Anyone who’s gone to a Netroots Nation conference knows what goes on there. They know that there are serious and wonky panels, as well as light-hearted and humorous ones. The best panel I ever attended was hosted by David Waldman (Kagro X) and it basically explained how Congress works. If I remember correctly, there were about three dozen people in attendance. It’s easy for one sensational panel to steal all the oxygen (as well as all the headlines), which is what has happened this year.
But what interests me is different. Is there still a sense of commonality of purpose? When we all showed up for the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas in 2006 we knew what had to be done. We had to wrest power from the Republicans. There was very little bickering. And, compared to the despairing conferences then being held in DC, there was tremendous optimism, and shared interest in innovation and creating new tools and new ideas. We were going to beat the crap out of the Republicans through superior organization.
You know, we did that. And then we lost our common purpose.
sometimes I think you write pieces like this just to provoke a reaction.
What’s wrong with that? The people responsible for the “divisive culture” know who they are. But rather than change their behavior, they just get faux-scandalized that they’re being “silenced by The Man” and harp louder.
At a time when a coalition has a tenuous hold on power, it’s those trying to break the coalition that are at fault for whatever hostilities ensue. You may think you’re doing right by “speaking truth to power” or whatever, but until you come up with alternative paths of policy shaping that don’t devolve down to magic thinking, you’re just masturbating in public.
The only critics of the administration who have the right to be smug and “unproductive” are the left leaning economists who once again accurately surmised the conditions on the ground and made realistic forecasts of what would and did happen. And since nobody will ever listen to them anyway, I don’t know what they gain by trying to make headway in the current corporate environment. The best they can do is keep putting their thoughts out there on the record, in the hopes that five-ten years from now, shifting trends in global capital and energy flows prove more hospitable to that type of economic thinking.
you’re right bazooka joe.
Speaking out is disloyal to the Leader and the Party. I should know my place better. That the Leader wins is most important: it doesn’t matter what he DOES as Leader, just that he wins.
So that public option that was promoted but never really meant seriously: unimportant. And I must never speak of the unemployment rate that was supposed to be below 7% without stimulus and is now (officially) more than 9%. Or Race To The Top, the union-busting educational policy that’s based on the dieas of noted fraud Michele Rhee: that is to be applauded, or at the very least don’t say it hasn’t worked.
You’re right. I will sing the Blue Team song from now on.
Oh please admire me
the brave iconoclast
You Leader and Cult
will feel the blast
of my disapproval stern and true
I’ll hold my breath
until I’m blue
No sandwich made of shit for me
I’ll sulk and sulk
’til we all are free
And when the far right gets the win
you dare not blame me
I’ll turn you in.
I like this a lot.
No matter what he writes about, the same people have the same reaction.
So, why not?
There is a big divide between people who make money from the netroots (markos, hamsher, etc.) + those who want to join this group and the Democratic party. The moneymakers make more money and get more TV attention by attacking the Democratic party, which is at cross-purposes with the original common purpose of the netroots, to elect more Democrats and accomplish progressive goals.
I think that is the reason we are seeing the 2nd string from the Democratic Party at NN this year. Instead of WH senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, we get Deputy Communications Director. Pelosi and Reid aren’t there. There are really no top tier elected officials except for the Minnesota delegation.
I think TPTB in the Democratic Party are realizing that the netroots aren’t worth the time and hassle.
Markos? Really?
He’s taking hits from both sides. I about wet myself once reading a commenter at another blog complain about the “centrists” at Daily Kos.
It’s what happens when your blog has diverse ideas about stuff.
I think Markos abandoned any pretense of his original mission “electing more Democrats” when he let paid FDL diarists take over the rec list for months without comment and then promoted posters to the frontpage who copy FDL stories verbatim.
He’s pretty much abandoned any interest in the site last year. He rarely posts there and when he does it is the usual FDL talking points (Obama’s lost his base, blah, blah).
That’s what has just pushed me out for the last time. When 350.org came out with this money-raising poutrage, based on ginned-up controversy–and at the same time not telling people they were also running this campaign against Sherrod Brown–I lost it.
Why is 350.org going after Sen. Sherrod Brown?
In the dkos fundraising thread, nobody mentioned Sherrod. I had to learn about it in my local paper:
Sigh. I’m done. I don’t need allies like this. My purpose is not to target Dems in tough states.
damn, forgot the link to my paper: http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-16/news/29666177_1_advertising-policy-mbta-scott-brown
I am not surprised that they are targeting Dems, as they seem more concerned with raising funds and getting media attention than in actually passing progressive legislation.
