There's a revolution happening this first day of the New Year. It isn't on your television screens. You can't read about it in the New York Times or the Washington Post...yet.
But it's all the rage on the blogosphere.
From laptops, and desktops, clad in PJ's and sweats, downing aspirin as they're recovering from New Year's Eve, the political blogosphere is quietly asserting itself against the New Hopeism of Barack Obama.
Let's start with Markos Moulitsos of Daily Kos, who is far from a fervent supporter of John Edwards:
"...Not being blinded by candidate worship, it's easier to sniff out the bullsh**. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter."
link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/1/1 33841/9311/412/428780
Kos is referring to Obama's recent attacks on trial lawyers, unions, and even Al Gore and John Kerry. Add that to the earlier gaffe of having Donnie McClurkin, a gospel singer and proponent of the controversial "ex-gay" movement, sharing the stage with you at a campaign concert fundraiser, and you have a candidate who is running to win the Democratic Party's primary who is simultaneously able to alienate some of its key constiuents.
Politico covers the outrage that unions are feeling against the New Hopeism:
"...I'm taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent," Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's behalf, said, referring to the television host's high-profile support for Obama. "It's sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make."
Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the other major union supporting Clinton, wrote on The Huffington Post that "the Obama campaign's criticism of our political action committee and some of the so-called 527 efforts, such as the one organized in support of [John] Edwards, is troubling because they are suggesting that workers are somehow a special interest, just like insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry..."
link: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/010 8/7652.html
Matt Stoller of Open Left is even more scathing:
"...Since declaring for President, this person has called Social Security a 'crisis', attacked trial lawyers, associated unapologetically with vicious homophobes, portrayed Gore and Kerry as excessively polarizing losers, boasted as his central achievement an irrelevant ethics bill, ran against the DC establishment while taking huge amounts of cash from DC, undermined Ned Lamont in 2006, criticized NAFTA while voting for a NAFTA-style trade agreement, compiled opposition research on the most effective liberal pundit in the country, refused to promise that American troops would be out of Iraq by 2013, and endorsed the central plank of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy doctrine, the war on terror.
How would you react? You could concoct a 'theory of change' and argue that all of this is just deceptive, and the candidate is worth supporting anyway..."
link: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?dia ryId=3002
Ian Welsh in Huffington Post does a full frontal assault on the technical aspects of the New Hopeism:
"...Then there's Barack "Consensus" Obama. It's hard to even take this seriously. In 2007 the Republicans in Congress killed, through technical filibusters, almost twice as many bills as any Congress ever has. For the last 7 years, George "I won the vote that matters 5-4" Bush has ruled the country by running rough-shod over the opposition party, giving them essentially nothing. There has been no consensus-driven voting or decision-making in the U.S. in 7 years, and there wasn't that much in the '90s, either. Oh, sure, I understand that Obama and many Americans would like to go back to the land of consensus-driven politics, where there's a center and where everyone works for what is best for America by splitting the difference. It's a pretty picture. But there's no middle left..."
link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-welsh/ the-edwards-imperative-b_b_79015.html
Ezra Klein shrewdly observes that the trend of New Hopeism is actually veering away from anything progressives or liberals would embrace as a victory:
"...But Obama's comfort attacking liberals from the right is unsettling, and if he does win Iowa, it will not be a victory that either supporters or the media ascribe to the more progressive elements of his candidacy. Instead, they will search for the distinctions he's drawn, and, sadly, a number of those distinctions point away from the heart-quickening progressivism of much of this race, and back towards the old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias..."
link: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezrak lein_archive?month=01&year=2008& base_name=the_obama_close#103413
Finally, the New Hopeism has unfortunately lead Obama to embrace the Harry and Louise talking points that helped to successfully torch universal health care in the 1990's:
So, let's review. The New Hopeism uses right wing talking points against unions and trial lawyers. It calls out Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore and Senator John Kerry for being too divisive (link: http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/lo ngisland/politics/blog/2007/12/obama_gor e_kerry_alienated_hal.html).
And it's willing to alienate the LGBT community by embracing a troubled man pitching a troubled and harmful philosophy of "curing" homosexuality.
