Posted by
flagwaver on Monday, April 14, 2008 9:02:32 AM
Back in the day when the federal government was paying attention, people became obsessed with the gang warfare in South Central Los Angeles that was claiming the lives of gangbangers and innocents on a daily basis. Time has passed, the news cycle changed, and many have started to forget about the gang war between the Crips and Bloods that raged in L.A. for such a long time.
But what many never realized is that the real bloodshed was never so much between the Crips and Bloods, as it was between rival factions (sets) within the gangs. Take the Eight-Trey Gangster Crips and the Rolling Sixties Crips; both were Crip gangs, but they were more interested in establishng their dominance and warring with other Crip sets than they ever were in going after Bloods. In the world of gangbanging, they call that set trippin'; in the world of politics we call it Democratic party politics!
The Democrats have long practiced the art of set-trippin', where they rip each other to shreds to get ahead. We saw it back when Michael Dukakis was campaigning for the nomination and Al Gore...yes, Mr. Nobel Peace Prize...and his associates introduced the world to Willie Horton; we saw it when the Democrats turned on Joe Lieberman for not being anti-war; I see it here in North Carolina as our sitting lieutenant governor and state treasurer trade charges of corruption, and we all see it in how Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are at each other's throats right now. That's not to say that Republicans don't go after one another in election cycles, but it usually lacks the type of viciousness that you see from the Democrats. Republicans may take some shots at one another, but you don't generally see GOPers calling one another elitists or pulling out the race/gender card to win a primary.
As the Democrats continue to slice and dice one another, you have to wonder just how this is going to damage the Party. It cannot be a good thing to have your major candidates calling each other names on the regular, having one (Obama) having to restate nearly everything he says (see his San Francisco gaffe), or having a person that has been credibly called a "congenital liar" battling it out for your nomination. If the set trippn' continues unabated, the Democrats may find themselves like Humpty Dumpty: unable to piece themselves back together again.