The DCCC takes tone-deaf to a new level by asking for donations the weekend after 40+ members of their caucus folded on warrantless surveillance.
Even Fred Hiatt found the Dem’s actions indefensible:
THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted.
If anything came out of Yearly Kos it is the fact that the Democratic Establishment and the bigfoot media still do not know how to ride this horse we call the progressive netroots. Paul Hogarth, who asked the five-point question of Hillary at the candidate breakout, thinks she badly hurt her chances for the nomination. That’s probably not the case, but the big controversy coming out of the convention is about Hillary’s performance. She’s received some decent reviews but there’s no question that she stumbled in the debate over the issue of lobbyist funding and that she underperformed in the breakout session. Accusations that she had planted questions are false, but she did purposively run out the clock by taking a third of her time answering the first question…on education.
Meanwhile, mainstream journalists like Time’s Jay Carney and The Politico’s Mike Allen were subjected to withering criticism and even outright ridicule.
Frontrunning candidates, the DCCC, prominent journalists, the congressional leadership…none of them know how to control the netroots. The netroots’ demands are simple: stop this administration from committing crimes and get our troops out of Iraq. After that, it’s all detail. With each capitulation, with each gloss-over and passing of the buck, the Establishment further alienates themselves from the citizen activists that do not need and will not be told what to do or think. We’ve educated ourselves and passed our verdict. Those that will not convict and sentence are just cogs in an appeasement machine that is chug-chug-chugging over a collective cliff.
There will be no successful triangulation of the administration’s war, or their crimes. The leader that plausibly makes the case that justice will be done is the candidate that will rise to the top.
If any of the candidates, or the leadership, or the media, thought or think that the Netroots’ can be tamed through co-option, they must surely be disabused of that notion by now.
The people of this country…the people that are truly paying attention and participating in the blogosphere…demand justice and an end to this war. And that is not going to change.
