For the second straight year, I declined to attend the Netroots Nation conference. I’ve always enjoyed the conferences, but I don’t belong there anymore, and this is why. Let me start with the DREAM Act. If immigration reform supporters are mobilizing against the president, they need to have their heads examined. Here’s a reminder:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reintroduced the DREAM Act in the Senate on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after President Obama called on Congress to take steps forward on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would put the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants on a pathway toward citizenship…
…In the last few years though, even the DREAM Act has proven impossible to get past the Senate. Last year, Reid tried to bring it to the floor twice: the first time, pre-midterm election 2010, its fate perished with a defense authorization bill; and the second, during the lame-duck period, it fell five votes short of passing a needed filibuster-proof hurdle. The final Senate vote, 55-41, closely reflected the country’s attitude toward the legislation at the time, as captured in a Gallup poll, which found 54 percent of American citizens wanted the DREAM Act, while 42 percent did not.
The Democrat-controlled House did pass the bill last December, by a slim margin.
While Reid did not get his full caucus of 59 Democrats to support the DREAM Act last year, most Republicans who have supported the measure in years past — such as Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Jon Kyl of Arizona, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — also withheld their votes, objecting that an independent piece of amnesty-granting legislation shouldn’t be allowed to move without some sort of counterbalance to increase immigration enforcement, which was the original concept behind the more comprehensive approaches to immigration changes.
The president is not a magician. Working against his reelection is not going to help pass the DREAM Act or any other piece of positive immigration legislation.
Moving on to gay rights, I am certainly sympathetic to the plight of Lt. Dan Choi and I don’t begrudge him his anger. But John Aravosis has been acting like he’s been betrayed since before the president took his oath of office. The president kept his promise to repeal the DADT policy, and it was anything but easy. Aravosis says that all he wants is what the president promised, but the president never said that he approves of gay marriage. Nonetheless, he has instructed the Department of Justice to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, he’s signed a Hate Crimes bill, and he’s expanded benefits for same-sex couples who work in the Foreign Service and executive branch. What does he get in return?
“I would probably vote for the president in the end, but I’d also do everything that I can to shame him,” said Aravosis, who writes about gay rights issues. “But I don’t think they realize how damaging that is.”
Although Obama signed a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in December, the panelists decried his failure to take a hard stance for gay marriage.
“We always say we simply expected what he promised,” Aravosis said “The White House would rather not engage at all — at least with the big stuff. We were told he’d be a fierce advocate, and he’s been not fierce at all and not much of an advocate.”
I’m sorry, John, but your own words condemn you. You can shame him, criticize him, lobby him, cajole him, and maybe he will change his mind about gay marriage. I hope he does. But he did the one thing that he actually has the power to do; he told the DOJ to stop defending the DOMA in court.
And then there is Jane Hamsher, who has made it her career to harass the president. The less said about her the better.
There’s a line between principled advocacy for the issues you care about and being a careerist champion of the disgruntled.
Upton Sinclair used to say, “”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” That’s what happened to a big part of the blogosphere.
And guess which panel was the most well attended by the media?
Not any of the ones about how to beat back the right, that’s for sure.
“We were told he’d be a fierce advocate,”
I swear to God they sound like bitchy passengers complaining about the cruise line entertainment or those annoying tourists you run into in 3rd world countries hectoring the hotel staff because their air-conditioning is not up to par.
But we were told it was a first class hotel with automatic ice makers in the toilet
Too funny. All the more so for the (accurate) racial implications, whether or not you intended them.
Great image – and since I’ve just returned from travel/ work in The World, let me say from viewing the disgruntled left from outside the USA the image is even more spot on. And the sad or enraging part is that ppl who live in much more difficult circumstances than we live here are taking on issues of corporatism and climate change whereas our “disgruntled left” is doing their best to thwart our doing so. The Upton Sinclair quote says it all – the professionally disgruntled don’t want change, don’t want an equal world, a non-hegemonic USA that gives its fair share in return for all the benefits we enjoy, they just want theirs within the status quo.
Look, I’ve been plenty critical of Obama – much more than you, Booman – but I think you’re being too generous here. There’s nothing wrong in itself with being a “champion of the disgruntled,” careerist or otherwise. The problem lies in the disconnect with reality over what they’re disgruntled about: measures that Machiavelli himself could not have gotten through the present Congress, or even the 2009-10 Congress.
