We're left, I'm gone: my predictions

I'll save you the sappy farewell address. Your time and the space on this page are both too valuable for yet another self-serving farewell with exhortations to take advantage of your time here. Anyone who thinks they have it all figured out after four years here is deluding themselves, so I won't bore you with the same old maxims. Instead, I'd like to take advantage of the fact that you won't have Charles Donefer to kick around anymore by making some predictions about the political situation in the months and years ahead.

The return of triangulation. Bill Clinton survived six years of a hostile Congress by adopting some of the opposition's more moderate proposals and taking over the center -- otherwise known as triangulation. President Bush has used a different approach to maintaining control over the agenda.

By mobilizing his base with "red meat" proposals like tax cuts, funneling public money to churches and what is shaping up to be a never-ending war with the Islamic world, Bush, with the help of Karl Rove and others, has made the base so enthusiastic for and defensive of Bush that they are willing to fight tooth and nail for his proposals. Whereas triangulation appealed to centrist voters but received tepid support from Democratic Party loyalists, Bush's strategy has the full support of the entire conservative movement, which won't last. Everyone is pulling for him and working to put down opposition, from think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Republican Congressional power brokers like Tom "The Hammer" DeLay (R-TX) and media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, which brings me to my second prediction.

The "liberal media" myth will die a much-deserved death. The other day, I was watching Scarborough Country with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. This man, who has his own show on a cable news channel, was ranting about how the "liberal media elite" would spin this and that hot issue. Was he serious? The most popular cable news channel is Fox News, which makes no secret of its conservative bias. CNN, attacked as being liberal, at least makes an attempt at balance -- keeping in mind that centrism looks liberal to a conservative, just as it looks conservative to a liberal. Lately, MSNBC has tried to improve its anemic ratings by going even farther to the right than Fox News by hiring kooks like Scarborough and the bilious and hateful Michael Savage, who called fellow MSNBC employee Ashleigh Banfield a "slut" for allegedly being too liberal.

It's not just television, either. Clear Channel, America's largest owner of radio stations, held pro-war rallies across the country and whose stations encouraged burning or otherwise destroying Dixie Chicks albums.

The whole concept of the "liberal media" is part of the conservative persecution complex, which extends to the existence of liberals in universities, the corporate world and just about anywhere else. Never have such a privileged group felt so oppressed. As it becomes evident that we won't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and most of the President's rationales for going to war were either weak or outright false, the utter failure of the nation's media to question any of it should prove to most people once and for all that all the whining about the "liberal media elite" is laughable.

Democrats won't be disorganized forever. Even more than knee-jerk flag-waving and a press unwilling to ask tough questions, President Bush has benefited from the almost comic incompetence of the Democratic Party. Where are the policy alternatives? It seems as if they're languishing at Brookings and in the pages of The American Prospect while Daschle, Pelosi, Kerry and the rest are flailing in the wind. The joke is that the only formation into which liberals can arrange themselves is a circular firing squad; this isn't true. The New Deal Coalition included southern whites, immigrants, urban African-Americans and labor unions -- groups that don't usually associate with one another. They held together for three decades, until Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" lumped southern whites with western libertarians and northeastern money.

Just because there is no dominant voice coming from the left doesn't mean that, all of a sudden, all of America favors tax cuts, the death penalty, the War on Drugs and Strom Thurmond for President in 1948. Perhaps the presidential candidate will be the uniting voice, or it may be a renegade Congressman who challenges the dormant Democratic leadership.

Democrats will learn how to exploit bigot eruptions. Remember Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions?" They were self-sustaining stories that ate up news cycles and drew coverage away from issues. Fueled by bribing reporters funded by rich conservatives, such as the reformed David Brock,they didn't succeed in bringing down Clinton, but they did slow him down. Similarly, Republicans have been suffering from a series of "bigot eruptions," starting with Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) and continuing with recent homophobic comments from Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA). In between, there were a series of smaller eruptions, including a statement by one North Carolina Congressman that favored Japanese internment during World War II and a series of anti-black comments from other southern Republicans. These stories die because major news outlets tend to ignore them after a few days at maximum. Soon, Democrats will figure out how to use their friendly media organs to keep these stories going, tearing down Republicans, bigot by bigot, until they learn how to be nice, although I don't see that happening any time soon.