Maybe you haven’t really arrived until someone as important as Martin Peretz reads what you write and responds:
Forgive me. But I never read Daily Kos until today. Well, now that I’ve read it, the first thought that came to me is how illiterate Kos is, just plain illiterate.
Of course, Markos writes something like four million words a year. He’s not illiterate, and Peretz is just engaging in an ad hominem attack. This is what it has come to on the left, and pretty far out from the 2008 election. It was left to Hunter to eviscerate Marty Peretz on behalf of the Daily Kos community, and he did it quite well in his inimitable style. But, even Hunter responds with a tit for tat, repeatedly abusing The New Republic for its poor circulation numbers and lack of relevancy.
The left, never known for its ability to act in lockstep, is predictably tearing itself apart at the exact moment (the upcoming 2006 midterms elections) when it can least afford to do so. Soon, we will begin choosing up presidential candidates, with some going for Hillary, some for Kerry, some for Feingold, some for Clark, some for Warner, some for Edwards, and some for a Draft Gore movement. Here and there, there will even be Biden, Bayh, and Vilsack supporters. And we are going to be nasty to each other. It’s inevitable.
In response to Markos’s suggestion that TNR is “just another cog of the Vast RIGHT Wing Conspiracy”, Peretz tries to defend The New Republic’s Democratic bona fides.
The New Republic is very much against the Bush tax programs, against Bush Social Security “reform,” against cutting the inheritance tax, for radical health care changes, passionate about Gore-type environmentalism, for a woman’s entitlement to an abortion, for gay marriage, for an increase in the minimum wage, for pursuing aggressively alternatives to our present reliance on oil and our present tax preferences for gas-guzzling automobiles. We were against the confirmation of Justice Alito.
And, yet, they really are just a cog in an anti-progressive coalition of foreign policy hardliners…hooked as deeply into Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex as any neo-conservative. If there is one issue around which the left-wing blogosphere coalesces, it is opposition to the invasion of Iraq. The press signed onto the war at an early stage. The editorial boards of the New York Times and Washington Post, alleged bastions of liberalism, clamored for war and spread disinformation. The cable news channels visibly drooled at the ratings their embedded reporters would provide. Dissenting voices were silenced and shunted off the airwaves. And, more than any other left-leaning publication, TNR led the unquestioning chorus of bloodthirsty, shoot first ask questions later, liberal bashing warmongers.
Their poster boy is Joe Lieberman. And they react to criticism of Lieberman as though it must be driven by some kind of latent anti-semitism. How else can one explain Lee Seigel’s choice of words: “the fascistic forces ranged against Lieberman“? Inside word (from a single source) has it that Lieberman was in New York last night raising money and showing attack ads to his supporters. One of those ads questioned whether anti-Semites are donating to Ned Lamont’s campaign. Maybe someone will dissuade Holy Joe from taking the low road, but we are beginning to see a trend.
I don’t care how much TNR might agree with me on social security or abortion rights, if they call me an anti-Semite because I opposed the invasion of Iraq, and I oppose the ongoing open-ended occupation of Iraq, then they are going to have war on their hands. Call me a fascist, and I’m likely to call you a scumbag, or worse. But, none of this really gets us anywhere.
You’re illiterate, I’m a fascist, their scumbags. The bottom line is that there is an old guard to the Democratic Party. It extends from Maureen Dowd, to Paul Begala, to Madeline Albright, to Marty Peretz, and Donna Brazille. They told us what to think, and they told us to think in very traditional terms. You didn’t hear them crying out against the invasion of Iraq. At most, they made pro forma oppositional whimpers. The failure of the war in Iraq is dangerous for a wide range of well connected interests…primarily those that are hooked into the international corporations that do business throughout central Asia and the middle east, and those that are connected to the defense and security industries. They do not want a new left that fundamentally questions the size, scope, and posture of our military in Asia. In other words, the loss of Iraq is mirroring the loss of Vietnam. The New Republic appears very much to be representing a second wave of neo-conservatives, like the Perle’s and Wolfowitz’s that came out of Scoop Jackson’s offices in the 1970’s.
Lieberman going independent would be a sure sign that these hawks no longer feel welcome in the Democratic Party. That is what is really going on. TNR is fighting for influence, and is trying to marginalize the blogosphere (to Michael Moore us) in order to retain their influence. They don’t care about butter half as much as they care about guns, and therefore our political differences are unbridgeable.
Hunter can talk about how irrelevant TNR is, but he’s wrong. TNR still represents the respectable left in the punditocracy. For Beltway types, anyone to the left of Mark Warner is a dangerous loon, and weak on defense. This is specifically why I am concerned about the Warner/dKos nexus, because it seems like Warner and Lieberman and TNR are all on one side of a foreign policy debate, and the progressive netroots is (or should be) on the other.
In just the last month we’ve seen attacks on Jason Leopold for latest, on Armando, on Jerome Armstrong, and on Markos. How much is coming from Rove’s operators and how much is coming from TNR’s operators? The fact that we even have to ask that question should tell you all you need to know. TNR is our enemy, and so are their preferred candidates (Al Gore, notwithstanding).