It’s one thing to complain. It can be tiresome, but someone’s got to advocate for policies that are out of official favor. But holding someone responsible for not enacting policies that aren’t in his or her power to enact is a whole ‘nother level of Stupid.
There’s plenty of things Obama has had the power to do that he hasn’t, and he can and should be held to account for those. But a big chunk of the left, professional or otherwise, has gone way beyond that and into unicornland. A lot of them are the same people who took Obama to be far more progressive in 2008 than his words or history ever suggested. There’s a difference between being an idealist and immersing yourself in wishful thinking.
actually many of them were loudly proclaiming that Obama was NOT progressive during the primaries and warning us naive fans that he was not only not the messiah but a devotee of Reaganism, a homophobe, anti-choice, and God knows what else. Their disappointment is often sheer fraud.
you’re both right.
One of the key characteristics of the early rift between the white progressive blogosphere was that Obama just wasn’t paying any attention to them. He wasn’t seeking out their advice or relying on their networks of organization, and was building his own machine independent of them. Then, of course, they hated every thing he said that didn’t conform to their Lakoffian orthodoxy.
Quicker than you can say ‘Rick Warren’ they turned on him, well in advance of his inauguration.
And there was never any realism whatsoever during the first year and a half in office. And no patience.
They crucified him over TARP, which actually worked far better than they predicted it would. And even where they were right, like over the size of the stimulus, they never took into account little things like the availability of shovel-ready projects, the limits on how many jobs those projects can create, or the political will to do something two or three times larger than what they got.
And, never ever ever have they taken any responsibility for helping the Republicans divide and conquer.
They crucified him over TARP, which actually worked far better than they predicted it would.
Better in what way? It gave the banksters free money. And the economy is still in the crapper. I know a lot of the money has been paid back and all, but the banksters still rule our world and the economy still stinks, and that’s a serious problem.
it worked?
so why do we have rising unemployment? why is it so much harder for ordinary people to get credit?
it worked in that it saved the banks. Who, I’ll remind you KEPT THE MONEY and continue to fuck ordinary people up the ass.
So when you say “TARP worked”, I hear “Banks are more important than people.”
this comment troubles me.
You can, of course, use the state of the economy to discredit everything Obama has done that has any impact on the economy.
But, that isn’t honest argument unless you are willing to have a give and take.
Back when the administration took over Bush’s TARP plan there was a huge debate about whether or not Geithner’s Plan was going to cost us money or help recoup our losses.
I argued vehemently with Hamsher, Duncan, and others that the plan could win our money back and was actually a safer and cheaper course of action than nationalizing the banks, which might have been emotionally satisfying but was guaranteed to lose our money. They thought I was nuts, but I turned out to be right and they turned out to be completely wrong.
Now, you rebut this with an argument that the solution might have saved us money but it wasn’t emotionally satisfying.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it.
I never said we’d get justice. I never said that things would return to the way they were in terms of getting access to cheap money. I just said that they could stabilize the banking system, clean up the mortgage debt, and get back our money.
I just said that they could stabilize the banking system, clean up the mortgage debt, and get back our money.
TARP stabilized the banking system, but, if I remember correctly, the banks couldn’t even provide an accounting of how the money they received was used. Like the cash shipped to Iraq, a lot of the money seems to have disappeared into a black hole. And, considering the record number of foreclosures, was the mortgage debt really cleaned up? (Okay, conceivably the bad mortgages the banks wrote may not be among the ones foreclosed.)
The TARP money has been paid back. Most of the program brought the government a profit, with its stake in GM being the glaring exception.
When I talk about the mortgage mess, I don’t mean the foreclosure problem but the shitpile that was/is on the banks’ books as a result of the collapse of the housing market.
In other words, could we save the banking industry without bankrupting our treasury? If we had nationalized the banks, we would not have gotten paid back with interest. We would have just eaten the banks’ losses.
It depends on what you consider part of TARP? Is the AIG bailout part of it? If so, no it has not all been paid back, and likely never will. You could go Japanese or you could go the Iceland route. Guess which we chose?
