Advice To the Democrats From the Rude Pundit:

If you’re in a street fight and you are playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, you shouldn’t be surprised if your opponent kicks you in the nuts and then beats the shit out of you while you’re down on the ground, punching you in the throat, gouging your eyes, smacking you with everything that he can get his hands on, really just all the shit that goes on when you’re in a fight. In short, if you’re gonna bother fighting, fight to win, to be the one who walks away. The guy on the ground is only fit to be pissed and spit on by the gathered crowd.

See, Republicans understand this. They know that you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. They understood this when they went after Bill Clinton. They threw everything they possibly could at him, ignoring problems like, say, terrorism, in their blood lust to not only destroy Clinton's presidency, not only to bring virtually every cabinet office to a grinding halt, but to change the discourse about Clinton: he's the guy who got an Oval Office hummer, not the guy who, for good or ill, led the country into years of prosperity and job growth, and myriad other accomplishments. You've got to remember that for every James Carville on the Democrats' side, the Republicans have ten Lee Atwaters or Karl Roves.

And now the Republicans are continuing these vicious alley fight tactics. Witness the House of Representatives vote on Medicare "reform." The Democrats believed that the Republicans would abide by tradition, like the Queensbury rule that says, "The rounds [are] to be of three minutes duration and one minute time between rounds," and that the majority would give the traditional 17 minutes or so for a vote. Nope. Instead, the evil Tom DeLay, the corpulent Dennis Hastert, and others conspired to leave the voting open until the Republicans had enough votes to win, twisting arms, threatening wives, sending goons out to place guns at the heads of the baby daughters of Republican reps who would not toe the party line. The Democrats were incensed. How dare the rules be so stretched? How dare tradition be set aside? But that's the wrong thinking. That's the kind of thinking that gets you shanked in the ribs. And that's what's happened, as the Senate passed the Medicare "reform" bill today. There you go. Now the President can campaign on a lame ass prescription drug benefit, bringing out the still breathing corpses of elderly people who got extra thorazine to parade in front of the cameras. Bill Frist may as well have been standing over the curled-into-a-fetal-position still warm corpse of Tom Daschle, wiping his shiv on his pants and cackling madly as he disappered into the White House.

The advice to Democrats is this: the rules are that there are no rules. When you have a President and opposition party that is willing to destroy people like Max Cleland, willing to question your patriotism because you think the war in Iraq is a bad idea, willing to degrade you and lie about you and use proxies to do their dirty work, you are not dealing with an opponent who will give a rat's ass if you say that he is breaking the rules. You have an opponent who will say that your opposition to Medicare "reform" means you want to dump seniors in an alley and watch them slowly die, who says that your opposition to the energy bill, loaded with pork for energy corporations, will lead to a long, cold, dark winter, who says that your opposition to the war means that you want Saddam Hussein to come to this country and rape your children while you sit with a ball gag and beaten and bruised face to watch the maiming and slaughter of them. They will stop at nothing to demonize you, Democrats, and they will smile at you and call you friend even as they slice off your nuts.

It's time to not question all the hate against Republicans that's going around. Embrace that anger. Channel it into a real opposition. Republicans will suckle at the teat of Richard Mellon Scaife-funded foundations until they are engorged to bursting with filthy fascist lucre, but they bleat like castrated lambs when George Soros donates money to MoveOn.org. You'll want to talk about the economy and they'll say you want gay marriage so who cares what your economic policies are. So you can't win. Instead, degrade them. Make them seem like the corporate lackeys and hate mongers that they are.

You want a commercial? Here it is, free of charge, from the Rude Pundit: Circus-like music plays as we see scenes of George W. Bush landing on that aircraft carrier. Then a graphic: "Number of WMDs found in Iraq: 0." Show W. in front of the "Mission Accomplished" Banner. Graphic: "Number of Americans killed in Iraq since George W. Bush landed here: X" (with X=to whatever the number is). Show W. on the deck of the ship, in his flight suit, looking all goofy and shit. Graphic: "Cost of playing soldier: Priceless." Then whoever for President. Run the ad so many times that no matter what, when the electorate sees Bush, all it thinks about is him in that goddamn flight suit, with circus music behind him.

So to all viable candidates, Dean, Clark, Gephardt, Edwards, Kerry: fuck the Republicans up. Badly. And if anyone tells you to play nice, to abide by the rules of conflict, you kick them in the nuts and tell them to go fuck themselves. You have the backing of many, like Paul Krugman here.

And, because so much is at stake, the Rude Pundit is opening this up. If you have any other rude advice for Democrats, send it to rudepundit@yahoo.com. The rudest and best will be posted. If you're all lame, he won't post anything but himself.