On policies it embraces the Harry and Louise arguments against mandates for universal health care and calls social security a "crisis".
This isn't Clintonian triangulation. It's actually worse than that. It's unilaterally disarming before the first shot's been fired.
In the face of the New Hopeism, John Edwards's fighting words are drawing new praise. To quote Ian Welsh:
"...It's time for a new approach, and amongst the three front runners in the Democratic field, that means Edwards. As with FDR, if his approach works, he will be both the most loved and most hated man in America, and some will wring their hands about how divisive that is. But if "unpleasantness" is what is needed to stop going to war illegally, to end the shredding of the Constitution and to stop the destruction of the Middle Class, so be it. An unwillingness to really fight means that those who will, the Republicans, will walk all over those who won't.
The time for the failed politics of compromise is over.
Now it's time for John Edwards."
I couldn't agree more.
Showing posts with label blogosphere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogosphere. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Why "liberal bloggers" are a political threat
I've been reading the back-and-forth between Clinton and the audience at the YearlyKos convention, specifically her statement that she will continue to receive campaign funds from federal lobbyists.
Now, the coverage of this exchange is frankly just as interesting as the exchange itself. Here's a sampling:
The New York Times:
"...Mr. Edwards got back on his hobby horse against Washington lobbyists, saying his rivals did not need to wait until the next election to start reforming..." (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/the-democratic-debate-begins/#more-2183)
And The Atlantic Monthly (which was founded, by the way, as a magazine of the abolitionist movement...a little-known factoid):
"...After dozens of forums in the last four months, it seemed as if the presidential candidates had run out of new things to say, and despite the promise of Netroots sparkle, today's YearlyKos roundtable, held in a poorly lit, cavernous convention hall, was kind of dingy...
... Although the headline-making exchange will probably unsettle Clinton's campaign, her refusal to disavow the culture of Washington was not surprising. Her platform aims to restore competence to government, to work within government to produce solutions, and to bring the Democratic Party back to power. John Edwards is running as an anti-institutionalist, taking on the Bigs. Barack Obama has placed on a pox on both houses of Congress and both political parties. Clinton seemed to relish the challenge of disagreeing with the audience, joking with them as they began to boo her. It was hard to here [sic] precisely what she said, but it sounded like "I'm here. This is real. It's what you were waiting for."
(http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/the_mccormick_place_convention.php)
This is it, folks. The "liberal media", up close and personal. The writing in the above referenced pieces suggest a free-wheeling, let's-take-our-professional-masks-off-for-a-moment-and-say-what-we-really-think style. The writers are making attempts here to connect with the "vibe" they get from these bloggers...only, there is one vast difference: the bloggers at YearlyKos are not in the employ of major multi-national corporations, or Historic Magazines of Renowned American Thought.
"So what?" You may be thinking to yourself. "I mean, they're still working-stiffs, right?"
True. But defending the folks that put bread on your table can sometimes be a reflex so powerful it ingratiates itself into the fabric of your soul. And, in my opinion, that's exactly what's happened here.
And it begs the question: what's up with this?
There are three components to political power, as any good poli-sci professor knows: people, money and guns. Rarely does any one entity, be it State, State-Actor or Social Movement, have all three. Generally they're very good in one and have the other as a strong second.
Let's look at the US, for example. What are we strong in right now? Money and guns. In fact, they're so intertwined in our power structure that sometimes we can't distinguish one from the other. Wal-mart? Money...and people (even if they're being exploited), are a distant second. Al-Qaeda? People and money. Let's face it, an entity who's strong in the "guns" area doesn't build make-shift bombs or fly airplanes into buildings. If Al-Qaeda were strong in guns, a suitcase bomb would have exploded in a major US metropolitan area by now.
What does all of this sidetracking have to do with YearlyKos, and the above-referenced coverage of it by Big Media?
YearlyKos is a physical representation of the power of the liberal blogosphere, which is now approaching something resembling a Social Movement. It is very strong in people. With all of these people talking together ad-infinitum, it may start to attract money (in the form of grants, donations, or even job opportunities). That's two of the three spheres needed to have real political power (and, unless Kos shows up on YouTube with an Uzi calling for an armed takeover of NewsCorp, I'm assuming "guns" are out of the question).
