In the world of comedy, they say you always want to leave them wanting more. I guess the Democrats have accomplished that. It’s not surprising that they told people at the Netroots Nation conference largely what they wanted to hear, but they also gave out a wake-up call that I’ve been trying to send for months now. Policy accomplishments are nice, but they are of secondary importance. The number one job that the Democrats are doing at the moment is simply not being Republicans. That may be an uninspiring message, but it’s their single biggest accomplishment and nothing even comes close to it in importance. The policy accomplishments are more important for what they can do to maintain the allegiance of the public than they are in themselves.
I’m not saying that policy doesn’t matter or that the Democrats weren’t elected to get things done. I’m saying that the Republican Party cannot be allowed to govern this country at the executive or congressional level because they will ruin us and get an unspeakable number of people killed. You can disagree with me, but that’s what they did under Bush and they’re twice as crazy now as they were just two years ago.
So, wring your hands all you want about what’s not being accomplished. I’m still quite pleased that we’re debating what we haven’t done rather than what the Republicans have.
Speaking of leaving the people wanting more, am I the only person who can’t get the uStream video feeds to work? I got to watch the Van Jones speech (from a link on FaceBook), but nothing else there is queuing.
That is a symptom of server overload. Which is sort of is a victory for Netroots Nation.
It came and went. Strangely enough Raul Grijalva’s speech and Al Franken’s keynote last night did not have problems, possibly because they were also broadcasting on DiskTV.
Yeah, the problem appeared to resolve itself pretty quickly. I’m used to trouble with uStream but this was a bit different. Even the Franken keynote wasn’t working for me. But I agree, if the server is getting overloaded then that must be good news in terms of demand for that particular content exceeding the ability to deliver.
It’s kinda like being the Uncola.
When they got tired of that campaign, they hired my Dad, who came up with the Feelin’ 7up commercials, featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
Cool!
Oh, and George Brett, too.
Well, I dunno about GB needing 7-Up or to choke up — the kid shoulda just told him he needed to wake up his bat with a little more pine tar on it, and higher up on the stick too.
(And, yes, I do miss Connie Chung — the last Asian on teevee?)
What Al Franken said.
Franken sorta put Net Neutrality on the front burner, didn’t he.
The funniest moment in Nancy Pelosi’s interview opening statement was when she played the video from President Obama. He starts out with his “we know how hard this is” talking points and then says “but we’ve accomplished a few things”. Cut to Rachel Maddow listing the things accomplished with the tag line “the most impressive legislative session since booze was illegal”. Cut back to Obama with “the days ahead are going to be difficult…”
And like party conventions, they showcased some impressive candidates.
And members of Congress. Check out Darcy Burner’s “Tip of the Spear” panel with two chiefs of staff, Rep. Tom Murphy, Rep. Raul Grijalva, and Rep. Tom Perriello (by virtual link). Totally on target about how to work the inside and the outside at the same time.
Startling fact. Members of the House are limited by law to 22.5 FTE’s to serve districts with a population of roughly 600,000 people and roughly 300,000 voter (of whom more than 50% of the turnout put the Representative in office). Not sure what the contact count in a typical office is, but that is understaffed. No doubt the Senate has a set FTE headcount too, probably advantaging Senators from small states over Senators for large states.
What was not startling was the amount of time members of Congress have to spend in fundraising in order to by campaign air time on Republican-owned media during campaign season. Finding a alternative low-cost way to mobilize 160,000 plus voters to actually get to the polls and vote for the Democratic candidate would go a long way to giving Democrats a financial advantage and getting the money out of politics. Right here comes my “why volunteers are important pitch” but while necessary, how volunteers are organized, how local messaging is done — all these are significant.
Perriello is big on figuring ways to win the media cycle in unbought media time.
Super panel discussion.
If Obama goes Clinton redux, it was all for naught. No president wants to be a one-timer, but if it means killing off the Democrats that got you there, we might as well have Sarah Palin.
Save this one for the day after the election.
Media conventional wisdom has not hardened into reality yet.
See Martin Wolf of the FT (arguably the best paper in the world, in my opinion):
http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/2010/07/25/the-political-genius-of-supply-side-economics/