Matt Stoller has a post on the punditocracy that I think is very on the mark. Stoller is reacting to a rather dramatic (and unacknowledged) flip-flop from Dick Morris. Back in March he said Lamont “need not be taken very seriously”; now he says, “Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) will lose the primary and will be so crippled by the defeat and Ned Lamont (D) so empowered, that he will lose the general election as an independent.” But Stoller uses this turnabout to make a broader point.
I’ve stopped thinking in partisan terms, though I am pretty much a partisan. To me, politics is all about conflicting political machines. The pundit/Republican class is not partisan, it’s a class. It’s composed of those who do their business with the machine, the lobbyists, the candidates, the media consultants, and the donors who demand fealty to a certain pro-corporate mindset. The reason I call it the pundit/Republican class is because it’s more profitable for Republicans and pundits, but it’s a class based on false certitude, fear-mongering, and elitism, and there are those who engage in this on both sides.
I think this analysis is correct and it leads to an important point. The netroots should not be about “just winning” in the hope of gaining a majority. We really cannot avoid being generally anti-incumbent. When the outsiders (bloggers) get invited into the inner sanctum it is always jarring to see how elitist, how insular, and how stupid the punditocracy really is. Most of the time I ascribe bad intentions and ill will to the idiotic statements I read from people like Nagourney, Klein, Kurtz, Broder, Fineman, and the like. But, that is not always the case. They really do live in a fantasy world, where they continually mistake their own self-interest as a disinterested analysis of political reality.
Bloggers act as a kind of journalistic incumbent challenge. We constantly challenge their common wisdom. Political incumbent challengers are our natural allies. That doesn’t mean that we should form a circular firing squad and fight Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer at every opportunity. But, it does mean that we should never, ever, assent to their will, their strategy, or their efforts to shut down primaries. If Ned Lamont’s campaign has done nothing else, it has shown us who our real enemies are. They are everyone that has been seen to squirm. For example, watch Tim Russert squirm, and watch Russ Feingold explain reality outside the beltway.
MR. RUSSERT: But Senator, you only have 13 votes for your resolution.
SEN. FEINGOLD: Yeah, that’s not the American people. The 13 votes…
MR. RUSSERT: But that’s the Democratic Party.
SEN. FEINGOLD: No, it’s not.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s less than a third of the–in the Senate.
SEN. FEINGOLD: The Democratic Party of this country is
the people of this country. And I have been all over Wisconsin, all 72
counties, to 12 different states. I can tell you, the one thing I’m
sure of, Tim, is the American people have had it with this
intervention. They do want a timetable for bringing home the troops.
And the fact that the United States Senate doesn’t get it shouldn’t
surprise you.MR. RUSSERT: So the majority of the Democratic Senate is out of touch with the American people?
SEN. FEINGOLD: Yes, it is at this point. Those who vote
against bringing the troops home don’t get it. They’re not out there
enough. They’re not listening to the people. Frankly, they’re not even
looking at the polls. I saw two or three polls, Tim, in the last week
that showed that a majority of the American people favor a timetable.
So it is to our–you know, we lost in 2000, we lost in 2002, we lost in
2004. Why don’t we try something different, like listening to the
American people?
Russ Feingold understands that the Democratic Party is out of touch. And they are not about to get in touch with American people, or the netroots, by suddenly gaining a majority. And we can’t think we will get universal health care or have Congress protect our rights if we don’t get new thinking in Congress, new representatives. Stoller concludes:
You’ve just got to work for what you believe, because the idea of predictability or electability is often wrong, and it’s used as a tool to keep you from working for what you believe.
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The insider Democrats and the punditocracy are worried the netroots will pull them to the left and that, as a result, they won’t be able to win. They no longer even realize that this merely serves their self-interest in bland centrism. They take no responsibility for creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. They don’t correct themselves when their conventional wisdom is proven wrong.
Some bloggers succumb to this thinking, too. Tired of losing, they agree to drop certain principles, or make heroic efforts to frame them correctly, as if we could win if only we could do a Vulcan mind meld with the electorate. What we need is to work for what we believe, and to do so with confidence. A self-conscious salesman is a failure as a saleman. Feingold understands this. It appears that Stoller does too.
to be all things to all people, you end up being no things to no people.
What draws many voters to the Republicans is that the Republicans take a stand and stick to it. We may think the stands they take are silly, or bigoted, or pandering…but that’s not what “the base” sees. There are hints that “the base” may no longer be fooled, but I’m not counting on that in November.
