In a set of recent pieces, Cenk Uygur has made a defense of relentless criticism of the president and an argument that Howard Dean and Jane Hamsher cannot be wrong no matter what they say so long as they are attacking the president from the left. Part of this argument I understand. Cenk is arguing that loud, visible criticism from the left helps blunt accusations that Obama is himself on the left, and that this makes him appear moderate which, in turn, makes his job easier. This isn’t an argument on the merits. Cenk isn’t saying that Obama is left, center, or right, and he isn’t arguing that criticism of him is fair or accurate or otherwise. He’s making a simple observation about how it benefits Obama politically to be attacked from the left. In this view, there is no downside to blasting away at the president from the left because you are either right and he might hear you, or you are wrong but he’ll benefit from the optics anyway. There are a couple of flaws with this strategy, even if it is true so far as it goes.
The first flaw is that there actually is a downside to having progressive opinion leaders blast away at the president and say things like this about him:
…you won’t make things better because you don’t work for us. You work for ExxonMobil, Blue Cross and Goldman Sachs, who are all stealing from us and making our lives worse. You can’t work for the people who are stealing from the public and serve the needs of the public at the same time. A House divided against itself must fall, you cannot serve the voters and Mammon, etc., as they say. It doesn’t matter anymore if some of you want to, or would if you could, because you didn’t and evidently can’t.
Most blogreaders and radio listeners and Olbermann/Maddow watchers don’t like to admit that they take their queues from opinion leaders. But many of them do. Because of this, progressive leaders can’t act like Charles Barkley and say they don’t want to be role models. Opinion leaders shape opinions, and they can breed cynicism and apathy if they so choose. If they go out and tell their audiences day after day that the president of the United States is stealing from them to do the bidding of Goldman Sachs and Exxon/Mobil then a hearty percentage of their audiences are going to, you know…start to believe it. And that’s where you start eating into your base and causing problems in a midterm election that will be decided on differential turnout. So, you ought not to go around saying these things unless you really truly think they’re true. And if anyone thinks that blockquote above is fair and accurate, then I just don’t know what to say to them. It’s a bunch of malarkey, is what it is.
Another problem with Cenk’s argument can be seen in his advice for those of us that don’t agree with this strategy of incessant bombthrowing.
The point is that the mainstream media loves people who they can call “moderates.” If Joe Lieberman is somewhere between Obama and Cheney, no matter how far to the right he is, he gets to be called a moderate. Why? Because there’s someone to the right of him.
Now, you have someone to the left of you. Congratulations, you made it! You’re now part of the cool crowd in DC, the only people that the establishment media care about or give any credence to – moderates.
But Cenk is wrong about this. The only progressives who get on teevee and radio are bombthrowers who attack the president (and blacks that got confused and became Republican shills). You never see supportive progressive bloggers on television or radio. Never. That’s because controversy drives ratings. You see moderate elected Democrats on television because they disagree with the party and the president. The same phenomenon makes Jane Hamsher a starlet of cable news while anyone who defends the president is about as exciting as a WHAM! reunion.
