Signs of things to come

Well, it seems that John Kerry made an ad-libbed remark during his speech at his show-and-tell with John Edwards on Tuesday morning and actually took a vaguely progessive position; specifically, that we're spending too much on prisons and would be better off investing that money in education.

That would seem pretty reasonable. After all, as the Sentencing Project points out, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world - a rate that continued to climb (along with the length of sentences) even as the crime rate dropped. (And before anyone jumps up with a raised hand, drawing in breath to break into the conversation, no, that does not show that putting more people in prison cuts crime. The relationship between the imprisonment and crime rates is inconsistent - that is, there is no correlation and so no connection.)

So what happens? Two big-name liberal pundits - Jonathan Chait at The New Republic and Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect - freak.

"Bad instincts," mourns the former. "Clinton showed pretty clearly that the right political message for Democrats is to be tough on crime."

"Terrible politics," wails the latter. "It's no reasonable person's idea of a winning political message."

Yeah, that's what counts: Is it the "right message," the "winning message?" Never mind the truth (Yglesias even admits to agreeing with Kerry), never mind what you believe, don't say it, don't even breathe it if it's not the "right message," the "winning message." Don't say things that don't play to people's prejudices, no, not even if it's true, and most of all don't ever, ever, say anything that might make people have to, you know, think. Because it's all about the "message."

And they wonder why Nader supporters can't get excited about the Democrats.