It seems to me that the progressive blogosphere is useful to the Democratic Party and liberal interest groups because it is a free source of media counterinformation to the crap the corporate media spews out on a 24-hour basis. But, the progressive blogosphere is actually more concerned with amplifying critiques of the Democrats because the Democrats are unwilling and unable to feed and tend to their base. So, we’re now more a part of the problem than we are part of the solution. Some people have a degree of self-awareness about this situation, but the majority do not. Yeah, it would be great if the Democrats were more willing and able to do the types of things we advocate, since most (but by no means all) of the advice we provide is solid. But since they’re not doing it, we’re just piling on and helping to demoralize the troops.
It’s not something I’m eager to associate myself with.
Showed that there is money to be made as a Democratic critic of Democratic Administrations, especially if you are willing to repeat Republican lines verbatim
Again, it’s not feed and tend, not even that. It’s signal that you WANT to, but can’t for some reason. Even that would be better and they don’t really have to do much, but they (office holders) can’t even bring themselves to do that.
For me, more than advocacy, the main purpose of the blogosphere is making sense of what the heck is going on in the political world.
And just to add, your block has been one of the most helpful to me in this respect.
Party vanguard is an acceptable term. Identifying as the base only amplifies the feedback loop and cognitive dissonance.
You don’t see much interest in or input from union or minority posters in the prog-sphere.
Otherwise, in regards to your main point, yup.
as informed, liberal, creative class whites we are part of the base. as bloggers, activists, organizers we are part of the vanguard.
Minority poster here.
should have included the qualifier “predominantly” in there.
I find it difficult to cheerlead for the democrats since imho they’ve screwed up hcr royally–and a few other things as well. With a majority and the WH and with much of the country behind them.
And they continue to cave into the rethugs.
That and the fact that they won’t stand up and fight angers me the most.
Perriello’s campaign may get me fired up again IF he stands up and fights.
i think the obama administration could mend the fences if they want, but im not sure at a high level the white house has figured out how they want to play things yet. progressives are extremely distrustful of the village, while Obama has decided (and shows no signs of rethinking things) that he’s going to govern with the tacit approval, or at least, not the disapproval of the village. thus, while a centrist president like obama can keep his base in line if it means throwing goodies to the left and right wings of his party, Im not sure how he squares that circle when a subsection of the left (us, the netroots) is so firmly anti-establishment. I’m sure the top political guys at the WH see Markos running polls to support his thesis that Reid is unelectable don’t help things. But can you really blame Markos? Everything he’s arguing is well supported empiracally and makes a certain amount of political sense. But if you’re in the trenches in DC rubbing shoulders with monsters like Ben Nelson you probably can’t help but get pissed when Markos and Dean pile on, despite the fact that they raise a lot of good points.
I think this is right. The Dems can’t tell us their every tactical move, but even something like reassurance the the President is working behind the scenes to get X passed would be so helpful. I feel like we are screaming ourselves hoarse and they are wondering if there is a fly buzzing in the next room.
One way or the other, I found my ears perking up and my cynicism at bay when I started getting emails again from David Plouffe, and this morning’s is no exception
Even Drum sees it:
My take on Obama for quite a while has been exactly the opposite of Nelson’s: I think one of his big problems is that he considers it a grave character defect to ever openly throw a bone to the left. Throwing those bones — even smallish, symbolic ones — would have done him an immense amount of good during his first year, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe a firm statement about DADT even if action didn’t come until later. Or a serious effort to claw back the AIG bonuses even if it didn’t work. Or — obviously — full-throated support of the public option even if it eventually got killed by Joe Lieberman. But none of that happened. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s so hypersensitive to accusations of “pandering to the left” that he’ll do almost anything to avoid them.
A good response to an earlier Drum post.
I’m don’t know how to square that circle, but jabbering on about the Overton Window and snarking on “center right nation” isn’t the fix.
That is a non-response. He shouldn’t pander because the base is small? He doesn’t pander because the base is small enough he doesn’t identify with it and didn’t come out of it? So what?
The base is small. He should be trying to grow that base. That is his job as Democratic leader. But more than that, the base understands they are smaller than the other side. That means it takes VERY SMALL PANDERS and that even FEWER people will get the secret words. So pandering becomes even less costly for equal results.
There’s a frequent confusion here. And that is to equate the blogosphere with the base.
