Category: Blogs

The Principled Base

Howie Klein and the other Blue America blogs (FireDogLake, Digby, and Crooks&Liars) are showing more principle than we saw yesterday in the Democratic Senate caucus. Howie explains how-so at DownWithTyranny:

OK, so last night Stevens was defeated bringing the Democratic majority to at least 58. An intense recount procedure looms for Minnesota, where only 206 votes separates Al Franken and rubber stamp incumbent Norm Coleman. And early voting has already begun in the December 2nd Georgia run-off between Jim Martin and Saxby Chambliss.

Political insiders are all excited about all this stuff. Should the grassroots be? I’m not so certain. Sure, I think Norm Coleman and Saxby Chambliss are two of the absolute worst members of the U.S. Senate and each makes the place and even bigger disgrace than it would be without them. And both Franken and Martin seem like decent and conscientious guys. (Even Allen Buckley, the Libertarian candidate who threw the Georgia race into a run-off, thinks Martin is a better choice.) I’m rootin’ for him and Franken. But no fund drives at Blue America. We’ve given enough this year. And what did we get in return? Joe Lieberman smirking on TV. If I lived in Georgia I’m sure I’d go vote for Martin. If the pitiful slobs in the Senate Democratic caucus want him to win… they’re stinking rich and basically take as much in bribes from corporate America as the Republicans do. They don’t need our money. We’ll be saving it for primaries in 2010. [Emphasis added]

Bloggers spend a lot of time supporting Democratic candidates and asking their readership — the core of the online progressive movement — to donate their hard-earned money to support these candidates. People like me have had jobs on campaigns to help facilitate that process and grow online donor support for campaigns from the progressive grassroots. But at what cost? The long-term risk of unquestioned continued fundraising for any and all Democratic candidates (or even ones that have learned how to say the right things to bloggers) is that the progressive base will be alienated by the lack of meaningful results.  Yes, we can do a lot to help get people elected. But are they the right kind of people? Do they run on a progressive platform, yet vote with the centrist leadership every step of the way? Do they lie to our face like Chris Carney? Do they win with the support of people like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel — and then feel obligated to dance with the girl that brought them to the Hill, thereby strengthening the wrong parts of the Democratic Party when they should be defining a shift to the Left?

What truly scares me is if things continue to go as they have gone during the 110th Congress and into this lame duck session and, as a result, the progressive base turns off. They stop donating to good candidates because their trust has been broken so many times by Democrats. They stop using grassroots pressure tactics to get Democratic legislators to vote the right way on key issues because the offices on the Hill never, ever listen to their input. They stop reading progressive blogs because they realize the asks for their support, time, and money on behalf of candidates was unwise in the face of the evidence.

I think Howie is making a good point. The progressive online movement needs to prepare to put our people in office. No more acts of faith for the ability of the DSCC or DCCC to pop champagne bottles because another Democrat from a place that’s not a Democratic country got elected. We need to pick our candidates and run them to win against the worst of Washington, regardless of whether their opponents are Democrats or Republicans. It’s the only way to get the country on track. A majority has not yet been proven to be sufficient for change. We saw that clearly yesterday.

Go Inside

Lorelei Kelly has a really important piece up at Huffington Post, calling on 20-something bloggers to go work on Capitol Hill.

So here’s my pitch: You twenty-somethings who are reading this, if you can’t take your day job after being part of such a political earthquake like last week’s election, go find your local Member of Congress and apply for a job. Take the district job over one on Capitol Hill. Even though DC is as giddy as that prisoner in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave–you know, where he is chained immobile to a wall for years–and then gets taken out to see the sun–the states are still where the most important action is going to be found because influential citizen input is a missing link for many issues on Capitol Hill. Then, when you write your letter to the Chief of Staff or mobilize your contacts, bill yourself as a “New Media” or “Citizen Participation” Specialist. The great thing about being part of a new movement is that you get to make up your own job title. You will know more about how this election was electronically organized than anyone working in the office (but don’t brag about it). In fact, apply for the job advertised, and sell your qualities for fulling those requirements, but come with a creative plan about how you are going to keep the citizens of the district involved and inspired.

As a blogger who moved from outside the system and has spent the last two years working on campaigns, I can say this is a path that the online progressive movement needs many, many more people to follow. We need more and better insiders. That’s how we can achieve change. Bloggers tend to be movement progressives and we need to get people inside the DC/Democratic Party system that will bring progressive ideals into closed-door planning meetings.

Moreover, change is a long, slow process. We need people inside now who in five, ten or fifteen years will be in positions of major influence throughout our party. We can’t count on change coming over night, so it’s time to do the hard work to be better positioned down the road.

Bloggers In Pajamas

First, Rachel Maddow clearly rocks. And hard.

Second, the bloggers in pajamas slur is a long-standing straw man. As Jane Hamsher recently noted, top liberal bloggers are some of the best educated people in the political cohort. Attire has no bearing on accuracy or clarity of analysis.

