Dave Johnson over at Seeing the Forest talks about why Democrats lack courage:
… Republicans who toe the right wing corporate line know they have the whole “conservative movement” infrastructure and political system watching their backs, sticking up for them and going after their opponents. Even if they get tossed out of office they can expect serious rewards. They get appointed to a nice agency position, or a think tank job, or a lobbying job – something will be there for them and they know it. The right takes care of their own. (And we all know this system extends through their whole infrastructure, right down to speaking fees and book advances for lowly RW bloggers.)
But it is not easy for Democrats to do the right thing. Not at all. It takes incredible courage and commitment, because they are on their own when going against the system and the right’s apparatus. For politicians who might support progressive values and policies there just is not much of a system beyond the blogosphere to encourage and support them to do the right thing. So they can expect no support – only punishment and pain. Dem politicians largely still do not support and stick up for each other and there is very little organized support from . There isn’t a reward/job/payment system at all – candidates and their staff in fact have to worry that they are harming their future political and business careers by sticking up for progressive values. …
Johnson then goes on to talk about how the blogosphere reflects this dynamic. We’re free to say what we like, and stand up for progressive values, but … we don’t get paid for what’s enormously time-consuming work and we can’t expect that everyone can do that.
This is one of the reasons why the blogs skew male, and skew white. This, in addition to the tendency of any subculture to reflect the racial, class or gender hierarchy of the dominant culture, means that an expansion of diversity requires some significant intentionality. People who statistically tend to do well, tend to carry that into all their activities.
So the culture of blogging is the culture of the same people who can afford to take unpaid career track internships of the sort that are common in liberal organizations. Conservative interns get paid though, and sometimes get housing and the occasional meal. Liberal interns get … the satisfaction of a job well done, just like most bloggers. And wherever two or three bloggers are gathered together, I will tell you that talk will turn sooner or later to how broke we all are, and how tired we all are of being broke and/or in debt. And yes, Dave, the healthcare question, it does come up with regularity. We’re holding this blogosphere together with duct tape and bailing wire by now, even those of us who you’d think would be doing well.
It’s a reason why you see fewer women, fewer people from low-income backgrounds, fewer people of color. Fewer of the people in whose hands society has not seen fit to concentrate wealth, and who just don’t have the cushion, credit or freedom to forgo potential income.
Everybody has to eat, and it’s hard to be courageous when you’re hungry.
Amen, Natasha. Beautifully put.
I can only ibid and say well put. It does help to answer the questions I had about dem courage.
And yet another, Amen sister.
That really does make alot of sense. So how do we get this information out so we can stop being labeled as pussies?
One of the problems with Democratic politics is that nobody gets paid. In order to participate you have to be rich, have rich parents, or be willing to eat scraps while you work you ass off.
I think that the political world would be much improved if we started paying the people who work to make a difference enough to live. One of the scariest things that I learned while working on a campaign last fall is that the fate of our nation generally rests in the hands of a bunch of underpaid youngsters who can afford to work for their ideals. It would serve candidates much better if they paid people enough to live and enough to recruit people with the skills needed to really do the job.
You are right of course. But here is my problem.
We all rip Dems for being cowards. But what do we have to lose. We are commentators on a blog.
Politicians have their jobs to lose. It is so easy to say, bring home the troops when you are John Edwards. You aren’t working. What about a Congressman up for re-election in a year. They have voters that will fall for the cut and run bullshit.
Say you voted against the spying bill. Month later, their is an attack in the US. You think the voters will say, well Bush had plenty of evidence anyway.
HELL NO. The media will crucify them. So enough of calling the Dems pussies. They may be. But what they are doing takes more balls then being tough on a comment thread.
You’re missing the point.
When right-wingers make votes that fly in the face of common sense and sanity, there is a massive infrastructure backing them up to the point that there are no ill consequences for risk taking.
That is not so for those who support democrats and progressives. It’s about Democrats and the left providing bloggers with the infrastructure necessary so WE can be as effective as THEM.
On C-Span I saw a panel from Yearly Kos that consisted of Mike Stark, Lane Hudson, that intern on Webb’s campaign that shot the “Macaca” footage where George Allen ruined his career, and some guy from MoveOn.org.
They were there discussing what each of them did to help take down Republicans and a particular question was directed at each of them about what the personal risks they have to take with their futures/finances/safety in order to do this activism work.
Lane Hudson (who outed Mark Foley and released the chat transcripts of him with Congressional Pages to media) talked about how he lost his paying job with Human Rights Campaign over it and how no one in Washington will hire him now because he is so controversial.
Mike Stark added that this is how the democrats treat their activist heroes. They’re afraid of them and have no equivalent of “Wingnut Welfare” for their activists. No American Enterprise Institute or the like waiting to give you a high-paid Fellowship, No Richard Mellon Scaife to buy you a yacht for harpooning a whale in the other party, no book deal with Regenry, etc. Instead, they’re actually afraid of associating with you.
If you can find the video, it’s definitely worth watching. I don’t think it’s at YouTube though. It was C-Span copyrighted material, not subject to the copyright waiver they provide for congressional hearings. Perhaps at the C-Span archive.
Dave Johnson has been talking about this for years and he’s absolutely right. But then we also have to consider that if it gets too well-funded and everyone is suddenly “on the take” like the “Conservative Movement” is then we become just as corrupt. So there is a balance and you have to know where the money is coming from and what they expect in return. It does seem that on the other side, everyone has sold their souls and is willing to sell the manufactured consent of the people to the highest bidder. They are a for-personal-profit PR machine and they’re good at it. So be careful what you wish for.
Think about this. The Right supposedly spews out how individual freedom and responsibilities is the way to go while socialist-group aspects are bad for productivity. The Dems supposedly preach the opposite. Yet in practice, It is the Dems-progressives that seem to be left on their own to sink or survive, while the right wingers have a sort of guaranteed social security from their ideological partners.
Interesting no??
Absolutely….something really wrong with the system on our side where the more outspoken someone becomes the more way way too many dems seem to marginalize those very people. We don’t have to look any further than Kucinich for that lesson…he’s not being done in by Republicans but by his own party. While the rethugs embrace and make rock stars out of their most outspoken.