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The Michael Moore “problem”

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As a follow-up to my comments below, this Matt Welch post bears extensive plag…er, quoting:

Jeff Jarvis says “Michael Moore lost the election.” Roger Simon adds that Kerry blew “an obvious opportunity to win the election – the perfect ‘Sister Souljah’ moment,” i.e., denouncing Moore.

Let’s address Roger’s point first, with a question: When, during the entire presidential campaign, was the incumbent president of the United States ever asked to come up with a Sister Souljah moment? (Widely understood to mean something like, “a controversial repudiation of your own party’s extremism.”) I did a Lexis search on “George Bush” and “Souljah moment” covering the last six months, and came up with exactly 8 responses. Six of those were actually about Kerry, and the 7th condemned both candidates equally. Only 1 result — over six months — was an unequivocal call for George Bush to distance himself from the lunatic fringe of his own party. Significantly, it did not come from the Mainstream Media, but rather from political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, who argued that keeping anti-homosexuality language out of the Republican Party Platform was an excellent way for Bush to reach out to moderates. We all know how well that went.

“John Kerry” and “Souljah moment,” meanwhile, produces 26 results. 20 are directly about Kerry, just 1 about Bush. Which begs the question: Is the Moonbat Left 20 times more worthy of denunciation than the Lunar Right? While you chew on that, here are some examples of the media either urging Kerry to go all Souljah on some Lefty’s ass, or lamenting that he didn’t.

I heard more than 100 people during this election cycle say they intended, through their vote, to repudiate “the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party.” Here’s the deal: There is no such thing, at least of any significance.

[…]

Michael Moore did not even belong to the Democratic Party in 2000; his candidate was Ralph Nader, and Ralph Nader got a meager 2.7% of the vote. For the sake of argument, if you assume (wrongly) that every single one of those Nader voters, plus the 1.3% or so that defected from him in the last minute, represent “the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party,” you are talking about 4% of the electorate, and maybe 8% of the Democratic Party. The real figure is likely much lower.

What about this year? In the primary season, Moore endorsed Wesley Clark, who campaigned like a boob, won one primary, and bowed out. Howard Dean, who is assumed (wrongly) to have Moore-like values (despite being a fiscal hawk who supported the four previous U.S.-led wars), didn’t win a single primary. The Democratic candidate whose politics most closely mirrored Moore’s was Dennis Kucinich, who was beaten like a rented elf. The nomination went to the former prosecutor & War Hero, and he picked as VP the second-most hawkish candidate from the primaries. And the Democratic Party Platform contained few if any of the provisions that the Moore/Nader/Kucinich 8% wing have been advocating for lo these many years.

Look, I used to work for these people, I have covered these people, I have certainly criticized these people, and from this extended exposure I can look you in the eye and say these people do not have a significant voice within the modern Democratic Party.

Yeah, you say, but what about Michael Moore wuz at the Democratic Convention in the skybox?? He was there at the invitation of discredited former president Jimmy Carter, the man who tasted the back of Bill Clinton’s hand quite often in the mid-1990s. At the Republican Convention, one could find strolling the halls and signing autographs for worshipful Republican delegates the likes of Jerry Falwell. Who, you may recall, reacted to the Sept. 11 massacre by telling a nodding Pat Robertson that:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”
Did Bush “miss a Souljah moment” by refusing to allow Falwell his seat at the RNC (which the Souljah-jonesers in the media demanded of Kerry and Moore)? Somehow, this didn’t come up.

Anyway, the main point is not to compare competing fringes, but mostly to point out that the Republicans’ extremist fringe includes powerful senior elected politicians from their own party. Moore, for all his sitting-next-to-people action at the DNC, was not invited on the podium. Rick Santorum, the senator from Pennsylvania who has described outlawing gay marriage as “the ultimate Homeland security,” gave a rousing speech to the Republicans. Tom Coburn, the new Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for abortion doctors, and held up Fidel Castro’s forced AIDS camps as a model worth emulating. Jim DeMint, your new Senator from South Carolina, thinks that single pregnant women shouldn’t teach in public schools. If Bush wanted to deliver a “Sister Souljah moment,” embracing cross-over moderation at the expense of his own party’s fringe, he wouldn’t need to take a swipe at a non-politician like Ann Coulter — he could start in the august hall of the Unites States Senate.

So finally answering Jarvis’ question: Did Michael Moore cost Kerry the election? Answer: Maybe! (I think it’s impossible to ascribe one reason to a complicated election.) But if it’s true, it’s only because the people who voted that way didn’t know or didn’t care that Moore’s influence over the Democratic Party pales in comparison to Republican extremists’ over the Republicans.

I agree entirely with Rob that Atrios is wrong to defend the substantive arguments of pacifists and conspiracy theorists. But the Beinhart/Yglesias/Drum agrument plays into the effective (for the right) lie that the extremely marginal Michael Moore faction of the party exerted a large influence on the Dem campaign of 2004, a claim that is not only completely false but actively self-destructive. Any Dem who starts an argument with this premise is part of the problem.

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