Contrary to Netroots and TeaBags, TARP has an actual definition and consisted of particular allocated funds.
Spot on – OFA is particularly hated over at dkos.
p.s. You forgot the King of disgruntled. Glen Greenwald
Because their organizations and Lakoffian style was working.
Props for the phrase “Lakoffian orthodoxy”.
There was a schism, as Booman says. There were the Obama-can-fix-everything, Obama’s-the-peace-candidate types who paid no attention to his platform or record. And there were the Obama-is-Republican-Lite types, who tended to be HRC partisans who were simultaneously claiming that she, not Obama, was the shining champion of all things progressive.
Neither camp was especially realistic about their preferred candidate’s pedigree. There was a lot of wish fulfillment going on after eight long years of Dubya. Ironically, the exact same thing happened with Bill Clinton in 92, after 12 years of Reagan/Bush Sr. That’s the other thing. Some quarters of the left never, ever learn from the past.
Obama’s Iraq “residual forces” plan was widely discussed and complained about (by people like me) during Iowa and before.
Good commentary. I sometimes think, Obama would be doing better if he had received more positive feedback from his friends (who can be called fair weather friends) than the constant gripe, gripe, gripe and all the negative criticism. I have often wanted to ask the complainers if they are really saying “we should have elected John McCain President”? I think there are unknown impediments in Washington that Obama met that we know nothing about. I believe he has done his best to get things done. Additionally, I have never seen in all my life any President met with as much and as hurtful and hateful criticisms as Obama. Never. Not even George W. Bush, who truly deserved the criticisms he received. I have been voting since 1966. Maybe Obama will pull out all the stops in a second term. That would be cool.
The question I ask is which progressive actions of the President received Netroots support? Appointing Solis and Van Jones? Begging the Congress not to forbid closing Guantanamo? Enforcing coal mine safety laws? Civil rights enforcement? Carbon regulation? Surely there must be a few cases where they did the right thing and got helped by organized support?
But no. Not one.
Yeah, appointing Van Jones and then throwing him under the bus at the behest of Breitbart types.
Exactly – when Jones was appointed, the netroots was BORED and uninvolved. There was no support, no attempt to build a constituency out in the public that would understand and appreciate what Jones was doing. The Netroots only noticed Jones when Beck had been campaigning against him for a while (as usual the right sets the agenda). And even then netroots did not seek to build support for Jones- they just attacked the admin.
They don’t even fucking try to pretend that they are interested in anything but bitching.
The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People.
Attaboys don’t show the world that you’re a Protest Person.
I have no respect for Lt. Dan Choi. None whatsoever. I don’t see how anything he does moves votes in congress and I don’t see how he moves people to go out and vote. The scene he acted out at NN was disgusting and so was his statement to Harry Reid. A statement that if said by anyone not claiming to be a progressive, would have been cause for major outrage from the left yet he’s still one of their heroes.
I’ll say this until the day comes when I get to say, “I told you so.” The problem is the Senate. Just one Conservative Dem can tank a repeal of DOMA or block the passage of all they want. Just one. but lets keep demanding that Obama say this or say that. We all know that congress listens to him.
I’ll say this until the day comes when I get to say, “I told you so.” The problem is the Senate. Just one Conservative Dem can tank a repeal of DOMA or block the passage of all they want. Just one. but lets keep demanding that Obama say this or say that. We all know that congress listens to him.
And who enabled HolyJoe? Is the Senate a problem? Sure is. But who runs the DNC? The President, by who he chooses to run it. Remember how the DNC paid for those ads for Ben Nelson after he tried to torpedo HCR?
The voters of Connecticut.
Who “enabled” him? He’s a United States Senator. He has power in the Senate.
You miss the point. Lamont won the primary back in ’06. Remember that? And we all know what happened. He was given tepid support at best by the Democratic establishment. And if a GOP Senator had done what HolyJoe did in ’08(campaign with a Democrat) he would have been tossed out of the party. But HolyJoe? He was allowed to piss inside the tent. How dumb was that?
“Lamont won the primary back in ’06. Remember that? And we all know what happened.”
The popular, long-serving Senator was re-elected by the same people who’d already elected him repeatedly.
“He was given tepid support at best by the Democratic establishment.”
