Brad DeLong, economics professor at UC-Berkley hosts an extraordinary blog, Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand: Fair, Balanced and Reality Based. DeLong's blog teaches the readers economics (he posts his class syllabus, reading assignments and test essay questions); provides a running history of WWII, and contains pertinent commentary on political influence on economic perspectives in the general population. He also runs an almost daily diatribe about the state of the media headlined, "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"
Today the professor features six questions he asked Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein on May 18 regarding their book "It's Even Worse than it Looks." The authors have yet to answer DeLong's questions, but the questions themselves - and the commentary attached to the list - are well worth exploration. DeLong also references Daily Kos and channels Markos - and he's spot on.
A sample below the fold.
Questions for Mann & Ornstein:
1. Why do Republicans tremble in fear at being deemed "moderate," but moderate Democrats keep their seats until they're ready to retire? What's up with that?
2. Why is getting 60 Democrats to vote for a Republican health care bill considered an accomplishment?
3. Why can't the Democrats in congress get organized enough to pass cap and trade?
4. Is Daily Kos not strong enough?
5. Under their small-government dynamic, how did the Republicans pass Medicare Part D?
6. So why aren't you two advocating the rapid destruction of the Republican party?
Since the authors haven't answered his questions, DeLong decides to invoke what he imagines would be Markos' reaction to the authors.
Look. You two are expecting normal politics to rein in a Republican Party gone bonkers extreme. But it will not work. The press corps will continue to say "he said, she said, yadda yadda yadda" either because they are gutless cowards or because they are bought. In a world of low-information voters, the bonkers extremism and sheer total meanness of the Republican Party will not get through. The only way it could get through would be if moderate Republican barons were to announce that they had had enough and were crossing the aisle....
And it only gets better from there. Apparently Brad DeLong is a reader of Daily Kos, even if not an active Kossack, because he's channeled Markos Moulitsas Zuniga pitch-perfectly.
When you visit the blog and read the story, be sure to take in the comments as well.