Yesterday, Jed Lewison had a piece over at Daily Kos that was a rebuttal of sorts to a piece by Hendrick Hertzberg in The New Yorker. Lewison was mainly concerned to defend Markos Moulitsas’ honor, as Hertzberg had criticized him for excessive purity on the health care bill. I don’t care about that debate at all. What I do care about is something that Lewison wrote as part of his defense.
Ah, so Hertzberg believes that progressives (especially members of what he calls “the Internet cohort”) are impugning President Obama’s motives. He singles out a weeks-old tweet in which Markos slammed the Senate health care bill as a “monstrosity” that should be killed. To Hertzberg, this is an example of “nonsense,” but such a glib proclamation overlooks the fact that when Markos made his statement, the final Senate bill was still being negotiated, and progressive pushback likely made it stronger than it otherwise would have been.
Certainly, progressives could have shouted from the rooftops about how great the bill was, but who can forget what happened when we jumped on board the Medicare buy-in compromise? Didn’t go so well, did it? At least this time, Ben Nelson was unsuccessful in his efforts to reduce subsidies, the loophole allowing insurers to cap annual benefits was eliminated, Bernie Sanders’ Community Health Centers were funded, and a loophole allowing national plans to sidestep state regulations was closed.
Would those things have happened without progressive pressure? Perhaps, but the notion that progressives made the bill worse is implausible.
Implicit in Lewison’s defense is that Markos didn’t necessarily mean it when he called for the monstrous Senate bill to be killed. What Markos was doing was a negotiating ploy, not a sincere assessment of what he thought ought to be done. I don’t know that that was the actually the case. But let us say that it was the case. What does it do for you the reader to have to wonder whether the bloggers you are reading are giving you an honest piece of analysis or they are trying to outrage you or mobilize you or to push some agenda?
Most progressive bloggers are also activists, and some are even organizers. Many of them raise money for candidates (as I have in the past). But they are also writers who offer analysis and interpretation of the political landscape. These are two hats that cannot be worn together comfortably. For my part, I definitely choose to write about things with the knowledge that I have a readership in the White House and in offices of the leadership in the House and Senate. I want to convince them of certain things. And that can shade what I write about and what I choose not to write about. But my primary focus is on my regular readers who come from all over the country and even the world. I want to tell my readers the truth as I see it. So, no, I never considered giving false analysis as a negotiating tool. I don’t flatter myself that I can move votes in the Senate. And I certainly am not the right person to convince Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman to vote for a public option.
So, what’s more important to you? That bloggers tell you what is going on to the best of their ability, or that they use their readership to push an agenda you support?