My Dog Isn't This Eager To Please

Via Digby I see that Joe Klein, the only member of Time's columnist corps that they call liberal, again goes out of his way to suck up to the Right, slam Democrats and be dishonest while doing so. This bit from the Hugh Hewitt program (he's the guy who writes books like "Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It" and then claims the Left is angry and mired in a fever swamp) is astounding on all counts:

HH: Joe, what I want to talk about is reverse Turnip Days, moments where candidates were not candid, and I think it hurt them. I want to start with an episode I find odd not finding it here in Politics Lost, which is the Florida recount, and the disastrous attempt by Gore and Lieberman to throw out the ballots of the military. Was that not the sort of authentic moment where we saw the soul of the modern Democratic Party on display?

JK: I think that the Florida recount in general...well, first of all, you're right about that. I mean, too often, the default position, especially in the left wing of the Democratic Party, is to not respect the military sufficiently, and to assume that anytime the United States would use force overseas, we would be wrong.

Those ballots were cast after Election Day. It has nothing to do with the military. Just the other day, one of the "protestors in Brooks Brothers suits" from Dade County, Florida, who staged made-for-TV uprisings while faking being constituents of the county, Joel Kaplan, was promoted to White House deputy chief of staff. But Joe Klein sees this as an opportune moment to bash Democrats for being anti-military.

It's not a problem that Joe Klein has these beliefs; that's his personal dementia. The problem is he somehow represents Democrats on these shows, and by association tars all Democrats with this brush. Democrats are unfairly characterized as having no ideas and standing for nothing. That's only buttressed when you have on a "liberal pundit" who's an idiot, has no ideas and stands for nothing. It's not the Democrats' fault that Joe Klein is so desperate to be liked by his opponent that he willingly agrees with whatever they say. Including a later denunciation of Michael Moore (who I haven't heard a peep from in almost two years, but apparently he represents the entire progressive sphere) spending time in Jimmy Carter's Presidential box during the 2004 DNC, which in reality:

The mundane truth, if anyone's in the least interested, is that we were on the skybox level of the Fleet Center because Michael had just done O'Reilly's show in the Fox booth, and we were making our way down the hallway and Michael was getting mobbed, and one of the Carters happened to see us and invited us to take refuge in their skybox. So, if the question is, "Was a liberal/left filmmaker shown spur-of-the-moment hospitality by a once-prominent political family which has very little power or influence over the modern-day Democratic party?", then the answer is "Yes." But that's where it ends. There were no signals being sent, there was no greater meaning implied. It was a completely random event, utterly lacking the significance some people insist on reading into it.

This is a guy, Joe Klein, who thinks nuclear weapons should be on the table in dealing with Iran because it makes us look crazy (the "madman in the marketplace" theory). This is the guy representing the "liberal viewpoint" in the largest political magazine in the country.

Is there a way to excommunicate someone from a political party?