It’s amazing how much you reduce your stress level when you don’t pay attention to the latest outrages of the Michelle Malkins and Rush Limbaughs of the world. I spent time with my extended family in Nashville this past week, listening to my aunts and my uncles tell stories about growing up in rural South Dakota, my one uncle’s experience as an infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, my cousin’s new wife’s experience in Myanmar working with Doctors Without Borders, and then attending their wedding reception on Sunday. A much better way to spend my time than pondering why the right wing freakosphere had another eruption over sick children receiving health care benefits from the government rather than just dying like all good poor children should when the free market didn’t provide a solution to their problems.

I also had a lot of time to ponder what it is that we do here on the progressive end of the blogo-spectrum. Too often, I thought to myself as I drove back from Tennessee the last 2 days, too many liberal blogs (and particularly the larger ones) seem to me to have become just another arm of the dysfunctional Democratic party, the one that passes along what passes for Democratic talking points. And I’m not just referring to Daily Kos. I think all of the major blogs have connections at some level with Democratic officials, and a tendency to “promote the brand.”

It’s not the coordinated effort that you see with the Republicans, but then when has the Democratic Party (at least since the days of Mayor Daley and Sam Rayburn) ever operated at anything approaching a modicum of efficiency. But nonetheless, it’s clear to me that the Democrats would prefer to have the “netroots” under the party’s big tent shooting out at the “enemy” (i.e., Republicans and conservatives), rather than on the outside beyond their control, where there is no chance for them to direct the messages we transmit, or the targets we choose to snipe at. This process hasn’t coalesced to the same extent to which Republicans and the Conservative Movement have, in which one is practically the mirror image of the other, but it is proceeding apace, and with an election year coming up, I expect to see the process accelerate.

(cont.)
Now let me clear. I have no issue with those who believe that the best way to achieve a progressive agenda is to work from within the establishment of the Democratic Party, such as it is. There is merit to having a seat at the table, and real life connections with politicians, and I won’t deny that fact. In short, whether to become part of the spin machine/fund raising wing of the Democratic Party is a tactical and personal decision that I leave to each individual blogger to decide for themselves.

But it seems to me that if that is the primary path down which the netroots shall progress, we will have diminished our ability to influence and impact the political scene, putting into place those policies which implement our values. Because exposure to any institution, and the Democratic party for all its apparent chaos, is an institution, invariably leads to the compromise and corruption of the values which led one into political activism in the first place. It is as certain as the sun rising in the east. The sausage making aspect of politics, the nitty-gritty of campaigning and fighting to gain and hold power makes this inevitable. Thus, to the extent the progressive blogosphere is just one more soldier in the Democrats’ Army, one more mouthpiece attempting to drown out the right wing wurlitzer, one more group whose wallets can be tapped after the appropriate words and promises have been spoken by candidates anxious to secure our support, we will have less and less influence to effect the change we seek.

Rather than continuing aimlessly down that road, progressives/liberal bloggers need to sit back and consider where it is they wish to see this movement of ours end up within the next 2 or 5 or 10 years. Do we really wish to emulate the message control that exists on the right? Do we really think that working from within to “change” the Democratic Party, to make it more acceptable is the only or best alternative? Because that is not how the “conservative movement” achieved its aims. Certainly, it worked from within when it could, but more often than not it operated from the outside, as an insurgency which didn’t just seek the gradual change of one party, but a radical reshaping of our politics. And much of their success came from what they did to attack the Republican establishment of their day as it did from insinuating themselves within that establishment. In brief, they didn’t merely work to elect Republicans because they were better than Democrats, they wanted a radical overhaul of our politics inside and outside the corridors of Congress. They were revolutionaries who sought to reform the nation, not one small aspect of its politics. In the end they captured the Republican Party, and made it their own. However, had it made more sense to tear that party down and start from scratch they would have done that as well.

I don’t want to elect Democrats for the sake of electing Democrats. Far too many Democratic officials and candidates are operating within a system that encourages them to promote many of the same goals and to accept the help of many of the same “special interest groups” that have worked put Republicans in power. Would the democrats be any less beholden to these interests, these lobbyists and pressure groups, merely because they are Democrats? Some would, but as we have already seen many of them would simply try to put a more congenial face on the same policies which are destroying the lives and dreams of millions of Americans each day. The effect might be to moderate the ill effects of those policies (free trade, for example) or to roll back some of the more egregious effects of the Bush administration’s war on the federal government, but I suspect many of them would be satisfied with holding power (and the campaign cash that comes with it) than with actually working for real change.

Which, to me, means that we cannot let the netroots become merely a cog in the Democratic Party’s creaky and inefficient machinery. That way lies disaster for our goal of creating a truly progressive politics, one from which ordinary people, people such as you and I who have found our political voices in the wilderness of the internet, will benefit most, rather than the multinational corporations that now increasingly dominate our planet. Like the radicals of the early days of the conservative movement, we need to retain our independence from any party, even the one that at present is less odious and which has a few politicians within its borders who actually agree with us on the direction the nation should take (and no, obviously I don’t count the DLC, the Clintons, the Carvilles, the “Blue Dogs” and most of the Democratic Congresssional leadership in that number).

So, I will be seeking in the months ahead to explore and discover ways in which we can retain that independence, ways in which we can avoid the trap into which the netroots seems to be falling. I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to do that, but I bet together, all of us do. I’ll be anxious and curious to hear your thoughts and ideas about the future of the progressive movement in the post-Bush era. One thing, I know, with all the problems he has created for our country and the world it will be dangerous. It will be a world on the precipice of economic disaster and even greater wars over ever diminishing resources. A world where the physical climate is literally changing before our eyes. And a nation that could as easily turn toward fascism as toward a more enlightened and compassionate politics. To think that merely working for the election of more Democrats will solve these massive problems would be as foolish and wrong headed as those who believed that electing more Republicans would shrink the government, limit its power over us and bring a conservative utopia into existence through the wonders of an unfettered free market.