Unfortunately, I am sure that the majority of posters at DK have no problem donating to ads airing against progressive (and yes, he’s a progressive) Sherrod Brown.
DK has completely abandoned its original mission statement of being a partisan blog.
The community that is showing up at Netroots Nation this year is more diverse politically than was 2006 just because the number of people in the “progressive” blogosphere is larger and more diverse. That in itself leads to conflicting visions. And conflicting views about strategy and tactics.
And, winning is more difficult than losing, and we are still winning despite the composition of state legislatures and Congress — maybe even because of that composition. Because, there are those who don’t want to risk the gains that have been won and are more cautious and those who are dissatisfied with the progress that winning has brought and are quite willing to gamble.
In addition, in 2006 the economic conditions in the country were not great but not catastrophic. Those who were professional bloggers had not made a mark in the national media and gotten stars in their eyes. And the general failings of the liberal establishment in DC were not as blatantly apparent. In 2006, the consensus opinion in the left blogosphere was that all we had to do was to get Democrats back in power in the Congress and in the White House. We now know that the rot goes beyond the Repubican Party. We now know that bulwark “liberal” DC advocacy groups can be controlled by large donors who have agendas not necessarily aligned with the purposes of those groups. We now know that there is a political class that is more interested in their personal careers than in the success of progressive or Democratic politics. We now are in a much tougher legal situation with campaign finance, thanks to a corrupt court system. And of course those with illusions have been disillusioned.
And the Republicans discovered new media and mainstreamed folks like Erick Erickson and Andrew Breitbart.
Yes, we are at a point in which we have to reassess exactly what our purpose is. Is it winning seats for Democrats? Is is winning seats for progressive Democrats? Is it transforming the Democratic Party? Is it taking to the streets and demanding reform of the entire corrupt system? What exactly is the American politics we want to see going forward? Is it limited to supporting one of the established parties or a third party? Should the political space be structurally opened to third parties? How do we restore the Constitutional rights that have been stripped away by the fear of terrorism? How do we resurrect the labor movement in every state in the union?
What we missed in 2006 is that the Republicans would not cede back power quietly because they understood themselves to be at war and had understood themselves in that role since Watergate. That they no longer respected the Constitution and the ordinary processes of government. The GOP adapted, caught the Democratic establishment flatfooted (and us too with its breathtaking cynicism). And now we are bickering about how to fight back. Better now than at next year’s Netroots Nation.
Of course, we are in some disarray. That is what is called the fog of battle. But the battle is greater than the re-election of Barack Obama, and we need to stop fixating on the Presidential race. It has become a distraction.
That said, our purpose has not fundamentally changed since the Progressive era — end corruption in politics, structurally defeat the tyranny of large economic actors over democratic politics, bring a better life and equal justice under law to all Americans. Deliver on our promise of being a model of hope for people in other countries. Take the next step in human progress. Peace. Prosperity. Not as empty words but as delivered realities.
Scott Peck was a pop psychologist, but had an interesting insight about how groups and movements operate. It’s the core of his book, A Different Drum: Community Building and Peace. He noticed that purpose-driven groups show up at any particular time in one of four states: (1) naivete and superficial unity, (2) serious conflict, (3) denial of conflict, or (4) tactical evasions of conflict like cliques, strawman issues, and withdrawal to the point of leaving the group. The most effective groups are those that can work through serious conflict without hiding from it. Within a common vision, there are serious differences in principles, strategies, tactics, intermediate objectives and the like. Just by the fact that there are different human beings involved. If a group shows up in one of these four states there is no way to shortcut dealing with the issues that come with that territory.
And consider some doggerel an friend of mine in the 1960s put together:
You know, I agree with perhaps 30% of what you say, but I would really like to read a blog by you.
For instance, my personal belief is that our purpose should be to delegitimize the Republican party and conservatism in general. But of course, we’re fighting against biology there. Nature has built us to be suspicious of anything “different.”
Delegitimization is not a purpose, it is a tactic–whether hampered or hindered by biology.
The self-domestication of humans (take toilet training for instance) is a fight of culture against biology too. Something the human nature determinists choose to forget.
Conservatism as a self-conscious movement did not exist until FDR took office and then it lacked a name other than it was “against socialism”. The name “conservatism” came in the 1950s. And they built a movement on terror of communism. And then on terror of terrorism. Interesting eh? And now, they’re trying the socialism card again.