…which understands what happens when a long-serving, popular Senator runs for reelection.
Have you ever worked in a huge organization? You have a naive view of how much power the formal and symbolic head of an organization has. They are free agents only to the degree that the political forces within the organization allow them to be free agents.
Most CEOs are free agents only in setting their pay and keeping their jobs–if only because they coddle their board of directors at the exclusion of other things.
The chair of the DNC is constrained by the collective politics of the executive committee, which come mostly from state Democratic organizations.
Mathematics enabled HolyJoe. For a long time he was the one vote you had to get, until others started playing his game.
And yes, wasting money on Ben Nelson’s campaign was a bonehead decision. But it is unlikely that it was made by Obama or without the consultation of a lot of necessary votes who would get cranky if Nelson was punished. Obama doesn’t hold the Congressional chits that LBJ did. LBJ did a good job of paying it forward when he was in the Senate. Lots of folks owed him.
… than an amateur champion of the apologists.
And using the Sinclair quote re Hampsher et al just demonstrates a sad lack of perspective.
Netroots – all about criticism – except any directed its way.
Yeah, raising money and paying yourself handsomely to find candidates to run against centrists kind of makes you dependent on a permanent sense of outrage against the Democratic Party. She found one candidate. He lost. She pocketed something like thirty grand out of that deal alone.
She makes a living off galvanizing people on the left against the Democrats, kind of like her pal Grover Norquist has done on the right.
To each their own, but her objectivity is non-existent for the reason Sinclair pointed out.
Sorry, but you’re exaggerating.
I am actually at Netroots, and have been able to attend a couple of interesting sessions that contained no Obama-bashing at all.
I quite intentionally avoided the Hamsher/Choi whining session, “When the President’s Just Not That Into You” (or something close to that). That was like a big red flashing sign to me, saying, “DO NOT ATTEND, IDIOCY AHEAD”, and, from what I’ve heard about what happened there, complete with cheap stunt with a fake “civil unions are good enough” person, and Choi tearing up a photo of Obama, my instincts were right.
He tore up a photo of Obama? Holy shit! I guess he’s a big fan of Sinead O’Connor. Why the fuck did I waste all those years getting a degree in Political Science if this is what politics was going to turn into? Should have stuck with Anthropology.
Anthropology is a good area of study
While describing left-wing bloggers as “the downtrodden” doesn’t lack perspective at all.
Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party
Yup. One of the greatest diaries ever submitted to the Great Orange Satan. And still true in almost every particular. The only thing he was wrong about was his not taking our warning seriously about the nature of the opposition. John Roberts is a disaster and Alito is worse. Obama has learned the hard way that you can’t play footsie with these assholes.
But, what have we learned? Nothing. His advice continues to go unheeded.
Obama has learned the hard way that you can’t play footsie with these assholes.
(1) He had to learn? Was he in a bubble for the past 30 years?
(2) He’s still playing footsie with them.
And stop painting Obama as powerless in the face of the Republican opposition, which was in the minority when he had a Democratic House and Senate, and is still in the minority in the Senate. Other presidents were not just figureheads.
And the “professionally disgruntled” bloggers should be as quiet as church mice when they don’t think Obama is as effective as they think he could be? Yes, I should only read the “professionally gruntled” like Daily Kos and Booman Tribune, between whom it is getting harder to tell the difference.
“A man who uses his balmoral to tread on your toes with much frequency and an unmistakable emphasis may prove a fast friend in adversity, but meanwhile your adversity has not arrived and your toes are tender.” – George Eliot
Why are you here then if nobody measures up to your high intellectual standards?
it’s valid criticism. More than one person has noted that the BMT is more willing than most blogs to overlook the Obama administration’s failings. Booman himself has said so, arguing that Obama’s the best hope we have, and we undermine him at our peril. His criticisms are specific and limited to certain circumstances (like Libya).
I don’t know if my intellectual standards are high or not, but this blog and the commenters generally live up to them, so I’m here. (You say my intellectual standards are high, so that’s obviously a compliment to Booman Tribune!) I disagree with Booman about Obama, but I agree on a lot of other things, and there are good discussions. I also read AMERICAblog and Firedoglake, among other blogs.