One thing that’s attracting me more and more to Feingold is that he has the courage of his convictions…as does Al Gore now that he’s not running for anything and is free of his handlers.
Voters want a real choice. When a new detergent or toothpaste comes on the market, they have to be different than the existing brands, or shoppers will just stick with the same stuff they’ve used for years. Why should voters vote for a “Republican-lite” instead of the same Republican they’ve voted for before? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, after all.
If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything…but it might take the Democrats several more messy losses to get that through their thick skulls.
What draws the most people to the (current) Republican party is that those people want to feel strong and powerful, and are willing to believe all manner of nonsense that helps engender that feeling, even if those beliefs are categorically false. A significantly large segment of the current population eagerly embraces denial in order to insulate themselves from uncomfortable truths. The current GOP provides a steady stream of fictions designed specifically to weaponize the ignorance of the elctorate by exploiting the emotional neediness of those who seek to enhance their own sense of self-worth by attaching themselves to the forcefulness, (misinterpreted as strength), and stubborness, (misinterpreted as resolve), of others.
(And the Democratic party, as currently constituted, is barely any better or more realistic the the Repubs are.)
Every dictator, every tyrant on the planet from time immemorial has received support in this same exact way, and the Bush regime is no exception; they are firmly in the category of authoritarian tyranny.
That’s worth a 4 all by itself.
Thank you. I’ve been trying to get the term “weaponized ignorance” into thepolitical lexicon for the last 4 years. I hope you will feel free to use the term profligately, and encourage friends to do so as well.
Sorry to bring up what might be a sore point, BooMan, but this sounds like a description of the thinking of the late, unlamented spoon. Apparently he’d rather win at all cost, throwing principle overboard. But that’s thinking that will likely only result in a short term gain for the party, if any gain at all. It is not what is in the best interest of the electorate. They, and we, deserve candidates like Feingold, that understand that government serves the people and not the other way around.
The insider Democrats and the punditocracy are worried the netroots will pull them to the left and that, as a result, they won’t be able to win.
They’re not willing to move to the left because it would mean abandoning the corporate money and cushy retirement lobbying jobs that come with being faux-liberals. I don’t think they’re worried as much about losing to Republicans as they are about being replaced with an actual progressive who might help change the corrupt political culture that enriches everyone on the inside.
a Vulcan mind meld with the electorate. What we need is to work for what we believe, and to do so with confidence. A self-conscious salesman is a failure as a saleman. Feingold understands this. It appears that Stoller does too.
You know, it would really help to win in the long-run to have the insight needed to see how current policies of any side side will shake things up eventually. If the principles that you believe are correct and logical but not currently in vogue because of propaganda or good economic times or the innate greed of people, don’t hide from them because if you do, in the long term you will not get rewarded for these good principles and logic.
I posted a diary yesterday about what I perceived as another sign of the anti-women, anachronistic view of the current in power political types. This anti-women sentiment is even being embraced or at least tip-toed around by the Dems who are now supporting the likes of Harry Reid and Bob Casey. This is missing the future gold mine forest from the trees! As I wrote in a comment earlier, from a political strategic point of view, if the Santorums of the world get Roe and maybe Griswald and other women’s rights issues overturned, how many millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of women will be so outraged over their sudden slave-like status that they will be eager to vote for a women’s freedom party/agenda. If the Dems have Reid and Casey in office facilitating this demise of women’s freedoms, then what party looks good and has a subsequent political advantage. Hint, NOT THE DEMS AND NOT THE REPUBS, In fact the issue dies as a possible political winner becasue of somekind of stupidity or stratgeic blindness! Am I the only one seeing these longer term scenarios????????
Moral of the story is to stick with what you believe, advertise it smartly, and wait for the forest to bring lots of good fruit!
I’m w/you on Casey–no dice, folks.
At the expense of women? Never. Wait for the incoming backlash…the so-called [un]Democratic party has never cooperated w/the feminists…never (DLC is riddled w/DixieCrats, for one thing).
Fuggetaboutit.
The “war on women” rages on…in the [un]democratic party…no thanks, I’ll pass (I already gave @the orifice). <g>
We’ve had to claw and hammer our way thru decades of marginalization (and it’s women who tend to vote Dem.–esp, single women)–i.e., single, never married, cohabitating, divorced, widowed, etc.
We do have a new BT member–her diary is already MIA in the traffic, folks…Jean Hay Bright (D-ME) is running for U.S. Senate against ‘Limp Snowe.
Just won our primary by 600 votes, so it’s on to phase two.
Jean will be along soon–this blogging thang is new to her…here’s where she stands on the issues, et al.
