Should we blogger firebrands burn Steve Elmendorf in effigy for his unbelievably dismissive, offensive remarks about filibuster-keen bloggers in today’s WaPo? (New image created by mrboma, who named the file elmendork.jpg.)
But, first things first: That WaPo story — “Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center” — has the potential to suck a lot of oxygen out of our actions this weekend, unless we deal with it (and cleverly?), and then move on. Why move on? Let Jim VanDeHei and Steve Elmendorf spin away and mock us. We have a country that’s in crisis and we must get back to work to try to save it. We have the GOOD FIGHT. WE OWN THE GOOD FIGHT. ONWARD!
But, of course, every blogger — you too — is going to want to weigh in on remarks like these:
“‘The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections,’ said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. ‘The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left’.”
As VanDeHei makes sure to point out, Virginia governor Tim Kaine, who is giving the Dem response to the SOTU Tuesday night, has been hit by Arianna Huffington who wants Rep. John Murtha to give the response. VanDeHei quotes Kaine’s response to Huffington’s criticisms:
“‘Blogs can take up a lot of time if you’re on them,’ Kaine said to reporters Thursday. ‘You can get a lot done if you’re not bitterly partisan.'”
Bitterly partisan? That is NOT what I see here at BooTrib. I see people who are — as Jesse Jackson, Jr. says — trying to “keep hope alive” by simply asking their senators to fight a GOOD FIGHT …
… Fight a GOOD FIGHT … That’s all we want right now. We know only too well we’re in the minority. We see evidence every damn day. We simply want all Democrats to ACT LIKE you’ve got some guts, some nerve, some fight in you.
That’s why I’ve totally kissed and made up with John Kerry after his actions this week (I even signed up again for his newsletter after quitting in disgust last November).
And Hillary is getting the spanking she deserves. (Besides the Iraq issue, that flag burning pandering bullshit amendment did it for me.) And check out HowieinSeattle’s story, “Murtha: ‘Hillary Can’t Win’.” (In fairness, it’s good that Hil’s for the filibuster.)
But, as if to pile more on the leftie bloggers, Vandehei reaches to swat at Code Pink’s protests against Hillary this weekend … Keep reading! …
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is another frequent target of the Internet attacks. Code Pink, an antiwar women’s group with a flashy Web site, plans to protest one of Clinton’s weekend fundraisers and is using the Web site to rally people against the New York Democrat. The critics say Clinton has not challenged Bush aggressively enough on Iraq.
Guess what, Jim VandeHei. Damnit Janet — who was at that protest in Portland last night with Code Pink — and I would both much rather be sitting back, all relaxed, this weekend, just biding our time, waiting for a Democratic president’s SOTU and the confirmation of a rational, centrist jurist to the Supreme Court.
But that’s not our reality. My reality these days is a nightmare! And this “poliics as usual” that you inside-the-Beltway boys only know about just doesn’t cut it out here in the hinterlands.
Most Democrats in D.C. are eunuchs! And they’re too busy managing their contributor harems while D.C. is on fire! While we’ve got a White House, Pentagon, and Congress that has lost all sense of the meaning of the Constitution, the civil rights of American citizens, and has cracked all of our presumptive precepts — including that the U.S. would never initiate an unprovoked war.
And our Supreme Court, with Sam Alito aboard, is going to castrate what’s left of the checks and balances left in D.C. Any Democrat remaining in D.C. will most definitely be a eunuch.
The WaPo says that “Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center”:
Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.
Fiery? Okay. I concede that. Manny is, for sure! Judy too! Tampopo, Janet, all of you! Actually, Judy is ON fire.
Faithful Progressive blog gets in a cautionary lecture mode:
Stand Up for Liberal Values, But Don’t Become Too Dogmatic
In our drive to get Democrats to stand up for principle, liberal blogs and writers sometimes seem anything but liberal. After reading Molly Ivins’ piece about how she could never, ever vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton, it occured to me that liberals sometimes become so self righteous and so convinced of their own purity that they sound like nothing so much as extreme Christian conservatives. Progressive religious bloggers can offer some perspective on this attitude, because we have at our disposal a long history of debate that suggests that the “If You Don’t Agree With Me Entirely, You’re Against Me” approach is a road to nowhere. … read all
Oh, save me and Molly, sister! Save us from our extremism, sistuh!
Fuck you. That remark gets me nowhere. Oh, Faithful Progressive, if you’d but looked at our 12 Days diares on Alito, our countless diaries and stories on Alito, our open threads, you’d see that we are decent, rational, but terribly worried people who desperately see the need to stand up to save our country.
Re the WaPo story, Ann Althouse critiques us:
Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.
These activists — spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns — have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush’s upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts.
But it’s the same old story, as the article acknowledges. The most activist members of a party want something stronger than what ordinary people like. How have bloggers made this any worse? One of the examples in the story is the demand for a filibuster of the Alito nomination, which was made on DailyKos — but it was made by John Kerry, who, for whatever reason, decided it was a good idea to be writing there. Whether that counts as bloggers putting on the pressure, I don’t know. Kerry could have found a forum in any number of places. And the fact is, the NYT was calling for a filibuster too.
That kind of scoping I can tolerate.
The rightie bloggers will probably LOVE this story. So what. We have the GOOD FIGHT. WE OWN THE GOOD FIGHT. ONWARD!