Whenever I saw Obama interviewed on TV before he began his campaign for the Presidency, I found him wishy-washy. Consequently, I voted for him with no illusions – or so I thought. I had low expectations, but, in my opinion, Obama has even failed to meet those. You and Booman disagree with me and think that Obama has accomplished a lot under the circumstances. Fair enough, but some of us respectfully disagree.
I signed up before I knew that Hamsher et al were going to be pulling their crap, and had some doubts after I found out they were going to be there, but I have enjoyed myself so far, at least for the first day.
Oh yeah, the “Right Online” clowns are in the same hotel I’m staying in. If you think Hamsher et and her crowd are obnoxious, how childish is it to watch to see where Netroots Nation is going to be, and putting on a competing, smaller right-wing circle jerk in the same city?
John Aravosis has an extremely profitable website to the tune of 40+ grand a month. He writes like a totally uninformed fool and yet his idiot followers buy into all of his distressful claims. He’s a grifter, kids. He used to work for Ted Stevens (R-AK) and he’s a Republublican profiteer by birth. Yes, he’s supposedly gay but he may just be afraid of penises. Still haven’t figured that one out. He is a crooked Republican by default. I’m sure this will generate some argument. Fine. Save your keystrokes because I will not respond. I used to read him years ago until I realized he was a total fraud. But hey, he’s good at raising those ad rates every month.
And Dan Choi can suck my balls. He needs to get some therapy, seriously. I am SO sick of him trying to make himself the celebrity of my gay rights cause. Once DADT is over, he’ll be free to re-apply for his old job but he doesn’t care. He’d rather play victim for coming out on live television, totally against current policy and then expect the whole world to accommodate his nutso crazy ideas about the way the world is / vs the way it is coming along. Fuck Dan Choi right in the EAR!
Yes, I am gay and I have been working for years for reasonable, timely gay rights measures. I think Obama has made more progress than any political leader in this country EVER HAS and it really pisses me off to see the likes of Aravosis and Choi just go and spit in the face of the REAL progress that we’re been working on FOREVER and are finally seeing.
It is attitudes like theirs that caused so many liberal/progressive voters to stay home last November and give the House up to the fucking Republicans. Thanks alot ASSHOLES! Both of you can make reservations to suck my balls. Enjoy your new President, Michele Bachmann. And have fun in the prison camps. You get what you fucking deserve, assholes.
… and don’t even get me started on Jane Hampsher and her phony PAC’s for any issues that she can generate a small amount of outrage about. Also a major FRAUDSTER.
Liberals and progressives staying home most certainly did not deliver the defeat that the Democrats suffered last fall. Liberals and progressives don’t have those numbers yet; that’s why they are constantly ignored. And the results in progressive strongholds refute that analysis.
What had more of an impact were the folks who bought the GOP lie that the ACA cut $500 billion from Medicare.
Which means that progressives not turning out will not result in an Obama defeat.
But…independents not turning out at all or not voting for Obama will be catastrophic. Right now, the current GOP field works against that happening.
Choi and Aravosis are not what’s making a difference in the politics of gay rights. What is transforming the politics is the number of gay people who have come out and the support of the friends, families, neighbors, and co-workers who know them and accept their honesty. This progress came before Obama’s pushing the legislation to institutionalize the progress. And the executive order to make the next step part of next year’s campaign. Next year, for the immigration bill and for gay rights, is going to be as essential as 1964 was for the civil rights movement. And remember that that was the year that Fannie Lou Hamer called out the Democratic Party for seating a segregationist Mississippi delegation elected by suppressing voting rights. And the year Stokely Carmichael gained public attention. But in the end, it was Barry Goldwater’s (relative) extremism that put LBJ back in office and ensured the passage of extensive civil rights legislation.
But the netroots worked 24/7 to sell the “disappointment narrative”. Since most people vote on emotional impression, Netroots was producing a message that complemented and amplified the GOP message.
Complemented and amplified the GOP message to whom?
I don’t buy this just like I don’t buy the idea that progressives are the base.
What sort of people did not vote because of what was on this or that blog?
The whole original point of the blogosphere was that there is a pervasive progressive viewpoint that isn’t/wasn’t getting heard on television or in our newspapers. Lies big and small could be told without rebuttal for things like mobilizing the country for ill-advised war or privatizing Social Security.