Jean is also an author, so here are some summer beach readin’ material.
Did someone say there’s a shortage of progressive Dems. running?
Nah…but, they tend to spend too much time fund-raising (which includes the pundit’s erroneous lamentations, such as “projected landslide”–before the lit drops even commence)…you can see where I’m going w/this?
Sheesh.
Truth to power: we certainly don’t need to “go along to get along” re: vote for misogynistic pigs such as Casey…makes my gut wanna hurl.
I’m too old for this sort of cooption, I guess.
Maybe (for varying degrees of “maybe” from “probably should begin to consider” to “hell yes”) we should stop thinking about parties and begin to think in terms of classes. Thinking only in terms of partisan politics gets you candidates like Bob Casey, whose main selling point appears to be that he will get Santorum out of office (and that’s a good thing, really).
We are in the middle of a class war, with the common folks pitted against the aristocracy. Maybe we need to start thinking less in terms of getting Democrats elected and more in terms of getting people elected who will serve the working class in this country rather than the aristocracy, at least until such time as the Democrats repudiate their ties to the aristocracy and start supporting the average American 100%.
I wouldn’t use the word aristocracy, but other than that, bingo.
Got a better word? For better or worse, that’s what we have in this country. It’s not a European-style hereditary aristocracy per se, although you can be born into it (Paris Hilton, for example); you can buy your way into it, and sometimes you can bluff your way into it. But mostly I’m just using the word as a shorthand for the corporatists who have the money, those in the government who do their bidding, and hangers-on like the Beltway punditocracy and political consultants. In other words, those at the top of the political food chain who have a vested interest in maintaining the political status quo.
Oligarchs!
exactly, my friend! This is why I have had ppl wroking on me to get Harold Ford elected against my better judgment. I was gonna hold my nose and vote for him, but I just can’t bring myself to do such a horrific thing….you are absolutely correct.
Apparently all this needs saying again and again, even though it’s been clear for a long time that the Dem party as constituted is in a death spiral of its own making. The current great hope of the party movers and shakers is that the GOP will continue to implode under its own weight — basically the mentality that daddy will kick off soon and we can pay off the credit cards with the inheritance without having to earn anything ourselves.
The evidence of how wrongheaded that is is all around us for anybody willing to look.
–Feingold’s career is sufficient proof on its own. And Sanders. And Wellstone, who could be stopped only by death. As opposed to losers like Kerry, whatsername in Cunningham’s district, and, I fear, Casey in PA.
–Americans are no longer jumping everytime the alarms sound: there was barely a ripple when the media pumped up the fake Sears Tower conspiracy, for example, even here in Chicago. Americans are finally sick and tired of being whipped into fearfulness. They’ll vote for anybody who forthrightly offers another way, another America.
–Americans are sick of Iraq. There’s nothing heroic going on in this occupation. Evidence? They had an “election”, Zarqawi was killed, and depite the media hype, nobody really much cared. Americans just want to forget about it. They’ll vote for whoever promises to make it so.
All the ingredients are there for a massive Dem turnaround this year. The question is, can it happen without a total overthrow of the current pundit/consultant class. I really thought things might get better with Dean in charge, but he doesn’t seem to be in charge. As for us, our mission is to forget the electability myth, to see it as the self-serving snake oil that it is, and work for real change. Somebody said democracy has never been tried yet. Over the past quarter century, neither has the Dem party. Maybe it’s time for a little fundamentalism on our side of the fence.
Taxation without representation has come back around.
Some bloggers succumb to this thinking, too. Tired of losing, they agree to drop certain principles, or make heroic efforts to frame them correctly, as if we could win if only we could do a Vulcan mind meld with the electorate. What we need is to work for what we believe, and to do so with confidence. A self-conscious salesman is a failure as a saleman. Feingold understands this. It appears that Stoller does too.
Preach it brother.
Here’s something you aren’t hearing enough about in the blog world – the Akaka primary Hawaii.
It’s a reverse Lieberman situation, where anti-war Akaka is being challenged by Bush sympathizing Case. Akaka is one of 13 Senators to vote for a firm timetable of withdrawl of U.S. troops from Iraq, while Case rubberstamped Bush’s war in a house vote the week before. I just wrote a big blog posting about it that I thought you might be interested in. Akaka needs as much support as we can give him.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Lamont goes to the Senate from CT, yet his votes are cancelled out by D-in-name-only, pro-Bush/Pro-Iraq war Ed Case from Hawaii? We need to fight to keep Akaka in the Senate. Spread the word!
Support Akaka!