“The Democrats are playing politics.” “The Republicans are playing politics.” “Mitch McConnell is playing politics.” “Chuck Schumer is playing politics.”
And your point is?
Of course they’re playing politics. It’s what politicians do. Politician: practitioner of politics. It’s in the name. It’s in the job description. Politicians pick their causes, they pick their moments, they plot, they strategize, they use tricks of the trade to get what they want. Meanwhile, politicians on the other side of the aisle do the same. Politicians who don’t play politics either aren’t very good at their jobs or they’re back benchers who sit quietly, vote aye or nay, then sit quietly again.
Politicians who accuse other politicians of “playing politics” are playing politics.
It’s the word “play” that makes “playing politics” sound like it’s something politicians shouldn’t do, like they’re playing games with something that should be taken seriously. If you say “practicing politics,” or “strategizing,” it doesn’t sound nearly as petty. It’s like when people talk about “throwing money at education.” The word “throwing” makes funding education sound like it’s foolish and wasteful.
Politicians should be called out when they practice dirty politics. Lying. Cheating. Ducking legitimate questions. Selling their souls and their votes to special interests. Call the political sins by their names. Saying politicians are “playing politics” is accusing them of plying their trade.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2018.
If that is the shallow view you take, you must believe the attack on Kavanaugh by Feinstein has nothing to do with the harm this woman believes she has suffered. How insensitive.
fienstein is trying to look tuff to the california democratic base as are the other discredited corporate establishment clintonistas. she is worried she might lose to her democratic opponent. which is why the california democratic party refused to endorse her. this is guerrilla theater by corporate establishment democrats trying not to get tea partied like establishment republicans did. we of the democratic left will get rid of conservatives on the courts when we take power. only discredited establishment clintonista would let them stay on the court for 30 years.
“Politicians should be called out when they practice dirty politics. Lying. Cheating. Ducking legitimate questions. Selling their souls and their votes to special interests”
Gosh, does that mean you’re actually going to start doing that with local Democrats, David?
Hallelujah!
This morning the first bulletin in my news app offered up was “New York Times columnist defends Kavanagh.” I clicked on it immediately. That really WOULD be news. Of course, listening to the interview in question made it clear that the headline I originally saw had cut off the final word: “New York Times columnist (Charles M. Blow) defends Kavanagh ACCUSER.”
The alignments behind accuser and accused in this case fall along strictly partisan lines. We have an incident more than 30 years old relating to how teenagers under the influence of alcohol behaved at a party where there was evidently no adult supervision. Now another incident has been added, involving drunken teenagers in a college dorm room. Compare these incidents and Democrats’ reaction to them to Democrats’ reaction to the incidents between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, which, whatever else can be said about them, took place in the workplace between a full grown man with a lot of power and a subordinate woman with relatively little.
It would seem that there would be some kind of uniform standards for assessing what should or shouldn’t matter in forums like a Supreme Court confirmation hearings or attempts at Presidential impeachment — accounts that are corroborated or uncorroborated, taking place among drunken minors at parties or between adults in the workplace, but we don’t seem to have any. I absolutely do not support abuse of power or aggression against anyone, in any context, ever. But am I the only progressive-leaning indepenent who does not like Kavanagh’s politics who sees a problem with a situation where any person’s career and professional prospects can at any time be derailed by the uncorroborated accusations of a couple of people that individual knew 30 years ago? Are we really to believe that it is completely impossible that anyone would ever make a strategically uncorroborate-able accusation like this to block someone’s access to a position of power?
What’s disingenuous about this post is the way Safier tries to separate “playing politics” from “lying, cheating, ducking legitimate questions, selling souls and votes to special interest.” Unfortunately all of those things now fall regularly under the rubric of “playing politics” on both sides, and I’m guessing Safier knows that. It’s a no-standards, no holds-barred all-out war of one group of special interests against another in this country right now. If Safier think that should be regarded as “business as usual” that can still hope to serve the interests of the constituency in some way, he’s mistaken.
captain arizone Are you saying that we now have two democratic parties? How can I tell the one that I want to be in? I agree that Diane caused this mess after the fact and should have introduced it when she received it. But didn’t the young lady ask her to keep it secret? Then what did she expect to happen once she sent it to politicians?
sandra your post assumes fienstein did this out of the goodness of her heart not to cover herself with the base at best a little of both. we are becoming one party again as the discredited corporate establishment clintonista third way donor class loses power in the party similar to the tea party in 2010 did to establishment republicans. alexandra ocasio-cortez not diane fienstein or hillary clinton democratic partys future. every day 100 latinx kids turn 18 voting age and almost very one of them hating republicans almost as much as I do.
Are you saying that is the reason they are in favor of open borders? I didn’t think the Tea Party really changed much of anything. Ultimately money will dictate the winners. That’s just the way it is. Whoever has the money makes the rules.
What if this wave of Latinos have interests at odds with yours, then what do you do? Or I’m sorry, are you Latino?