The fact that all they are at root is delegitimizing those who might rein in the economic tyrants does not mean that we should be empty shells as well. Empty fortresses tend to wind up being the vehicles of evil.
After Citizens United I don’t believe there’s anything we can actually do until we delegitimize conservatism. And the only way to really do that, is to see that as an end and not a means.
I’d say the juries still out on self-domestication. What happened in 40,000 BC to cause Behavioral Modernity? Was it biology? Was it culture? Was it some combination? Did it happen rapidly or was it a gradual accretion over the last 60,000 years?
Even if conservatism was not a self-conscious movement until it reacted to the new deal, it still existed. It existed every time some noble slaughtered uppity peasants demanding bread, or every time the peasants rioted to protect the priests and so on. The whole of human history has been an attempt to increase security. That’s why nobility were tolerated in the first place and when the threat they posed proved greater than the external threats, their power began to decline. Perhaps it seems Hobbesian of me, but it wasn’t until recently that “better lives for all” was a goal for its own sake.
At this point conservatism is so bad, and our entire species in such dire straits that destroying it, even if it’s destroyers have to be defeated in their turn, is a net positive.
The Progressive movement delegitimized un-selfconscious conservatism through muckraking journalism and fiction. And by characterizing the “captains of industry” as “robber barons” and “trusts”. But their goal was to fight that which was corrupting American democracy. Citizens United legitimizes pay-for-play and revolving door politics in DC, which is a current form of corruption. The goal, stated or not, is ending the corrupting influence of money on politics — that is only one goal, mind you. In order to accomplish this, you have to delegitimize the Randian underpinnings of modern conservatism — individualist overemphasis, denial of social action, tyranny of economic values, mythology that the rich are “producers”, religious sectarianism, crony politics, and the corruption and brutality of law enforcement. To name some of the individual elements that must be delegitimized.
But the big problem is that you cannot do that and affect Republicans so long as Democrats are willingly part of that system and that ideology. Or bow in its direction. And that problem goes from the buying of zoning variances and exceptions to building inspections all the way up to President’s consulting with Wall Street to figure out how to end the overreaching on Wall Street.
And note that we are not talking about moral failing here but a rigid social understanding that severely punishes those who do not conform. You either play the game or you are out. And Citizens United just gave Wall Street a bigger stick to hit politicians with. And people come to support this conservatism by buying into the individual pieces of the ideology one at a time. “Individual responsibility”, “Christian nation” or “moral nation”, “character”, “values voter”, “right to life”,…..until they absorb the entire package and its internal logic. And the fact that so many people believe the internal logic means that pragmatic politicians are dragged along as enablers.
What is apparent in the post-World War II period is that the sunlight that this vampire system most fears is peace and prosperity. An environment that allows people to be less afraid and more generous. Hence the destructive tendencies in the practice of modern conservatism and why the conflict keeps getting ratcheted up and up. The truth is that even benign conservatives like Romney and Huntsman don’t want prosperity for everyone and don’t want peace for everyone. The first loosens managerial control; the second loosens state power. And for conservatives, the sole purpose of politics is control–military and police power. All other activities of government to them are illegitimate.
Delegitimizing cannot become a distraction from the real goals for the same reason that a war on terrorism distracted from the real goals post 9/11. It provides the very direct resistance that can rally, in this case, the modern conservative movement. The goals are a functioning democracy, peace, prosperity, absence of religious conflict or discrimination, extension of equal rights under the law, access to participation in democracy, and a decent chance of seeing government respond to you as a significant political player. I guess in one sense that makes us the real conservatives, for that is the Jeffersonian vision of the functioning of government and society. Sure he preferred small government; after the PATRIOT Act, that makes sense. But he also late in life saw that any strong institution — for his generation it was religious institutions, for the next (Jackson) the rising corporations — could be an instrument of tyranny for which government had to be the counter-balancing institution.
Conservatism is so bad because it adopted in the 1950s the Randian argument against Marxism in a period when Marxists were see by politicians as being in every institution. Because its lust for power after the Goldwater defeat cause it to adopt Stalinist tactics – ideological policing, political commissars in government agencies, a propaganda machine, and operation through small cells in every community driving a minority opinion into a majority one. Because it became the handmaiden of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. Because the notion of privatization of public services inevitably leads to corruption and cronyism. Conservatism is now a lust for wealth and power empty of any other purpose–individual or social. Wealth for wealth’s sake. Power for power’s sake.