I don’t know about others, but when I say that Democrats are unwilling and unable to feed and tend to their base, I am talking about a wide cross-section of folks who voted for Democrats last year because they thought that things in DC would change.
I’m perfectly comfortable being a Yellow Dog Democrat (even with the uglier and uglier yellow dogs), but a lot of new or crossover voters aren’t. Those voters could be solidified into the base but they are beginning to have lots of doubts.
I’m not sure what troops we are demoralizing that aren’t already demoralized.
I’m just wishing that the Democratic caucus in the Senate would get a clue about what they have done to make 2010 even more difficult that what it would have been otherwise.
And the proof is in the pudding. Reid’s likely gone. Lincoln’s likely gone. Bayh is getting shaky. A number of Blue Dogs who were major recipients of lobbyist cash have bowed out. Nelson created a firestorm in Nebraska with his Medicaid earmark. Dodd, who was perceived to be compromised on banking issues has retired. And enough union members voted for Scott Brown for him to win.
It’s a long time before November so there is the possibility that we might find a way to hang the obstructionism around every Republicans neck. But it’s not going to happen as long as Democrats give them cover.
When Lieberman, who everyone hates, ended up killing the public option thanks to the Democratic leadership allowing him to, and when it was clear that this health care reform was going to be paid by people already struggling with paying their health insurance, it became obvious to a lot of Democrats that the Senate bill was really, really bad. Maybe not Boo or some of the others here, but to a lot of Democrats.
I spent my working years as a union steward for my unit and a union officer several times. I know how easily blue-collar workers can be swayed to vote against their interests. And by voting for Brown they were voting against their interests. But are corporate Democrats acting in their interests?
But a lot of union people were afraid of this mess of health care, and that they’d get stuck not only with the blame for it but also with the bill for it. They voted against their union leadership because they could figure out that the promise to not get their insurance taxed would only last until the Republicans took over, which could very well be in November. Or at least a coalition of Repubs and Blue Dogs will take over, you know, the same folks who brought us NAFTA and GATT.
So why did they vote for Brown? Who else were they going to vote for? At least Brown won’t push this lousy health care bill.
Getting elected is not by being a Republican-Lite. This incredible failure of leadership by the Democrats is endangering people like Barbara Boxer. She can very well lose. Surely the people here have some touch with people out in the real world. The Party is committing suicide and everyone around here is carping at people who complain about the bitter taste of the kool-aid.
It wasn’t Lieberman who killed the health bill because he never had to join the Republicans with a vote. It was Obama through Reid who made the decision to keep Lieberman in the Democratic caucus after he had shown his true colors during the Republican National Convention that killed any effort of reform. We never had 60 votes or even 59. We may have had 51 with Biden. Because of the 60 vote temptation we missed the chance at the beginning of congress to change the Senate rules so we could make the changes mandated by the election. Without Lieberman the choice would have been wait until 2012 for more seats or fix the rules. The 60 vote strategy was only useful in case the Republicans ever got a majority again but the Republicans would have already changed the rules if it wasn’t for the gang of 14 (including Lieberman) who blocked it. They would do it now if they had the large majority we now have.
I cannot believe the Senate rules did not allow Reid to call Nelson and Lieberman’s bluff on joining a Republican filibuster if they didn’t get their way. Instead we got a bill so toxic that I can understand why a union member would vote for Brown to kill it. For me, I just felt like, why bother.
…to throw in the towel on Obama.
He sure looked promising as a candidate.
A long way to go in his term, but his performance couldn’t be worse at the moment.
A horrible mistake, major disappointment.
What the fuck are they thinking?
Totally agree with Booman that the most important thing is to hammer the republicans for their failures. Intra-sniping is basically a rear-guard action. People need to be out there destroying the ideology of the “national-security” state and the twin ideology of the “free-market”. People need to be on that message every day, day after day. That’s the long term project. Small victories in the context of that larger project are what we need. Don’t get distracted by this or that legislative failure. Republicans are fixing to run on “tax-cuts” and the evils of government spending…
nothing demoralizes me more than bogus defenses of the dem party leadership and why we’ not supposed to notice. or if we do notice, we’re not supposed to say anything.
what’s demoralizing is not the truth, it’s the unwillingness of progressive to come to terms with it (what happended to the reality based community?)