Footnote to an earlier post

This one, in fact, the one where I said we were screwed no matter the result on November 2 because the Dummycrats apparently have no guts for the fight against GOPper undermining of the entire system of voting.

In a column in the October 10 Village Voice, Rick Perlstein writes from Washington, DC, that even "level-headed" people are beginning to worry for the future of democracy and think something has to be done about it. However, he goes on,

[s]pend three days talking to movers and shakers around this town and you're hard-pressed to find anyone who agrees. Even those who think the president is stealing our democratic birthright are eloquent in their excuses for why we shouldn't do anything much about it at all.

Democratic insiders use politics to explain their inaction away. They've seen the focus groups: Accusations of a president draining the lifeblood from democracy just won't play in Peoria. "It's what the folks in this business, we call an 'elite argument,'" says Jeff Shesol, who was a speechwriter for President Clinton and whose firm, West Wing Writers, develops messages for some of the most prominent Democratic campaigns. "It pitches too high to reach the mass electorate." ...

Peter Fenn, a Washington advertising guru who frequently represents the Democratic side on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, says reaching voters on this point is hopeless: "Their eyes glaze over when you deal with process kind of issues."

Yet the "process," by many accounts, is not just broken but shattered, intentionally ground into dust by Karl Rove and his Republican campaign machine. "What these guys do every day, as a matter of course, without thinking twice about it, would be dramatic transgressions even under Nixon," Jeff Shesol admits.... He's just amazingly quick to dismiss the notion that there's anything a Democratic presidential campaign can do about it. ...

[Democratic consultant Julian] Epstein called arguments focusing on injury to democracy a "sideshow": better to focus on executive mismanagement. He adds, "Most people would rather vote for the guy that stole the other guy's lunch money, rather than the guy who complained that his lunch money was stolen."

So much for using the Democratic presidential campaign as any kind of check on the corruption of the democratic process. The consultants have spoken; they've decided it's not worth the fight.

Like I said. We are screwed.