An aside on self-domestication. It occurred as invention, not determinism. It was pushed by pragmatism and a search for convenience. We learned by the necessity of having created other things that pooping in your clothes was inconvenient. So is destroying your planet by pooping in your clothes on a grander scale. Intra-group killing is inconvenient (and can destroy the group). So is inter-group killing with massively powerful and “intelligent” technology. (Wars inconvenience even when they do not threaten. How many vacations have been canceled because of a war somewhere?)
You are not being Hobbesian in your observation that for a while the war of all against all was contained. Isn’t it interesting that the turning point seemed to be the Enlightenment and that the rise of corporations as a result of Enlightenment improvements so soon undid that. And that attitude appeared again after World War II and was gone by the Nixon administration. It wasn’t until recently that “better lives for all” was seen as being possible. Some argue it still is but only if we understand the word “enough”.
The same thing happened during the Spanish Civil War. The socialists and the anarchists, who’d long been at each others’ throats, joined together to fight off the fascists, but in the middle of the war, the anarchists decided that the new goalposts would be to bring about a social revolution in society, and defined their enemies as enemies of the revolution. Meanwhile, the socialists wanted to put la revolucion aside for the time being and focus on the task at hand – winning a victory over the fascists as part of the republican coalition. This meant that the socialists became enemies of the revolution, and open fighting erupted.
In the end, the fascists won, and there was no social revolution.
Well, y’all better find a common purpose soon because the reality of a Romney presidency is very real, I’m afraid. And if Republicans regain control of the Senate, the White House, and retain the House they will gut the social safety net and other regulations that protect consumers, the elderly, the sick, the middle class, workers, students, and the poor. The rightwing is determined to rollback the 20th century. If that’s not common purpose enough for the left, then we are truly well fucked.
Not Romney, the Tea Party hates him. Bachmann.
She might be the nominee but there’s no way she’s going to be president. Forty percent, tops, will be what she gets. Country’s not that crazy yet.
Nominee
I’m writing this as I sit adjacent to the exposition area at NN 2011. There does seem to be less urgency in the atmosphere, at least amongst the attendees. Most folks I’ve talked to are here to recharge and/or seek mutual support. For some, it’s a time to catch up with friends met at prior conventions. I’m not sure that much in the way of organizing is going on.
So we were united, we threw out the Republicans we elected Democrats to the House, Senate and the Presidency. Then those Democrats promptly turned their backs on us and cozied up to the banks and the lobbyists.
Now AARP has joined the betrayers. We might as well vote Republican and get stabbed in the front.
Don’t believe everything you read in the Wall Street Journal. As an AARP member myself, I’ve already let them know that whether John Rother is negotiating cuts to Social Security or whether he was misquoted by the Wall Street Journal and The Hill, he should be fired. Giving a statement like the one quoted or even allowing his name to be in print associating the AARP with a statement like that shows that he is more interested in being a DC player than in pushing the interests of the retired.
I suggest that other AARP members call their 888 number and ask that Rother be fired. (Members only, they screen your membership information.)
Their so-called walkback is pretty much just PR gibberish. If they had a better record of standing up for their putative constituency I might be willing to give them more benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately they are much better at marketing crappy Medicare supplements than actually standing up for the interests of seniors or any other non-corporate persons. The the very least the entire top management has to go, and in the meantime we need to find genuinely nonprofit alternatives.
The top management who did the Medicare Part D deal did go. The current bunch seem a lot more sensible. That’s why I’m focusing on the holdover John Rother.
I’m calling. I hope the lines are clogged with angry seniors.
The AARP SS advocate was supposed to be on Bloomberg, but canceled. That tells me Rother wasn’t misquoted and the leadership is in disarray.
Leadership in disarray? Might cause them to offer up Rother to placate us geezers.
Delusions of grandeur.
First, most of the people who voted for Democrats are pretty moderate and not at all enthused about what “progressives” consider correct. But, get this, they are citizens just like you and their votes count too.
Second, most of the Democrats elected never said they agreed with your ideas and would not have been elected if they had said that they agreed. The people of Lousiana who just re-elected Dave Vitter want Mary Landrieu to be conservative and corporate friendly.
You can live in delusion all you want, but that’s a long way from having any power.
THIS. This is what Booman, Rootless, and the others try to ignore.
There’s something called “accountability”. when the vaunted health care reform bill gets watered down to health insurance reform, someone’s gotta be held accountable. when the economy’s collapsed and you hire as your econ team some of the very faces that helped make it happen, someone’s gotta be held accountable. when your forclosure prevention program DOES NOT WORK and you won’t do anything to change it, someone’s gotta be held accountable.
