From about 1980 to 1995, it wasn’t much fun being a liberal.

 There was Reagan, and his teflon popularity.  How could a guy sell arms
to terrorists, get over 200 of our marines blown up in an incredible act
of reckless stupidity, blow apart a five year old girl to make political
points, pressure NASA into an ill advised shuttle launch that caused the
death of seven astronauts, turn into a drooling idiot during his second
term, and still be so popular?  It didn’t make sense.

 Of course, the term “astroturf” meant fake grass in stadiums, and
didn’t apply to phony political movements created out of thin air by
corporations, and well-heeled think-tanks that fronted for anything from
the tobacco industry to lunatic-fringe but wealthy crackpot religious
movements.  We didn’t understand that the media was already dominated
by the right, from the heavily subsidized Washington Times to the heavily
promoted Rush Limbaugh.  Back when we still thought the media was at
least trying to be unbiased, the chorus that liberalism was wrong meant
that there really was something wrong with liberalism.

 We expected truths and were told lies: that Ollie North was a patriot,
that Kissinger was wise, that Democrats caused the national debt because
they put all the black people on welfare so they could count on the black vote.

 Limbaugh and other commentators used the word liberal, as they do
today, the same way Hitler used the word “Jew”, stopping only at the
suggestion that a mass extermination was in order.  They made it clear
that no liberal could ever be of any social use, but stopped short of
suggesting anything so drastic.  After all, they took considerable pride
in the ability of their listeners to figure things out for themselves.

 The liberal movement in America was emotionally and politically
unprepared for this, and by the mid-eighties, it was a running joke that
a politician would do anything to avoid being labeled a liberal.  A
popular comic strip of the time, “Bloom County”, had a series on a
hunter seeking the “nearly extinct” American liberal, who once existed
in “vast herds” around the country.

 There was a brief moment of hope in 1992, when Clinton was elected, but
that was quickly extinguished the next year, as it became apparent that
the new Administration could only lurch from one fiasco to the next, and
the scandals seemed endless.  (The fiascos were real; the scandals all
turned out to be Republican astroturf).

 When the GOP unexpectedly took the House in 1994, it was widely assumed
that liberalism was dead, Clinton “irrelevant”, and the GOP and their minions triumphant.

 But as the old saying has it, “Victors are by victory undone”.  Newt
and his crowd had the reins, and everyone started watching them a lot
more closely.  They obliged everyone with a protracted series of
screwups, ranging from Newt’s venality and dishonesty to the ever-more
blatant role of the media as a cheerleader for the right wing.

 Clinton prevailed, and in so doing stopped the right wing from taking
over the country entirely.  They spent hundreds of millions trying to
destroy him, and in the end, wound up with an enormously popular
two-term president, and steadily eroding influence in Congress.

 Yes, they got Putsch in the White House, but they had to spend hundreds
of millions more on propaganda, and in the end, had to suborn the
Supreme Court and steal the election – and worst of all, the voters NOTICED.

 In other words, since 1995, it’s become better and better to be a
liberal.  The Revolution of ‘94 is deader than Newt’s political career,
and people, more and more, are realizing that much of the attitudes and
opinions they see in the mass media are not the give and take of opinion
among a free people, but carefully scripted and analyzed propaganda
from well-heeled entities inimical to actual American freedom.

 More and more people have realized over the past six years that many
of the shibboleths of the right are purest fabrications.  The free market
not only fails to provide the most efficient answer in all circumstances,
but is actually anti-competitive and not interested in the well-being of
the average citizen. California is a model to the world of what happens
when you let a vital social service fall into the greedy paws of the private sector.

The fact that the power blackouts suddenly STOPPED when Jeffords switched
parties and the Senate started investigating the power companies was not lost on
most Californians, as was the astrotruf crap from the right wing assuring Californians
that it was all their fault that there was a sudden power crisis to begin with.
The Christian Coalition not only doesn’t represent America, it doesn’t
even represent Christianity.  Few American Christians believe, as the
central power player in the Coalition does, that Jesus was a failed
prophet and that he, Sun Myung Moon, is the true Messiah.  Economic
booms and surpluses occur, not under the “fiscally responsible”
Republicans, but under the “tax and spend” Democrats.  Not only are
Democrats not pro-“big government”, but it is the Republicans who insist
on rigid and authoritarian structures such as mandatory sentencing and
limited appeals, forced prayer, bans on abortion, limits on legal
redress against corporations, and “zero tolerance.”  Democrats were
called the party of weasel words, but it was the Republicans who gave
us such linguistic abominations as “pro life”, and “faith-based”.  What’s
wrong with plain, simple talk.  Say “anti-abortion” and “religious”!

 Even though Putsch is in the White House, it appears that the wave of
neo-fascism is finally breaking in earnest.  There were two items today,
each minor in and of itself, but together, and combined with a plethora
of stories detailing the Putsch administration setbacks in environment,
the economy, foreign relations and pushing religion at us, are significant.

 First, there was an online poll that wasn’t flooded with rightwing
multiple votes.  Netscape asked people to grade El Presidente, A to F.
Over half (55%) of the tens of thousands of respondents in the
unscientific poll gave him a “D” or an “F”.  No word on where Free
Republic was with their vaunted “freeping” of such polls.  Maybe they
are still licking their wounds after being stiffed by Judge Sauls and
Katherine Harris at their catastrophic convention last month.

 The web used to be the home of “conservatives” – usually right wing
crackpots who raved about the UN and Vince Foster – and “libertarians”
– usually corporate shills using the language of the Founders to make
America the land of Corporations.  As late as 1996, liberals were few
and far between on the web, and often shouted down.  Back then, Steve
Kangas’ site was extraordinary because it was so rare.  Now there are
thousands that emulate it, and dozens that match it.  Now there are tens
of thousands of liberal sites on the web, and Americans, for the first
time in years, are hearing a response from the left to the endless GOP
spin.  The internet is now the home to the American Left, which is,
once again, a viable political movement.

 The second article, in today’s Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31074-2001Jul7.html,
contained the remarkable admission from a GOP media consultant, Alex
Castellanos, that the so-called Reagan Coalition had basically fallen
apart. The article, by Thomas B. Edsall, begins with the startling
statement, “Republican strategists, examining new census data and
recent election returns, are warning that the electorate is
moving steadily to the left and that the party needs to adopt new
rhetoric and tactics to attract the growing number of working women,
Hispanics, secular voters and socially tolerant, well-educated
professionals.”

 Yes, the country is moving steadily to the left.  The GOP has lost
ground in congress in each of the past three elections, despite all the
phony scandals they charged against Clinton, and despite the billions
spent by both Republicans and the well-heeled and motivated outside
interests such as Sun Myung Moon to tinge everything we see or hear in
the mass media.  The only reason they got the White House was by
stealing it, and they dealt themselves a massive blow by doing so.

 Putsch is now less popular at this point than Clinton was after six
months as president–a point regarded as his low-water mark.  But
Clinton had intelligence, personal courage, and strength.  Does Putsch?
I think not.

 We’re moving to the left, folks.  We’re going to take America back,
and make it a free country once again, where no-one need live in fear of
multinational corporations or weird foreign religious demagogues.

 Stop and savor that for a minute.  Then get back to work.
There’s much yet to be done!

 PS: Thanks, Steve.