Tomasky says something that isn't quite right!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2017

The history of our tribe: If memory serves, we met Michael Tomasky just once, years ago.

We're strongly inclined to like Tomasky. For reasons we can't quite define, Tomasky's our kind of guy.

In a new piece at the Daily Beast, Tomasky argues against a certain type of liberal purity as Democrats start casting about for their next White House contender. On balance, we agree with the views he expresses, though it's hardly bearable to see this topic being raised at this early point.

We will complain about one minor point. Along the way, Tomasky says what's shown below.

As he does, he "bring[s] the eternal note of sadness in," if we might borrow from Arnold. We refer to the consummate, world-class cluelessness of our own self-impressed liberal tribe over the past many years:

TOMASKY (8/8/17): Someone, probably David Sirota, will respond to this column by saying we don’t need any lectures on electability from Tomasky, who assured us Hillary would win. And it would be a fair point. I was sure she would win. I and everybody else in America except Allan Lichtman, but still; I was wrong.

So I’m going to try to refrain, for the next three years and three months (!), from giving electability lectures...

Was everyone but Lichtman sure that Candidate Clinton would win?

Actually, no, they weren't! To cite one example, we weren't sure that Candidate Clinton would win, a point we made again and again at this award-winning site.

Indeed, it seemed fairly obvious that Candidate Clinton could lose. If memory serves, we made this point in an award-winning radio chat with our old friend, KGO's award-winning Chip Franklin, in the week before the election.

Was everyone sure that Clinton would win? Over Here, in our tribe's liberal tents, pretty much everyone was! After all, Professor Wang had given his assurance! What more could you ask?

In this way, we liberals showcased the stunning passivity and world-class dumbness which have been our calling cards for the past thirty years. Our history during that time is one of total haplessness:

We sat out the various wars against President Clinton, then sat out the twenty-month War Against Candidate Gore.

We sat around and stared into air as twenty-five years of gong-show attacks were directed at Hillary Clinton:

Remember when Gennifer Flowers told Rachel's favorite pundit, Chris Matthews, about Evita's many murders? (That's the sort of name Chris called her year after year after year.)

Remember how Rachel ran and hid as the myths about Benghazi were being invented? When James B. Comey—Comey the God—launched his first attack? When the New York Times ran its giant, gong-show pseudo-report about the scary uranium deal?

We remember all those tribal silences. They explain how You Know Who won.

Presumably, much of this can be explained by the desire of our leading liberal "journalists" to maintain faith with the increasingly conservative corporate owners who increasingly ruled their careers. But our spectacular tribal dumbness, and our steadfast refusal to fight, have been our defining tribal traits for a good many years.

We carried our insouciance and cluelessness into the last election. This morning, up jumps Tomasky, saying it wasn't just him!

In truth, it wasn't just him, but some others could see. One of the things a few people could see was the manifest intellectual helplessness of us Over Here in our tribe.

We're very, very, very slow and we're preternaturally dumb. Unless you hear the story from Us, in which case the dumbness can only be found among the vile folk Over There!

We're very dumb, and we're quite self-impressed. How do you think Trump got there?

For extra credit only: How horrible would the discourse be if Candidate Clinton had actually won?

Discuss for ten seconds, then nap. It's part of tribal culture!