During the campaign, it’s all about holding people accountable. Once we elected the democrats, it was all about “who, me?” and “you better elect us, or those awful guys win.” In a way, it’s no different than the Republicans holding the economy hostage. “Vote for me, or the country gets it.”
Back in the 1980s hardcore scene, I remember there were tons of songs about “unity”. “if the kids/were united/they will never be divided” by 7 Seconds was a big anthem. “We Will Be United” was another.
I remember wondering “Unite and do.. what exactly?”
I have the same question as an adult. Yes, we united and beat the crap out of the Republicans. That’s good.
But if the result was only to pass: a health insurance-industry friendly “reform” bill (the price of which was abortion rights), a wall street reform riddled with loopholes that hasn’t helped ordinary people, 4 more wars, an expansion of the surveillance state, fewer civil liberties, offshore oil-drilling, a president who claims the power to assassinate Americans without due process, attacks on whistleblowers, protection for war criminals, and an obsession with the deficit and austerity when people need jobs, proposals to cut medicaid and social security…
…well, no, I kinda wonder why the fuck we bothered to unite to begin with. I mean, these are all things republicans ordinarily would be in favor of if it was a republican doing it. I’m supposed to volunteer for four more years of achievements like this?
This is what you try to ignore. To enforce accountability, you have to enforce it against the Republicans first. Otherwise you never have accountability. This is the conundrum we have been in since we held LBJ accountable for the Vietnam War.
The only way out of it is by not being marginal (that is just providing a margin of victory) but by consolidating public opinion independent of both parties to hold real and not phony accountability. That is much harder work than casting a protest vote against a candidate.
The good news is that a large part of the Republican base is in the same position right now.
Accountability in principle is easy. Accountability in practice is very difficult and time-consuming to get. There are not shortcuts and firing before you draw just shoots yourself in the foot.
Yes, we are dealing with hostage-takers, but those folks go well beyond Congress into the highest reaches of American business and private wealth. The GOP in Congress is just their hit men.
The only way to deal with this hostage taking that I see right now is to rebuild the strength of the labor movement. And that is going to require that some people put their lives on the line in a way that we haven’t seen in fifty years.
Electoral punishment is not going to exact accountability.
I love you. No, it’s not. It’s only going to push Democrats farther to the right. After all, that’s what the Village thinks lost the 2010 elections.
Like we always do, we thought electing Obama and a Dem majority was the common purpose. Like they always do, both turned out to have purposes of their own that precluded battling for our purposes.
I think Obama and the Dem majority, by being the best we can get, ended up demonstrating for once and for all that the American political system has no ability to shield us from the destruction caused by the clash between its own internal contradictions. In other words, that we are past the point where gradualism has any potential for the good, and revolutionary change, by whatever means, is the last hope for remaining a reasonably decent, livable, society.
That’s not a view anyone is ready to even contemplate, much less begin to act on. A person gets exhausted from always being on the losing side no matter how many political battles we “win”. We are trapped in a dysfunctional system held in place by an unworkable relic of a Constitution. We are unwilling or unable to make changes ourselves and so will be changed by forces outside our control. There is no sense of common purpose to be had when all we’re left with is waiting to see what fate might have in store.
Once all the seats in the lifeboat were taken — Yglesias has a paying gig, Klein has a paying gig, Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, etc. — of course the remaining passengers were going to turn on each other.
The common purpose is not now and should never have been to elect Democrats, or to elect better Democrats. It’s to get better policies enacted. Putting Democrats in office is a possible means to that end – it’s not the end in itself. And one of the many problems with it as a tactic is that far too many Democrats, especially elected officials, seem to see it as an end in itself.
That said, every other tactic has at least as many problems. There are, indeed, serious structural issues in American politics. As a result, at a time when decisive action is needed to increase the chances that we’ll even make it to the 22nd Century, instead we’re fighting rearguard battles to preserve hard-won gains of the 20th. And the rest of the world – let alone the biosphere – is not waiting for the USA to get its shit together.
This is what makes Obama’s (and many other Democrats’) incrementalism so frustrating to so many. It may be all our political system allows – but it is hopelessly inadequate to the challenges at hand. It’s absolutely true that the changes we need are revolutionary. But it’s hard to imagine any revolutionary changes in this country without some seriously apocalyptic developments first. The imminent broiling of the planet, for example, isn’t even a major concern for more than half of all Americans. So where’s that mass revolution going to come from?