Once we all heard the news of Van Jones resigning, most of us here reflexively shook our heads at how weak the left looked. Again.
As some of us have pointed out, the GOP does things differently when faced with pressure. Remember when Larry Craig was all set to resign, but then the conservative wingnuts led by Limbaugh circled the wagons, and he ended up staying and fighting? Nowadays, people don't even think about Larry Craig.
What did they learn from that? Now all their senators and governors can have affairs and they'll still be defended and they'll stay and fight. They just wear you down and they do whatever it takes until things are forgotten. They'll deflect. They've learned how to stop the slippery slope.
So how do we stop it from here??
I honestly don't know, but what I believe is that we must circle the wagons around the administration now instead of going after how Obama did not fight hard enough for him. Full disclosure - I am one of those people who have been accused of being in the tank for Obama and gets turned off by too many anti-Obama rants here on dailykos, so my credibility might not be that great in this community...
But I think it is time we put our differences aside on this issue and really focus our attacks on those who are actually responsible for bringing Van Jones down.
Personally I think this is just an unfortunate situation which is no one's fault but the wingnut right. They are bullies, plain and simple. Yes, the way to stop a bully is to stand up to them, but I don't believe in berating the victim if they fail to do so.
I assure you, this is only the beginning for Beck and his ilk. Many have said, they now smell blood in the water. Glenn Beck mentioned one of his 10 minute rants against Van Jones that this is just "the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to the administration. Michelle Malkin has already compiled her list of czars to attack, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Beck go after another one next week.
Forgive my not linking to these as I do not want to give these guys any more traffic, but I'll provide you Malkin's words on her latest on this Van Jones saga:
The story is not just about Beck or Fox or us racist conservatives martyring Van Jones.
The story is not just about Jones.
The story is about Adolfo Carrion, Carol Browner, Vivek Kundra, Nancy DeParle, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, Obama’s education comrades, and the culture of circumvention and corruption that plagues this White House.
The story is the czar explosion, purposeful undermining of congressional oversight, Valerie Jarrett’s promotion of a two-bit Jeremiah Wright in eco-guru’s clothing, and the public vetting of unaccountable Obama appointees that Washington won’t do.
They don’t get it. They’re in the tank. Behind the curve. And slouching towards irrelevance.
So get ready folks. There will be a whole lot of attacks against not only the president, but his advisers. They will ratchet up the rhetoric, even if they might not be successful in getting all of them to resign, they will definitely try and distract the conversation from health care.
One thing though - Michelle Malkin is right. This isn't about Van Jones. What it's really about is the right wing knows that the administration has no time whatsoever to spend on something like this. They know that Obama spending even just a day addressing this is a day wasted that should be spent working on health care...
Was it a good move for Van Jones to step down? I'm still not convinced either way. Again, it is not good for the shark to smell blood in the water; but at the same time, I feel he should get a lot of credit for believing that taking himself out of the picture will take away a distraction that we don't need at this time. I am still hopeful that Van can in some capacity help the Green Movement, and maybe if he does so without the constraints of working under Obama's administration, he'll be able to do more.
The thing that is most frustrating is how Beck can bring down a man like Van Jones in a week and make it part of the political conversation, and yet Rachel Maddow's work on C-Street barely gets a whisper of regognition outside of our community.
I mean honestly, outside of Maddow, have we heard anything about this from anywhere else? Maybe it's because Maddow's style mostly provides the facts and she doesn't distort this with some wild ranting and raving to spin it into some evil sinister plot to take over the world - even if it is looking like it was.
Maybe I'm naive, but my hope is that we as a community can forget about Obama's shortcomings for a bit and come together when it's needed. We need to get mad at the bully. And this has got to stop now so our energies can be focused back on the health care debate.
I end with a quote from Van Jones' statement:
We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.