Willie Mays and Robert Reich

As someone who grew up watching Willie Mays, I found the end of his career difficult to watch, the once amazing skills eroded by time. I'm having the same feeling now watching Robert Reich. The man who gave us "knowledge workers" also wrote Tales of a New America, which should have been required reading for wannabe Dem powerbrokers for 20 years. But somewhere between there, thinking peopl would be interested in his getting lost at the Dept of Labor, and now, he's as self-deceived and helpless as Mays on a high fly in the sun that last year.

Joshua Holland at Gadflyer has reamed him better than I could, or want to. I'll just say that he is the perfect example of Beltway savants who don't understand how sick our democracy is and how it needs not a bandaid but a thorough cleansing of the toxins left by 40-50 years of authoritarian influence and power-grabbing. Reich's "advice" to Dems should they capture a house in 2006 is exactly the battleplan they followed after McCarthy, after Nixon, and after Reagan/BushI and Iran-Contra. And because the Dems failed to make the case that those people inflicted crippling wounds on our democracy and historical legacy, the Repubs came back into power each time further and further along in their quest to institute one-party authoritarian rule. The Dems had a chance to anchor Enron around the Repubs' neck, but, no, Reich-parrot Lieberman took the same tack. You wonder if they've lost the capacity to learn. (And don't get me started on nitwit Clinton preaching how he worked with Repubs in Congress. At least he's showing indelibly what a self-serving tool he's always been.)

We will not recover our democracy if the Bushnev Administration is allowed to walk away from its corruption, subversion, and destruction. Simple as that. If Dems follow Reich's "advice," when Jeb later inevitably takes office, he will pick up exactly where his increasingly demented brother left off. It's not about "payback." It's about our very future as a constitutional democracy. Tell Reich he's still lost and to STFU unless/until he finds his way again.

POSTSCRIPT: As if reading my mind, Matt Taibbi and Susie Madrak have the same wisdom for Robert and his idiotic ilk.