A side effect of this was that it opened for everyone’s viewing pleasure a lot of divisions on the left and within the Democratic Party. And that’s not a bad thing at all.
But a few people have made this side effect the key feature since Obama won the presidency.
They are amplifying a message that has morphed from constructive criticism to professional destruction.
People are influenced by opinion leaders that they respect. They can be inspired or demoralized. They can be called to action or put to sleep.
Or, you know, maybe nothing we do matters at all, which seems to be what you are inferring.
I can find no evidence that the blogosphere affected the 2010 election one way or another.
The blogosphere has had an effect but not directly on elections. And it tends to be a matter of folks seeking out sites that confirm their opinions. Except for big ones like Daily Kos, which is why everyone criticizes Daily Kos for departing from its mission.
It is interesting the extent to which state and local progressive sites influence opinions and moods more than the national sites do. And there are so many of them that they are all over the lot on their assessment of Obama.
And you have to remember that not all progressives are or have ever been committed Democrats. And some are no more than confirmed curmudgeons.
Progressives are the base, or at least a large part of it.
But, then, Obama has high levels of approval from progressives.
The mistake is confusing the self-appointed voices of progressives with many millions of actual progressives in this country.
I hear Netroots BS stuff from people I know who are marginally connected. They pick up a Sirota article that HCR was a giveaway to insurers or a Dean Baker story that Geithner is corrupt/stupid or someone tells them that Obama lied about his supposed promise to quit Afghanistan or implement the public option or they hear some gibberish about the assassination program – and after a while it adds up to a generic feeling.
Exactly right about the numbers.
These people like to pretend that they’re the Democrats’ voting base, and then complain that they don’t have the same influence as the teabaggers, but the teabaggers actually represent much – most? – of the Republican electorate.
While these people are a tiny little sliver of a fringe of a wing of a faction.
How do you know he makes $40,000/month? If that’s the case, Krugman isn’t getting paid anywhere near enough from the Old Grey Lady. As his blog is more widely read(and it’s a 3rd job/side bar for him!!). And I know others who have blogs/websites that have just as much readership and probably only make $40,000/yr.
I don’t know, but I would suspect that the corporate media pays for the appearances blogger make on their shows. Some of these folks are more visible because they are frequently on the the tube as well as the tubez.
All I know is that is nice to not be alone on this issue. I donated a little bit of money to these guys back in the Bush days and I didn’t know that they would be stuck in this mode. I knew who Obama was before I voted for him in the general and was a bit concerned about it as I supported Edwards in the primary. But, this has turned into something akin sitting next to somebody at a ballgame and they second-guess and criticize all the manager’s moves. It’s fire the manager and trade everybody politics. Get’s to the point where I just want to watch the damn game in peace.
“Upton Sinclair used to say, “”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” That’s what happened to a big part of the blogosphere. “
Yes, we critics are very well-paid indeed, rolling in dough, financed by the Vast Anti-Obama Conspiracy.
Sorry man, but that is one STUPID closing sentence. It doesn’t even make sense.
Not that it matters,we both know that weak tea (if anything) is the best progressives can expect in the USA.
Obama’s a symptom of the underlying rot, he’s not the cause.
just because you aren’t well paid doesn’t mean that Aravosis and Hamsher are not.
oh I see. So you have two-well paid people that you can name, and so by extent the rest of us are also useful idiots.
Not buying that one. It smacks of the right’s “funded by Soros” nonsense.
Thank you BooMan!
That’s all for now, just thanks. I’m here at NN and will try to organize my reactions after its over.
I don’t buy it, BooMan. With several thousand attendees at Netroots Nation, you don’t have to converse with any of these people at all. You could engage with the hoi polloi who come to the conference to really strengthen the progressive movement in this country. The folks who are professional progressives.
There are one heck of a lot of people who can afford to got to Netroots Nation who will talk with each other, ignore the “big names” unless those big names say something really interesting. And those people will give you a better fix on where the progressive movement is with relationship to next year’s election than the professional progressives.
And those opinions form a very wide spectrum from what I can tell in reading diaries and comments online–on Daily Kos, here, and on other sites. There is even disagreement on strategy in the FDL comments.
