From the WSJ (where you have to pay for the news, but the commentary is free^*) writes about the State of the Uninion address.

Her assessment is succinct and well reflects my overall feelings about the speech:

The president’s State of the Union Address will be little noted and not long remembered. There was a sense that he was talking at, not to, the country. He asserted more than he persuaded, and he chose to redeclare his beliefs rather than argue for them in any depth.

[…]

Not precisely a pudding without a theme, but a thin porridge.

Yep, that about sums it up.

In regards to the politics of the moment, this assessment is on target as well:

Exactly half the chamber repeatedly leapt to its feet to applaud this banality or that. The other half remained resolutely glued to its widely cushioned seats. It seemed a metaphor for the Democratic Party: We don’t know where to stand or what to stand for, and in fact we’re not good at standing for anything anyway, but at least we know we can’t stand Republicans.

The italics are hers. This certainly comports with what I was talking about yesterday.

She also notes the Senator Clinton moment, which was one f the few specific things from the speech that I commented upon Tuesday night:

There was only one unforgettable moment, and that was in a cutaway shot, of Hillary Clinton, who simply must do something about her face. When the president joked that two people his father loves are turning 60 this year, himself and Bill Clinton–why does he think constant references to that relationship work for him?–it was Mrs. Clinton’s job to look mildly amused, or pleasant, or relatively friendly, or nonhostile. Mrs. Clinton has two natural looks, the first being a dull and sated cynicism, the second the bright-eyed throaty chuckler who greets visiting rubes from Utica. The camera caught the first; by the time she realized she was the shot, she apparently didn’t feel she could morph into the second. This canniest of politicians still cannot fake benignity.

She goes on from there to talk about the political venom at Daily Kos and tries to relate it to some of the woes of the Democratic Party:

The venom is bubbling on websites like Kos, where Tuesday afternoon, after the Alito vote, various leftists wrote in such comments as “F— our democratic leaders,” “Vichy Democrats” and “F— Mary Landrieu, I hope she drowns.” The old union lunch-pail Democrats are dead, the intellects of the Kennedy and Johnson era retired or gone, and this–I hope she drowns–seems, increasingly, to be the authentic voice of the Democratic base.

How will a sane, stable, serious Democrat get the nomination in 2024 when these are the activists to whom the appeal must be made?

Republicans have crazies. All parties do. But in the case of the Democrats–the leader of their party, after all, is the unhinged Howard Dean–the lunatics seem increasingly to be taking over the long-term health-care facility. Great parties die this way, or show that they are dying.

A few things:

First, if she wants to see Kos-like commentary from the Right, it isn’t that hard to find. The Free Republic message boards come immediately to mind. It is unfair to go pick out insane comments from juvenile partisans and try and generalize anything.

Second, I don’t think that this group is truly representative of the Democratic base. However, and this is why I wanted to comment on this section of her column, it does seem as if some Democratic politicians think that folks like the to Kossites are the base. The ascension of Dean to the DNC Chair was clearly linked to this idea that the future (and especially the future of fundraising) was via the internet.

The MoveOn.org folks are also responsible for this focus on the net and on dramatic rhetoric, at least as it applies to the Democratic Party.

Of course, the fact that Howard Dean the candidate, despite his internet fundraising prowess, did as poorly as he did in the primaries should bolster the notion that looking to denizens of the internet isn’t a panacea. His performance as DNC Chair provides further empirical evidence to back that conclusion.

It will be interesting to see how this develops. Certainly I think that this attempt to tap into the Kos types out there is part of the Democratic party trying mightily to find its way.

(Just to be fair, although it is slightly off my ficus here, the GOP’s dramatic rhetoric, strikes me as more generated from talk radio.)

^*I wonder which of the models, that of the WSJ or the NYT, is proving more profitable. Of course, the WSJ has unique content for which one guesses there is a market. I remain unconvinced as to the unique nature of the NYT’s market–either for new or commentary.