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deja vu all over again

This commenter to Ann Althouse’s post about the Jena 6 *** gets at what I was trying to say earlier about MoveOn’s revolting tactics:

My own interest has remained subdued for other reasons. White men are by definition now oppressors, so having any other opinion than that white people are evil is condemned. Any comment contrary to this prescription is also, by definition, racist. So why bother saying anything at all?

Like 100% of Soviets voted for Brezhnev and 100% of Cubans vote for Castro, when I am asked, I say that I vote for jailing every white person involved in this event.

But generally I do what folks in the sixties did when over-the-top leftists and demonstrators and race-baiters made endless demands: I’ll stay quiet, and vote for Nixon. [e.a.]

The Democrats in general, and MoveOn specifically, seem not to realize that in order to deliver politically correct votes, you need to do a lot more than kneecap people into spouting politically correct attitudes in the public square. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
My point about Rudy Giuliani was that he knows a lot about the kind of public political correctness that elects a “fascist” to a second term in a huge victory in decidedly not-”fascist” New York City.

THE 1997 ELECTIONS: THE OVERVIEW; GIULIANI SWEEPS TO SECOND TERM AS MAYOR

Rudolph W. Giuliani last night [November 4, 1997] became the second Republican in 60 years to be elected to a second term as Mayor of New York City, defeating Ruth W. Messinger, a fixture of Manhattan’s [liberal] Upper West Side …

[A] survey of voters leaving polling sites showed that his support crossed party lines…

He won the support of 4 out of 10 Democrats and people who identified themselves as liberal, better than he did against Mr. Dinkins four years ago. He also won the support of about half the women who voted. And he won the support of one in five black voters, the survey found — about four times better than he did against Mr. Dinkins four years ago.

And in what was an unpleasant coda to this election for Ms. Messinger, Mr. Giuliani even won in one of the Assembly districts that make up what has been her political base for 25 years: the Upper West Side district now represented by Scott M. Stringer.

Several political analysts suggested that Mr. Giuliani’s victory over Ms. Messinger was a final verdict by voters on the status of liberalism in New York City, a school of thought with which she has been identified since she first ran for a local school board in 1974. [e.a.]

That 1997 obituary to liberalism in New York City was more than a bit premature. Certainly, political correctness rules here. But to say that liberalism is thriving here—or anywhere in America except the blogosphere and the commentariat—would be a gross overstatement. It is political apathy that thrives here, as elsewhere in America.

Giuliani isn’t Nixon, but it is dangerous for Democrats to underestimate his appeal to disaffected liberals, more of which MoveOn and its ilk are creating every day.

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***(a case I knew virtually nothing about before reading the informative comments to Althouse’s post, and about which I still do not consider myself informed enough about to comment, except that I shudder to hear about nooses hanging from trees in the South just as I shuddered when Bonnie Prince Harry dressed up in Nazi garb for a costume party)

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