Promoted by Steven D. I ended my contributions to MoveOn after 2004 because I felt they had become less a progressive organization than just another promoter of the Democratic Party. I want progressives to be pushing the Dems to do the right thing, not enabling them to do the wrong thing for “tactical” reasons.
Just got this wretch-inducing appeal from wasted lives & quagmire enabler MoveOn (emphasis added and repeated requests for YKos donations deleted):
(cont.)
From: “Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Political Action”
To: “fairleft”
Subject: Big progressive conference in Chicago — want to come?
Dear MoveOn member,
We wanted to invite you to join fellow progressive activists, bloggers, leaders, and writers at the second annual Yearly Kos convention this August in Chicago.
MoveOn is co-sponsoring this weekend of thinking about people-powered politics and Internet-driven activism. MoveOn staff will be there along with major bloggers, leaders of top progressive organizations, and progressive media outlets. There will also be a presidential candidates forum — John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson have already accepted.
… Want to join us at the Yearly Kos convention in Chicago from August 2nd to 5th? …
The best reason to come isn’t the big names–it’s the chance to connect with thousands of other folks working across the country to build a more progressive America. …
We hope we’ll see you there.
Sincerely,
–Eli Pariser, Executive Director
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Okay, barring the cognitive dissonance of seeing three mainstream Democratic Presidential candidates so close to a word they run like jackrabbits from, you just have to say, WOW, talk about PROGRESSIVE (I mean “PROGRESSIVE”), that sure must be some sort of progressive, “people-powered” event gonna take place in Chicago! Except, well we know about MoveOn and DailyKos (and (seems to me) YearlyKos): they’re Democratic Party front organizations. That ain’t progressive, it’s more like:
Let’s get ourselves elected with Dkos yokels’ volunteering and money. It won’t cost us any ‘real player’ support, cuz these chumps never demand a thing!
MoveOn ain’t progressive. Just one story will tell you what they’re really about, because in March Eli Pariser and MoveOn were at their Iraq-quagmire-enabling, Democratic-Party-leadership-faithful, tell-ya-all-ya-need-to-know worst, as told by David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet: MoveOn.org Versus Its Members
True Majority was a late addition to the list [of organizations in favor of Rep. Barbara Lee’s fund an Iraq withdrawal bill]. The organization polled its members. Did they favor the Pelosi bill to fund the war but include various toothless restrictions on it, or did they favor the Lee plan to use the power of the purse to end the war by the end of the year? Needless to say, True Majority’s membership favored the Lee plan.
MoveOn polled its membership without including the Lee alternative, offering a choice of only Pelosi’s plan or nothing. Amazingly, Eli Pariser of MoveOn has admitted that the reason MoveOn did this was because they knew that their members would favor the Lee amendment.
In fact, writes Swanson, the point of MoveOn’s two-choices-only poll …
… was to allow MoveOn to announce that its membership supported Pelosi rather than Lee. Yet Pariser admits that he did not offer MoveOn’s membership a choice of Lee’s plan because he knew they would vote for it. …
Actually, [Pariser] doesn’t say that he knows Lee’s plan would have won out over Pelosi’s. But he certainly does not know that it wouldn’t have, and making that baseless and to my mind very unlikely claim was the only possible point of having done the poll. The rationale that Pariser offers is absurd. The poll could only have had one result. It served to give cover to progressive Democrats in Congress who gave their support to Pelosi after having intended to vote no on Pelosi’s bill unless it included Lee’s amendment.
[Pariser] didn’t let them make the supposed mistake of backing Lee rather than Pelosi, because Lee supposedly could never pass, while Pelosi could.
In addition to “the extreme arrogance and dishonesty,” Swanson adds two more reasons why Pariser and MoveOn’s decision to back Pelosi and not Lee was the opposite of antiwar strategy:
…as Bob Fertik has pointed out, even if Lee’s amendment did not pass, a vote for it would have helped to build war opposition in Congress, Pelosi’s bill could have still passed too, and other amendments could still have been denied a vote.
[Secondly,] we have no proof that Lee’s amendment could not have been passed. A third of the Democrats have taken similar positions. The leadership could have brought another third on board. And relentless pressure and threats and bribes of the sort aimed at progressives could have brought many of the right-wing Democrats along. And if it had failed, and the Republicans and Republican-lite Democrats had voted down the bill, it would have been clear who stood where, and Pelosi could have announced victory and the end of the war. The Pentagon has more than enough money to safely bring our troops home right away without Congress passing any bill at all.
All of MoveOn and the Democratic Leadership’s maneuvering in April and May was more of this b.s., and we finally ended up — is it where they wanted us to be? — with a fully funded occupation ($95 Billion is funding for 9 months, not 4, by the way). And, reacting after the nasty May 24 deal (not pro-acting; he and his frontpage didn’t say/do diddly when the deal was in play and might’ve been stopped (and neither did MoveOn)), Markos Moulitsas counsels patience (and please don’t put your chump change under the mattress!).
Speaking of that repeated ad infinitum `progressive’, YearlyKos let’s you know it doesn’t mean a damn thing. Here’s the YearlyKos website:
YearlyKos uses the term “progressive” to describe the common values held by most Americans, rather than as a reference to any political or partisan agenda.
Here’s more on the (insider) people-powered ‘movement’ of which YearlyKos is a part and over which Daily Kos is a leader/minder:
… the Netroots is made up of individuals — not corporations, not lobbyist groups, not any large money-infused machine that (currently) influences all that occurs inside the beltway. The most-visited blog of this movement is Daily Kos, founded in 2002 by MarKOS Moulitsas.
And finally, here’s Markos on his anti-ideology, and that means you, progressives:
The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It’s one between establishment and anti-establishment factions.
Like I said, we give `em our money and demand nothing in return. And that’s about all we’ve gotten. Can we at least ask for more from the blog we regularly post at? Can we at least ask more from a MoveOn that lives on its obsession with being seen as ‘progressive’?
By the way, if you want to know what a progressive Democrat looks like, definitely check out Bob Fertik at democrats. com. He’s trying to rustle up primary challenges to the Cheney Democrats who just voted more funds for the occupation. For example, wouldn’t it be ‘progressive’ to see this on the DailyKos frontpage: “Bush Democrats” Answer Primary Challenges with Lies and Stupidity
