Bartlett does his Titanic sequel and pushes his way onto a political life boat, actually any lifeboat, even one for women and children, e.g., Hillary and the Democrats. He's got the balls to abandon ship, but I'd bet Hillary's leather chaps and thong he doesn't have them to tell Hillary she's paddling the wrong way.
Dealing with a Democratic Advantage
The price of purity is political powerlessness.To recap, I said that no Republican can win the presidency next year. If
one accepts this premise, then if follows that it is in the interest of
conservatives to support the most conservative Democrat running for that party’s
nomination. I went on to say why I think Hillary Clinton may be the most
conservative Democrat.
...
The point is that there are better and worse Democrats from a conservative
point of view. Those who prefer to go down with the sinking Republican ship may
come to regret that they didn’t try to exercise influence on the Democratic
nomination before the nomination was sewn up.
Bruce and I may have worked some of the same turf, but I'm betting he didn't slog the political hedge rows. We slogged those hedge rows knowing the Rockefeller Republicans and the Democrats would out gun us and out spend us, but we kept on slogging because we knew in our hearts that eventually we would win. We believed in ourselves and our cause.
We didn't quit.
We attended the rallies, the coffee klatches, the speeches in the rain, went door to door, we organized and became part of a revolution. After years in the wilderness, we walked in the front door of the White House and Congress and then as now we knew how to answer, "Are you better off then you were four years ago".
Now, when we need to reorganize, we need back the backbone our leaders gave us then. The big difference is that now we are leading and the once stalwart members, such as Bartlett, are telling us that we have to cover the spread like we're in some cheap OTB parlor. That's not leadership, at any level. It is a form of the basest backroom deal cutting that built Tammany Hall.
To paraphrase, we need to remember "In our heart, we know we're right" and go back to the hard work of rebuilding what the new "Rockefeller Republicans" have undone these last 12 years.
That hard work does not include sweating the details and the degree of Hillary's socialized medicine package.
I would rather be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It may not be the saavy plan, but it is the honorable one.