Imagine if Gandhi had been a blogger. Or King. Or John Lennon.
*That's* what is terrifying to the current power structure in this country. And, that's why you're seeing folks from the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly - entities that have lost people, one of their most important ingredients for political power - give snide remarks and back-handed coverage to both YearlyKos and any candidates who excite the populism of bloggers.
We were once their silent readers. Now we are their interrogators. And every dropped subscription reminds them of their daily obsolescence.
I guess, in their situation, I'd be a little snarky, too.
Now, the coverage of this exchange is frankly just as interesting as the exchange itself. Here's a sampling:
The New York Times:
"...Mr. Edwards got back on his hobby horse against Washington lobbyists, saying his rivals did not need to wait until the next election to start reforming..." (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/04/the-democratic-debate-begins/#more-2183)
And The Atlantic Monthly (which was founded, by the way, as a magazine of the abolitionist movement...a little-known factoid):
"...After dozens of forums in the last four months, it seemed as if the presidential candidates had run out of new things to say, and despite the promise of Netroots sparkle, today's YearlyKos roundtable, held in a poorly lit, cavernous convention hall, was kind of dingy...
... Although the headline-making exchange will probably unsettle Clinton's campaign, her refusal to disavow the culture of Washington was not surprising. Her platform aims to restore competence to government, to work within government to produce solutions, and to bring the Democratic Party back to power. John Edwards is running as an anti-institutionalist, taking on the Bigs. Barack Obama has placed on a pox on both houses of Congress and both political parties. Clinton seemed to relish the challenge of disagreeing with the audience, joking with them as they began to boo her. It was hard to here [sic] precisely what she said, but it sounded like "I'm here. This is real. It's what you were waiting for."
(http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/the_mccormick_place_convention.php)
This is it, folks. The "liberal media", up close and personal. The writing in the above referenced pieces suggest a free-wheeling, let's-take-our-professional-masks-off-for-a-moment-and-say-what-we-really-think style. The writers are making attempts here to connect with the "vibe" they get from these bloggers...only, there is one vast difference: the bloggers at YearlyKos are not in the employ of major multi-national corporations, or Historic Magazines of Renowned American Thought.
"So what?" You may be thinking to yourself. "I mean, they're still working-stiffs, right?"
True. But defending the folks that put bread on your table can sometimes be a reflex so powerful it ingratiates itself into the fabric of your soul. And, in my opinion, that's exactly what's happened here.
And it begs the question: what's up with this?
There are three components to political power, as any good poli-sci professor knows: people, money and guns. Rarely does any one entity, be it State, State-Actor or Social Movement, have all three. Generally they're very good in one and have the other as a strong second.
Let's look at the US, for example. What are we strong in right now? Money and guns. In fact, they're so intertwined in our power structure that sometimes we can't distinguish one from the other. Wal-mart? Money...and people (even if they're being exploited), are a distant second. Al-Qaeda? People and money. Let's face it, an entity who's strong in the "guns" area doesn't build make-shift bombs or fly airplanes into buildings. If Al-Qaeda were strong in guns, a suitcase bomb would have exploded in a major US metropolitan area by now.
What does all of this sidetracking have to do with YearlyKos, and the above-referenced coverage of it by Big Media?
YearlyKos is a physical representation of the power of the liberal blogosphere, which is now approaching something resembling a Social Movement. It is very strong in people. With all of these people talking together ad-infinitum, it may start to attract money (in the form of grants, donations, or even job opportunities). That's two of the three spheres needed to have real political power (and, unless Kos shows up on YouTube with an Uzi calling for an armed takeover of NewsCorp, I'm assuming "guns" are out of the question).
Imagine if Gandhi had been a blogger. Or King. Or John Lennon.
*That's* what is terrifying to the current power structure in this country. And, that's why you're seeing folks from the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly - entities that have lost people, one of their most important ingredients for political power - give snide remarks and back-handed coverage to both YearlyKos and any candidates who excite the populism of bloggers.
We were once their silent readers. Now we are their interrogators. And every dropped subscription reminds them of their daily obsolescence.
I guess, in their situation, I'd be a little snarky, too.
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