Inside Politics

Washington times. ^ | 5/27/03 | Greg Pierce

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

  Identity crisis

    New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, following up on a Sunday article in which he portrayed the Republican Party as increasingly confident, wrote yesterday that the Democrats appear to be in the midst "of another of their periodic painful identity crises."

Rest of thread here

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Adam Clymer starts out okay, but fails totally to understand the whys for the eclipse of the Dems. He, in fact, makes a total clymer out of himself - again.

[OldPossum]

Part of the problem, Mr. Clymer said, is that "Democrats these days lack the killer instinct that it takes to sell blunt, demagogic messages." And the reason for that, prominent Democratic strategist Bob Shrum suggested, is that Democrats are by nature just too kind and gentle to compete with those mean Republicans. "It's probably a weakness that we're not real haters," Mr. Shrum explained.

This has to be--absolutely has to be--tongue-in-cheek.

[katze]

Well yeah, but since Bob Shrum is a well-known "Clymer" himself, that is to be expected. ;-)

We can forever thank Pres Bush and VP Cheney for their whispered conversation on the campaign trail, that led us to a new word that may be used in polite conversations (except I would not call Shrum "prominent").