Painting your enemy in false colors

Recall that Democrats spent an entire summer, last year, combating a wave of conservative clericalism, largely successful at the state level, by saying not a single word in recognition of what it was and instead misdescribing it from first to last as a war against women conducted by the old white men of the Republican Party.

Recall that they are continuing the same line against the current Republican bill in the congress to restrict abortion at will to the first 20 weeks and allow it only to protect the health of the mother or in case of reported rape or incest after that.

Hysterical alarms about a war of old, white men against women did a much better job of mobilizing the young, the female, and the non-white, identity-groups whose engagement and voting behavior are quite variable and on whom Democrats depend for success, without at the same time provoking dangerous ambivalence than calls to resist the moral authority and political power of the nation's Christian clergy could possibly have have done.

Lately, an aide to Senator Rubio, when quizzed about congressional negotiations on a pending bill, gave utterance to a lying plutocratic argument for immigration.

As reported by Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, a New Yorker reporter wrote,

"There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can't cut it," a Rubio aide told me. 

"There shouldn't be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can't get it, can't do it, don't want to do it. And so you can't obviously discuss that publicly."

Quite true, of course.

The lie is in the unstated claim that we are now at that point, as I wrote in a comment at NMMNB, mistakenly attributing the remark to the senator, himself.

Rubio is talking like a plute in a depression pretending to be an owner of a booming industry in a period of 2 or 3 percent unemployment, explaining we need to import labor because the domestic supply is down to the unemployables.

The reason for the pose is the desire to drive down wages even further by flooding the country with low end labor used to working for a pittance and willing to work, in the USA, for notably less than any American and be honestly grateful for the job.

So, what's the actual unemployment rate, now?

7.6 percent, right?

But instead of calling him out for this imposture I suppose it's better polemical strategy to attack him for what he did not do, for insulting the honor and dignity of American labor.

And for joining into the chorus of self-righteous rich dick Patrician class whose moral take is that the Populares buy votes by throwing crumbs to the Roman mob.

Steve M., you see, had labeled the remark another note in the right-wing chorus singing that 47% of the country has been bought by the Democrats.

It is the ancient song of the Optimates that the Populares have bought the Roman mob, the complaint of the nobles that Robin Hood, after all, was a mere highwayman who bought popular favor with stolen goods.

And it has been proved effective to bash Republicans for harboring such views.

But when I wrote my comment I had missed the real point of the mischaracterization.

I noted it in a later comment, still mistaken about the actual origin of the contentious remark.

Oh, wait. 

Dems can't attack Rubio head on for what he actually did because what he actually did was make a lying plute defense of immigration.

Exposure of his deceitful pose focuses attention on strong premises for an argument against immigration that no one can fail to see as just that.

So instead Dems attack him for what he did not do.

He did not join the right wing chorus of whiners whose moral take is that the Democrats buy votes by throwing crumbs to the American mob.

Pretty big mob, too, given their estimate of 47% of the whole people.