The Daily Show and the Dems

Maybe the Daily Show has a new policy - Monday's guest will get to say something really good about the Bush administration. Tonight's guest is a former CIA Middle-East field operative (and a woman at that). She said that the CIA went through a five year period where they didn't really have a mission and that we are safer now than on 9/10/2001.

Eric Alterman's going to hate that. His entry for today starts out:

My old friend Nancy Soderberg snagged a “Daily Show” appearance last week flogging her new book, The Superpower Syndrome and made an obvious joke about being a Democrat and therefore there's "always hope we'll fail" in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. She was obviously making fun of the Democrats’ predicament as well as the way Republicans and conservatives tend to discount liberals’ patriotism. Guess what? I saw the interview and she is clearly nodding when she makes her comment to what Jon Stewart is saying, and laughing and say "noooo" to indicate she's kidding. But not only are the denizens of the conservative media too dumb to get the joke, they embarked on an immediate media jihad to burn They now have their proof that Nancy, indeed, all liberals, hate America.

Ok, I saw it also. She wasn't laughing when she started out saying:

[A]s a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen.

Yes, she was laughing when she got to the part about North Korea and Iran but there was no edge to her voice to indicate that she was being ironic. Instead she had a "Did I say that in public?" laugh.

I didn't mention it when I wrote about the segment last week because I don't think that she really wants something bad to happen to America. At the same time, I'm sure that she would be relieved if Bush was somehow discredited. The conflict - Democrats want bad things to happen under Bush but loyal Americans want good things to happen to America - is real. This same conflict shows up in the Democratic Underground when they say that US troops are regularly committing atrocities but that the support the troops.

(For those who are confused, supporting the troops means that you give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Jon Stewart has admitted that he thinks poorly of the President's policies but that they seem to be working.

Soderberg admitted that she is conflicted. This came up during the election, also. Various Democrats admitted that they would rather defeat Bush than see Osama bin Laudin captured.

The Democratic Underground is not conflicted. They are in denial. So is Alterman.