, and not their figurehead, who were misguided. ... Decadence ... had led to a society that seemed incapable of conjuring up any outrage at deceptive policies that made the rich richer and the world less safe." Rob Reiner, the Hollywood heavyweight who has contributed significantly to progressive causes and who pushed a hugely expensive universal preschool ballot initiative in California that lost by a resounding 3-to-2 ratio, interrupts a discussion by announcing: "I've got to take a leak. Talk amongst yourselves." Bai never stints on such telling and unattractive details, whether describing a poorly attended and heavily scripted MoveOn.org house party or a celebrity-soaked soiree in which the host, the billionaire Lynda Resnick, declared from the top of her Sunset Boulevard mansion's spiral staircase, "We are so tired of being disenfranchised!"

[Markos] Moulitsas, the Prince Hal of the left-liberal blogosphere, comes off as an intellectual lightweight, boasting to Bai that his next book will be called "The Libertarian Democrat" but admitting that he has never read Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and social theorist, who is arguably most responsible for the contemporary libertarian movement. Moulitsas' co-author (of "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics"), Jerome Armstrong, talks a grand game about revolutionary change, but signed on as a paid consultant to former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, an archetypal centrist Democrat whose vapid presidential campaign ended almost as quickly as it began. When MoveOn -- the Web-based "colossus" whose e-mail appeals, Bai says, have always centered on the same message: "Republicans were evil, arrogant and corrupt" -- devised its member-generated agenda, it came up with a low-calorie three-point plan: "health care for all"; "energy independence through clean, renewable sources"; and "democracy restored."

Of course, when discussing intellectual deficiencies on the part of various grandees of the netroots, Bai could have pointed to other problems as well. And he might have referenced problems with corruption while he was at it.