The risk of the progressive movement being weakened in this critical moment by profession jealousy and irreconcilable disagreements over strategy is very high right now. And this division is not likely to affect Obama’s chances but the chances of getting a better Congress and state legislatures.
But there are unmistakably some real problems that progressives face:
The attitude by the Democratic Party that since progressives have no place to go, their votes can be taken for granted.
The failure of Democratic politicians to grasp that good policy is good politics.
The economic ignorance of Democratic politicians when it comes to dealing with unemployment.
The corruption in state and local Democratic parties. And the failure of Democratic operatives in some states to be more than welfare-receiving placeholders. And the resistance of local party organizations to new blood.
The success that big money has had in a recession in buying influence in non-profit advocacy groups that promote elements of the progressive agenda.
The absence of defense of progressive ideas in any part of discourse among the general public.
The lack of control over the advertising that appears on progressive sites. And the lack of click-throughs and revenue as a result.
The underdevelopment of progressive institutions in nearly half of the states. In some states, the burden is being carried totally by the local labor movement and a few socially-oriented Christian ministers. In others, the now aging warriors of the civil rights movement, who watch in dismay as the younger generation seeks to cozy up to the white power structure. And becomes convenient tokens.
The failure of the professional progressives – bloggers and advocates and lobbyist – to understand that a grassroots movement has to be grassroots (there ain’t no superstars) or it dies as a grassroots movement.
The red-baiting of anything to the left of Richard Lugar.
The differential success in employment as a result of political blackballing by bosses.
You’re valuable to the progressive Democratic movement, BooMan, but this expression of pique is unseemly. President Obama is perfectly capable of defending himself. And neither John Aravosis, Lt. Dan Choi, nor Jane Hamsher are going to mean one whit as to whether Obama gets re-elected.
You know, one of the most overused dismissive terms in the English language is “disgruntled”. What the hell are gruntles and where are people expected to go to get them back. Sometimes those careerist champions are so passionate, so stubborn, and tactically stupid precisely because they have one helluva a big dog in the fight. You know their personal history better than I do, but I know enough to know where they are coming from.
Just what what my opinion becomes if the the Democrats in Congress capitulate on Social Security and Medicare. My salary doesn’t depend on it, but my ability to pay the bills does. And I have contributed to the fund for 49 years. That one’s not an abstract “principle”.
Yeah, in the face of 10% unemployment, global warming, two corporate parties, and the death of unions, I kind of have to wonder what kind of liberal wouldn’t be disgruntled.
Oh, right, the professional apologists.
Its all about you and your feelings. You guys are not “liberals”, as much as a group therapy movement.
You mean, like Carville, Breazeale, Shrum, Axelrod, …..the folks most responsible for putting us in this position.
My point about the uselessness of the word “disgruntled” remains. It’s a convenient way of delegitimizing criticism without having to deal with the issues of that criticism. “Disgruntled employees” leave for very specific reasons, not general surliness. Kvetchers stay and kvetch.
What I see going on is a misguided attempt to make progressives more salient to the Democratic party by threatening to withdraw votes (it’s been the progressive shtick for the past 31 years and it’s not worked. It’s an attempt to avoid the hard work of actually organizing the grassroots to be effective. It sees the President as ordering a top-down progressivism through the “bully pulpit”, which is a serious misreading of what FDR did. You don’t “make him do it” by threatening to withdraw support. You “make him do it” by so moving Congress that Congress makes him do it. It’s the same point that Bill Clinton made to the Million Mothers March when they were pushing for gun control. So where are they now?
One thing I try to explain to “netroots” is that when Harry Bridges the Communist union leader was able to shut down the West coast and essentially lead an insurrection against the government, FDR had a much stronger negotiating position against the Chamber of Commerce. But they are wedded to a dream consumer experience view of politics in which some authority figure gives them a free pass in the mall without any of that hard work required.
This reads like something out of the Onion:
“I would probably vote for the president in the end, but I’d also do everything that I can to shame him,” said Aravosis, who writes about gay rights issues. “But I don’t think they realize how damaging that is.”
I don’t think the President of the United States quite understands how damaging it is when he’s shamed by a no-name political activist.
