Everything You Want To Know About The Decayed CA Democratic Consultant Class

Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani just got hired by the AMPTP, the coalition of the movie studios and networks, to help their PR during the WGA strike.

Make. Me. Sick.

So we have two of the go-to consultants for the California Democratic Party - the ones doing the top-level opposition to the Dirty Tricks initiative, for example - representing management in a labor fight, and not just any management, but one which is completely dishonest, and has earned the enmity of the entire blogosphere and arguably the entire country thanks to the excellent grassroots and netroots efforts of the writers. They've responded to union demands by trying to roll back the writer's residuals. They've lied from Day One about how little money they make off of product on the Internet. And they've openly attempted union busting tactics to stop the WGA juggernaut.

This is the lot that Lehane and Fabiani (and Schwarzenegger/Bush/Cheney hack Steve Schmidt!) have thrown in with.

Well this oughta be fun. Because we're about to see a battle for hearts and minds between Democratic Party insiders and the creative talent of the writing community.

If it was a boxing match, it'd be called before the first punch is thrown.

UPDATE: The interesting thing, of course, is that this comes at a time when talks are finally getting substantive, particularly with respect to union jurisdiction over the Internet and reality TV. That's quite astonishing to me, as it appeared to be the first thing the WGA was ready to give up early in the strike. This takes the model of getting the smaller things done first, and saving the big items, like residuals for content streamed online, for later.

But bringing in the masters of disaster suggests a very long, drawn-out fight, at least over that element.