Some liberal bloggers are very sensitive and get upset when people call them the “professional left” or suggest that they are the mirror image of the Tea Party, just with less clout and credibility. I shrug that stuff off.
First of all, there is a professional left, and I have been a part of it. I did a year of consulting work for Democracy for America. It was a rewarding experience, but it also taught me about the tradeoffs these organizations have to make in order to grow their membership and reach their fundraising goals. In issue advocacy, passion is the name of the game, and compromise is a toxin. When your job is to stake out a maximalist position (no new taxes, ever, or no cuts to entitlements, ever) then anyone who falls short of your demands is going to be a sell-out. Unfortunately, nothing can get done without some give-and-take, and legislators need the freedom of action to make a deal.
As for Schumer’s observation, I’m willing to grant that a lot of the left-wing blogosphere is engaged in maximalist rhetoric that mirrors the Tea Party faction on the right, and I am willing to agree that we collectively have less clout than the Tea Party. But I am not willing to agree that we have less credibility than the Tea Party.
While there are outliers, most of the left-wing blogosphere has been very astute and accurate in their predictions going back all the way to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The Tea Partiers can’t predict what is packed in their lunch. The truth (as they understand it) is the lode-star for left-wing bloggers. The truth isn’t even a regret for right-wing bloggers. They have no use for the truth at all. Right-wing blogging is all about tactics and ginning up outrage. Very few of them ever engage in honest analysis; everything is about persuasion.
In other words, the left-wing professional left, at its worst, parallels the right-wing blogosphere at its best. If “credible” means that you can rely on the accuracy, then the difference between left-wing bloggers and right-wing bloggers is the same as the difference between Nate Silver and Dick Morris.
So, I don’t like being insulted by Chuck Schumer, but it doesn’t really bother me because I know that he is wrong about the only thing I care about. And that’s my credibility.