I’ve spent time blogging in my pajamas. I’m comfortable to admit it. When I worked from my apartment as a consultant between the Dodd and Begich campaigns, I would often not leave my home for the entire work day. In those situations, it was totally understandable for me to stay in comfortable clothes and yes…gasp…even pajamas. What’s the big deal? Attire during work is no more disqualifying of quality or the moral ability to do good analysis of political events than chain smoking. I don’t recall anyone getting their skivvies in a twist over Woodward and Bernstein filling the Washington Post offices with smoke during their Watergate investigation. Nor have I ever heard political reporters who pile into the bar at the Hotel Fort Des Moines during caucus season bemoaning their lack of professionalism because they spend much of the Iowa winter drunk.

But I sometimes write in my pajamas, so what do I know?

On Debate

Thers is right:

The most ridiculous thing anyone seriously interested in politics will ever try to do is to “debate” an opponent. You’re much better off trying to win. Try to fight for things like, say, a responsible environmental policy, or equal rights for homosexuals, or no more stupid wars that get a lot of people killed. Win one of these points, and I’ll cheer you on, even if you had to stomp your opponent to do it. Go figure!

I dislike the notion of “debate.” It is naive and counterproductive.

Ye take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll get to gay marriage before ye.

Just getting things done is a much better plan than building consensus and finding points of agreement through debate of conflicting sides of an issue. What Thers doesn’t highlight in these three paragraphs, but points out earlier when discussing what it takes to be a member in good standing of the conservative coalition, is that some things are true and some things are false. Some are right, some are wrong. And on most issues, Republicans are wrong. Thus any debate that seeks a compromise solution necessarily involves mixing what is the right thing to do with what is the wrong thing to do. That just doesn’t work. It’s senseless. And it’s why we’re very likely to end up with a crappy health care plan and not health care for all. What we need is forceful advocacy for progressive policies that manifests itself, first and foremost, through the uncompromising.

Bloggingheads TV on Tibet

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake and Erick Erickson of RedState have a very interesting discussion of what’s going on in Tibet and China on Bloggingheads TV. Erickson argues that Bush should boycott the Olympics, while Jane pushes for action ahead of that, including efforts to ensure that China does not violently crack down in Tibet in connection to the torch relay. It’s an interesting discussion that moves on to America’s moral standing in the world.

They Commission Polls

Apologies for posting twice on Joe Lieberman in the same day, but Markos Moulitsas commissioned another poll in CT on the 2006 Senate race and how Connecticut voters think about their choices today.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/31-4/2. Regular voters. MoE 4% (9/10-12/2007 results)

If you could vote again for U.S. Senate, would you vote for Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

All

Lamont (D) 51 (48)
Lieberman (I) 37 (40)
Schlesinger (R) 7 (9)

Democrats

Lamont (D) 74 (72)
Lieberman (I) 19 (25)
Schlesinger (R) 2 (3)

Republicans

Lamont (D) 4 (7)
Lieberman (I) 74 (69)
Schlesinger (R) 19 (24)

Independents

Lamont (D) 53 (49)
Lieberman (I) 36 (38)
Schlesinger (R) 6 (9)

Lieberman has shored up his support with Republicans, who clearly see him as one of their own. He has predictably lost ground among Democrats. But interestingly, he also lost the same amount of ground (six points) with independents.

Clearly, his whole “independent” schtick isn’t playing well with real independent voters. I’ll have more on this poll later today. The crosstabs are below the fold. Crosstabs for last year’s poll can be found here.

I think this yet again shows both how successful Joe Lieberman was in 2006 at lying to the people of Connecticut about who he was and what he stood for. Would anyone believe him if today Lieberman were to say, “No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do”? Voters shouldn’t have believed them in 2006, but as our dear President says, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…you can’t get fooled again.”

This poll also shows how fed up Connecticut voters are with Lieberman’s embrace of a far right wing world view. It’s not what he ran on and independent voters have not been rewarded for their faith in the man’s long-perceived moderate views. Add to that a rise in Ned Lamont’s popularity and it’s safe to say that people in Connecticut now recognize how much they screwed the pooch by reelecting Lieberman.

Graphic Policy

Brett Schenker, the Dodd campaign’s database and social networking guru, has started a new blog called Graphic Policy. It’s about the recent growth in policy and politics in graphic novels and comic books. I grew up reading a lot of Marvel comics, though I doubt I’ve bought one in the last 12 years. It looks like Brett is going to be doing some interesting analysis of how contemporary politics is manifesting itself in comic books and I look forward to see the blog develop.

Sprezzatura

Ari Melber has a withering review of the internet’s most famous culprit of sock puppetry, Lee Siegel. This passage stands out as an apt summation of Melber’s whole piece.

By combining the fact-free observations of a futurist pundit and the hypocritical tirades of a sinful preacher, Siegel’s book is as unreliable as it is insufferable. Ironically, he sounds like the caricature of bloggers he denounces: uninformed, shrill, defensive, and self-obsessed. The nascent web culture does have problems, which fine thinkers have tackled before (Cass Sunstein and Yochai Benkler, for example). But Against the Machine fails to support its antiweb hostility, let alone offer specific reforms, because it’s too busy ranting in the mirror.

Shorter Ari Melber: This book would have undoubtedly been better if its author wasn’t a bad faith actor with a well-earned fear of research and an ax to grind.