The important thing to keep in mind is that these people do not speak for “progressives” or “liberals” or “the left” as a whole. They are a tine sliver of a fringe of a faction of the left. Overall, Obama’s approval rating among liberals has remained sky-high.
These devoted gripers are perfectly welcome to make their arguments and raise their complaints, but they should stop pretending that they represent anyone other than themselves. They do not.
No, they do represent more than just themselves. They represent the permanently disgruntled.
If you’re saying you didn’t go to Netroots because a few idiots were going to be there, well, that’s a shame and almost a dereliction of duty on your part. You’re a fucking voice of reason. Sometimes, you’re entirely too reasonable, and that opens you to criticism. Sometimes, even I say you’re full of shit. But, thicken your skin, dude, stand up and say reasonable intelligent things while being heckled.
Now tell me you’re short on funds and you’ve got a toddler deserving of your attention–those are good reasons not to go Boo-down these morons. But, otherwise, you’re young enough, healthy enough and passionate enough that I wish you’d be a Mover & Shaker at these events and put people who call themselves “progressives” back on a viable, politically legitimate course.
I just don’t call myself a “progressive” anymore. I just say I’m a damned liberal with an emphasis on the “damned” part. Are you agreeing with me? Saying the whole “progressive” label is a failure contaminated by shrill complainers and grifters? That there’s no point in wasting effort to redeem the meaning of the term?
The name of the conference is Netroots Nation.
It is supposed to be about building a digital grassroots progressive movement. That’s a project that interests me.
However, the leadership and the ‘stars’ of the conference have spent the last two years creating divisions rather than building anything.
I don’t need to go to Minneapolis to tell people that they’re being ill-led. I can do that on my couch.
I understand about the “star” issue.
But who exactly do you think the leadership of Netroots Nation is? I think you might be slamming the wrong people on that point. There are a lot of rings in the Netroots Nation circus, and not all of them have ringmasters.
Here’s something good about NN11.
As I was sitting in the event this morning while Dan Pfeiffer was attempting to respond to questions that have no right answers, a fellow attendee introduced me to your site. So, rather than be completely embarrassed at how he had been treated at NN11, I left so I could read your site in peace and quiet.
There are significant questions with right answers?
Who knew?
to the Frog Pond.
Re: the DREAM Act. The momentum for the bill has been completely driven by the DREAMers themselves, and rightly so. They have organized online & on-the-ground activism to put pressure on any and all legislators to get the bill passed regardless of party. They are not partisan because they are fighting for the ability to live here in peace & cast a vote in the first place. There remains a lot of tension between their movement & national immigration reform groups who want to keep focusing on comprehensive reform only, but (speaking just for me) I have undergone a personal education about the privilege that is exposed in me as a citizen.
Bottom line is, we don’t get to tell them what rights they should advocate for or how to do it “the right way”. Given President Obama’s track record since he took office (he is deporting at a higher rate than Bush), there is plenty of cause for the heat the White House is taking from migrant communities & their advocates.
And as a resident of Arizona, I’m all too familiar between having to choose between a shitty Democrat and a lunatic, racist Teajadist. Either way, my family, friends & neighborhoods are gonna get screwed. But at least I still have that right to vote when they are putting their lives on the line literally.
I have to say I’ve actually gotten tired of Lt. Dan Choi, and I never thought I’d say that. I admired him when he put his career on the line to support the repeal of DADT. I thought it was a brave thing to do.
But now, apparently, he’s decided that that’s not enough. Obama has to support gay marriage and start pushing for that.
Well, I also support gay marriage, and personally, I think Obama does too, even if he’s chosen, perhaps wisely, perhaps not but clearly for political reasons, to support civil unions rather than gay marriage. I’ve no doubt he’ll “evolve” toward publicly supporting gay marriage, and I look forward to that day.
Meanwhile… jeezie peezie, would you look at the political landscape for crying out loud?? We’re fighting an existential fight here, both politically and economically.
Sigh.
Dan Choi thinks that only his brave dissent forced an unwilling Barack Obama to…do what he’d been saying he would do for years, and promised to do by the end of 2010, and was in the midst of doing when Choi staged his protest at the White House.
That rally was great. It really drew attention to the issue, but the protesters thought they were bravely standing up to the guy whose issue they were pushing!