“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” -- Gandhi

I can't remember a more rewarding moment then opening up the above clip to find Sean Hannity spending ten minutes on his television show attacking me, the Democrats and MoveOn.  The fantasy he embroiders whereby the Democratic Party is being overrun by an elaborate left-wing conspiracy funded by George Soros is a bit of a hoot, but he does get one thing right when he quotes Eli Pariser - "It's our Party.  We bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back."  And I like to believe that thought is what's keeping Sean regular today.

As Glenn Greenwald notes in his column on the genuine political sea change that seems to be taking place before our eyes, those who have grown fat (like Hannity) defending George Bush cannot push back the waves of public disgust that the President now engenders.  "[T]he joint forces of the Beltway media and the right-wing machine have been almost completely impotent in trying to stem the tide," says Glenn. "No matter what they do, public anger with the president, his party and the war just continues to grow."

Now the notion that Hillary Clinton posting on FDL means that she is in the tank for the extreme left of the party is pretty much absurd, and I'm sure her primary goal when she chose to post here was to reach out to our largely female audience about an issue important to us, equal pay.  I seriously doubt her first thought was to kick Joe Lieberman in the teeth by appearing on a site that has been fiercly critical of him in the past. 

Still, it happened in a week when Lieberman was forced to grovel by the powers that be within the party and sign a letter to the Washington Post objecting to comments made by David Broder about Harry Reid, which were by and large not much different than those Lieberman had made himself recently.  The signs that are being sent are not that Democrats are slavishly catering to the left, but that Democrats are rejecting the right of the beltway establishment (and their willing collaborators like Lieberman) to define the dominant political narrative.  That they are willing to hang together and push back.   And as someone whose personal life has been obsessed over, prodded and probed by the New York Times and the Washington Post (who seem to show no such curiosity over the current White House resident), Hillary Clinton is to be applauded for cutting out the middle man and engaging directly with the activist base of the party.  It was Broder after all who accused the Clintons of coming to DC and "trashing the place."  

As Glenn Greenwald said (via email), regarding the original WaPo column that triggered Hannity's bile:

I really do think that a huge part of the animosity directed at blogs from the Dan Gersteins and Mary Ann Akers of the world is that they literally have no following, they represent nobody, their "spokesperson" status is completely artificial and based on nothing.  Bloggers, meanwhile, are part of an actual movement of real people - hundreds of thousands at least - and I think that's a big part of what they hate.

FDL was but a small part of defeating Joe Lieberman in the primary, and we most certainly called him out on the abject race bating he engaged in.  When Ned Lamont won it was a signal to Democratic candidates to throw off the "wisdom" being imparted to them from concern trolls everywhere that if they spoke about the war they would lose the election.  There's no way to know what effect it had in handing the Democrats a 2006 majority, or how much it continues to influence their collective resolute stance, but I don't think any rational person believes it had no effect whatsoever.  And then there's Sean Hannity way out in wingnuttia, stuck defending the indefensible, the untenable, the story that ever dwindling numbers of people want to hear anymore.  Does he feel threatened much?  Well I guess he does.

Sean's wet dreams notwithstanding, there is no George Soros behind this movement, no wingnut welfare, no "Abstinence Only" government boondoggles funneling money into the blogs to spread a bunch of gibberish in the hopes that endless repetition will eventually overcome the fact that it makes no sense.  No, it's a genuine community coming together because they believe in something, they find hope and a vision and something that sounds like truth to them.  The right wing has no answer for it, the Malkins of the world are the toenail clippings of the Mighty Wurlitzer and they are a sore disappointment to the GOP -- they can't raise money, they can't motivate their readerships to anything more than a few bullying emails and they inspire neither fear nor hope in anyone.

No wonder Sean Hannity is so frightened.  He should have been much more afraid of MoveOn's Tom Matzzie's appearance on FDL the same day as Hillary Clinton's. The ever growing numbers of people who hunger to get out from under the oppressive burden of lies and propaganda he is paid to spread do not bode well for him.  Their willingness to speak up and take collective action must have him trembling down to his short and curlys.  

Poor Sean. Somebody clap and get him a pony.

(Thanks to News Hounds for the YouTube and to Scarce for sending it along.)