Follow the bagels, Adam, follow the bagels. When a Times political reporter leads with his stomach, be warned: whether it's PBJ sandwiches or cheescake and bagels, you're in for a moveable feast of snark:

For Democrats looking for free food in New York, there was a cheesecake reception on Friday night and a bagel reception yesterday morning, courtesy of Donnie Fowler Jr. Across town, Simon Rosenberg, one of Mr. Fowler's competitors to be Democratic Party chairman, took the Rev. Al Sharpton to lunch at the Four Seasons.

"Seven Candidates Scramble to Lead the Party That Lost"

Don't you love the "free food" crack? 'Cause, you know, there were probably some poor people among the Dem crowd, oh and also they're the party of handouts ... It just works on so many levels!

Ostensibly a piece about yesterday's DNC Regional Caucus—fourth and last in an extraordinary series in an extraordinary public campaign for election to the party chairmanship—the piece is really about its lead writer, Adam Nagourney, his smug anti-intellectualism and his ingrained contempt for losers. Nagourney, the Times' appointed political worrywart (a recent headline, "Some See Risks For the G.O.P. in New Strength," is an almost self-parodically perfect example of the trademark Nagourney tack), is usually more circumspect than this, but perhaps he reads the Bush "mandate" as his own permission to unleash the hounds:

The prize is to be leader of a party that is arguably in the worst shape it has been since before Bill Clinton's election in 1992. [The authentic Nagourney weakness-in-strength trope there—ed.] But as the seven candidates for the job appeared in Manhattan yesterday for a forum before Democratic leaders, there was little doubt that they were clawing for the job as if it were the presidential nomination itself. ...

For two hours, the seven men talked at length about what needs to be done to fix the party - in short, learn how to fight like Republicans - as they bemoaned the state of their party. They spun out well-practiced phrases that seemed aimed at the few cameras in the back of the room. ...

This is not the first time that the competition to run a party has been intense, particularly on the Republican side. The job can be a steppingstone to money (Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman, is now a lobbyist in Washington) or political stature (Haley Barbour is now the governor of Mississippi, and Jim Nicholson is the new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.)

The fractiousness of this race reflects the state of the party in what is the first real competitive contest for party chairman since 1988, as well as a vacuum in personality and power that is allowing some arguably obscure figures in the party to get some attention for a few weeks.

The forum yesterday - the fourth and final one, intended to give members of the Democratic National Committee a chance to view the candidates - was nearly overshadowed by the extravagance of campaigns that had been on display for weeks, and verged on an over-the-top peak in New York.

I quote liberally, to make sure the through-line of the piece is as clear as it can be. Democratic pissants are wasting my time: a buncha no-names (and wierdo Dean) trying to grab some spotlight and their losers' spoils, and I, Adam Nagourney, am forced to lower myself (for more than two hours) to witness the sorry affair.

But this is what happens when you think with your belly: all you can see of others is that they're trying to fill their own. ("Clawing" to do it, in fact, like so many rodents.) That intellectual activity is going on—that a significant contest of ideas has been joined around the election of a Democratic party chairman, that a back-door process has been remarkably thrown wide open to the scrutiny of the party rank-and-file, that the intensity of electioneering in this process ("extravagant" as it seems to Adam) is an artifact and measure of the range and intensity of debate—such things are meaningless to Adam Nagourney, and would be even if (as I doubt) he had the wit to understand them. Do any of the men running for DNC chair have a program, a vision for the future of—in spite of everything, Adam, what remains—a party that commands the allegiance of half of American voters? Ought any of this be of interest to readers of the New York Times, many of whom are themselves however unaccountably still Democrats?

But, dude, c'mon—they're losers, says Adam. Pass the bagels!

[And thanks to The Cunctator for setting me on to respond to this one. These days I usually just avert my eyes whenever I see Nagourney's byline.]

posted by michael  8:24:50 PM  
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