HOW WE GOT HERE: All of a sudden, we're getting real good!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Part 3—We know this because Rachel says: On November 9, after decades of napping, we liberals arose to a new reality:

The craziest candidate in American history was president-elect!

Showing our infallible judgment, we liberals saw what this meant. It was time for us the liberals to get involved!

Ten weeks later, Rep. Keith Ellison chuckled about our new ardor. Two days after the mammoth women's march, his comment appeared at the start of this front-page report in the Washington Post:

WEIGEL AND PORTNOY (1/23/17): Alex Ellison, a senior at Boston's Emerson College, was thrilled by what she saw at the women's marches. She called her uncle, and Rep. Keith Ellison listened as the niece he'd struggled to get involved in the 2016 campaign described how inspiring it was to be surrounded by women, fighting for a cause.

"I was like—oh, now you're interested?" Ellison (D-Minn.) remembered with a laugh.

The scale of Saturday's marches, in Washington and elsewhere, surprised even the most optimistic boosters. Democrats who had tried and failed to generate enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton saw crowds conquering cities, as well as small towns she'd badly lost.

Rep. Ellison spotted the humor. To be honest, we didn't.

This isn't a criticism of Ellison's niece, who began her fight for the cause about twenty-five years too late. We offer this as a criticism of liberal leadership cadres—the people who failed, for twenty-five years, to rally the rank-and-file concerning the need for a fight and concerning the skills that are needed.

On balance, it's good that all those people marched that day. On balance, it's good that many liberals and liberal groups are now engaged in a series of fights.

That said, the giant damage had been done by the time the niece decided to fight. People like her had been failed, for many years, by their slumbering, hapless/inept, self-dealing leadership cadres.

Just in time to be too late, we liberals are pushing back hard! The people who failed us are cheering us on. It's the new way of selling the car.

As this embarrassing chain unfolds, we think a question should be asked. Will we ever come to terms with the ludicrous ways we liberals managed to get here?

Granted, the election of the world's craziest candidate is completely the fault of Those People. No one can think that losing to such a ludicrous person could possibly, in any small way, reflect some shortcoming in Us.

The craziest candidate got where he is because of the bigotry of The Others! That said, will we liberals ever be able to understand the admittedly tiny ways in which we ourselves may have failed, admittedly in some tiny way?

Almost surely, the answer is no. Last Friday, a cable star was selling the car by praising us for our greatness.

The cable star was Rachel Maddow, who clowned her way through sixteen months of masterful campaign non-coverage. Ever since Donald J. Trump got elected, Maddow has been selling the car by telling us how fun and exciting it will be to see what happens in the Trump era.

(Easy for Maddow to say! By now, we'll guess that she's being paid $10 million per year.)

Maddow has been selling the car by saying how fun and exciting it will be. Also, by praising us, in ludicrous ways, for how smart we've now become.

Starting in May 2015, did anyone sleep through the last campaign more than Rachel Maddow? We'll briefly review her performance next week, when we review the liberal cadres who have helped put Trump where he is.

For today, let's note the way Maddow was selling the car at the end of last Friday night's program. As usual, she was talking down to us viewers, confident that we wouldn't be able to see her for the hustler/clown she has become.

The segment started with footage of an exchange outside the office of a Republican congressman. A fiery liberal peppered an aide to the congressman with a series of questions about the congressman's stand on the Affordable Care Act.

After playing the tape, Maddow told us how smart we've become. For the record, she included a minor factual error as she poured it on:

MADDOW (2/10/17): That's what it's been like with constituents expressing themselves toward, in this case, New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin. Today, Congressman Zeldin canceled a town hall two months in advance of when it was supposed to happen, in April, because I think he is not particularly liking what it means for him and his staff to hear from his constituents these days.

But you know what? I wanted to show you that clip of that confrontation over the Affordable Care Act. I think it shows that people in general are getting very good, at being very articulate about Obamacare all of a sudden, right? Whatever the fights in the past had been about, right? With the people on the right saying, "Oh, it's socialized medicine" and it's "death panels" and stuff, and people in support of it not necessarily being able to be that snappy.

People, all of a sudden, are really good about articulating what's good about the Affordable Care Act when they're talking to their member of Congress, when they're talking to congressional staffers. This, for example, was last night in Tennessee:

"All of a sudden" we're getting really good, this corporate fraudster declared. For the full transcript, click here.

All of a sudden we're getting real good! Presumably, we were supposed to swell with pride when we heard Rachel say that. But uh-oh! Here on our sprawling campus, our youthful analysts had a different response.

They tore their hair and wailed and moaned about Maddow's familiar fawning. "Why didn't we 'get really good' in 2009?" one of the youngsters asked.

We'll answer that youngster's question next week. For today, let's continue to watch as the car gets sold.

Maddow now played tape of a young woman speaking at a congressional town hall meeting in Tennessee. The young woman offered a passionate exposition of the principles she sees expressed in Obamacare.

Maddow then did it again:

MADDOW: That was at a meeting last night in Tennessee with Republican Congresswoman Diane Black. People are getting very good at putting their member of Congress on the spot about health care right now.

And for people who want to save the Affordable Care Act, that skill is about to become important. It's about to become way more important than it's even been thus far, because last night at 2:15 in the morning, the Senate confirmed Tom Price to be the new health secretary.

Actually, "that skill" would have been extremely important back in 2009! Maddow failed to note this obvious fact. Once again, she gave us stickers, noting the high skill levels we are displaying "right now."

Maddow continued on from there, pleasuring us with standard remarks about Price's "ethics problems." Then, she turned to Andy Puzder—and told us to get some rest:

MADDOW: On Tuesday, a court in Missouri will decide whether or not to unseal his divorce records from back in the day. The government watchdog is asking that those records should be unsealed because they reportedly include claims of domestic violence made by Mr. Puzder's ex-wife toward him. Mr. Puzder has denied those allegations. His ex-wife now says she takes them back.

But his critics argued that those claims, if they're true, would make him plainly unfit to be in charge of efforts like combating workplace harassment and violence.

So Monday, the protests at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. Tuesday, we have the court hearing on the domestic violence allegations in his divorce records. And Thursday, we get Puzder's confirmation hearing, the one that`s already been delayed four times.

So like the Senate, get some rest this weekend. You're going to need it!

That does it for us tonight. See you again Monday. Now it's time for The Last Word, Ari Melber sitting in for Lawrence.

Pharoah, many thanks! Maddow, who's paid millions of corporate dollars per year, told us proles to get our rest.

We were going to need that rest. We had unpaid labor ahead!

No one sat out Campaign 2016 quite the way Maddow did. Too dumb to see this, we kept tuning in to her program. Her corporate bosses have rewarded her for her corporate labor. Now, she's telling us to rest up so we can get out there and picket!

Last Friday night, Rachel was telling us how really good we're getting "all of a sudden." In truth, we aren't getting really good at all, and the damage, which is extensive and dangerous, has of course already been done.

We got here through decades of gruesome failures by our own leadership groups. Next week, we'll run through some of those fails. Tomorrow, we'll show you some of the brilliant ideas we devise when we're left on our own.

In truth, we aren't "getting really good." Meanwhile, our leadership cadres are just as inept, and overfed, as ever.

We got here through our own endless fails. Will we ever see this?

Tomorrow: Home alone!