New package, old baloney A newish blog called Whigging Out suggests, in a post and several increasingly defensive followups, that Democratic leaders are raising doubts about attacking Iraq in order to cater to “Muslim and black” voters who form a “significant block” within the Democratic party.

As Atrios points out,

Every major Arab-American organization I can find endorsed Bush in the election. One estimate has him garnering 72% of the Arab-American vote. Grover Norquist’s attempts to court this group are well documented.

One would think these facts obviated Whigging Out’s picture of a Democratic Party uniquely in thrall to the Muslim vote. But after a break to insult Oliver Willis, Whigging Out continues its contributions to dialogue thus:

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are important, not because they are black, but because they are virulent haters of US history who hold sway over a significant block of voters, when broken down by district—those Cynthia McKinney types who agree with their sentiments and wait hungrily for their brand of demagogic rhetoric. Why not face it, the Democratic party IS the home of anti-Americanism. Whether it is the likes of Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, or Farrakhan, Jackson and Sharpton, you will never find these people but in one place. There are plenty of proud and pro Americans in the Democratic party of all colors, but they are usually overshadowed and outgunned by the activists therein. It is a party generally comprised people who are ashamed, bitter or guilty about one thing or another and looking to assuage their consciences with a ballot. If you are pleased to be affiliated politically with that then hey, keep on rockin’ in the free world baby. But don’t do the denial thing.

Admittedly, I wondered for the moment if the entirety of Whigging Out wasn’t the work of Neal Pollack. But this sort of thing isn’t so much funny as it is sad.

Leaving aside the question of whether all those individuals are in fact “anti-American” (or even Democrats), Whigging Out is essentially arguing that there is an “anti-American” portion of the electorate, and that it lives inside the Democratic party and sways mainstream Democratic views on issues of war and peace.

This libel founders on several points, most obviously this: for every nitwit on the American left whose views actually live up to the “anti-American” stereotype being paraded here, there are at least two Americans who think the Federal Government is a tool of the Z.O.G.; that Christianity should be the state religion; or (and this one’s very common) that the defeat of the Confederacy was a tragic blow to freedom. All of these positions are fundamentally “anti-American”. And the overwhelming majority of these people vote Republican. So which party is the “home of anti-Americanism”?

Most of the time I’m inclined to think it’s not even worth arguing with nonsense like Whigging Out. The guy can’t even marshal his own arguments coherently: in successive sentences, he asserts that “There are plenty of proud and pro Americans in the Democratic party” and that “It is a party generally comprised [of] people who are ashamed, bitter or guilty about one thing or another”. Which to believe? Who cares, really. But I’m tired of the sheer counterfactual bullshit. Criticizing American foreign policy isn’t “anti-American,” now or in the late 1990s when Republican leaders were falling over themselves to criticize Clinton’s Balkan war or his Administration’s moves against al-Qaeda. Whigging Out isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box—criticized for his earlier posts, his idea of a witty comeback is “methinks I smell smoke”—but he’s enough of a grownup to grasp this elementary principle. I don’t think he wants to grasp it. [01:04 PM]