Progressive Blog #Fail: Moral Failure or Demographic Doom?

P,

Thanks for taking the time to write this. Ian’s posted has sparked a lot of conversation, analysis, and debate across what’s left of the Prog blogosphere. I think you hit the nail on the head and that it is important to keep the embers going across the various blogs.

Ian,

Thanks for bringing in other viewpoints and prompting the discussion. I think your recent writings on what makes ideology effective and the need to develop a coherent one as antithesis to the neo-liberal and neo-con dominate views is vitally needed.

“There is something to be said for just finding a way to hang around and keep the narrative alive.”

The closest thing to a narrative that I see on most progressive blogs is, “Let’s pitch in some bucks and get a few relatively liberal Democrats elected if we can” and “Let’s hold the line till demographic shifts rescue us in a decade or two.” These aren’t awful, but when the rest of the narrative is “Climate change, income inequality, and evil conservatives are about to destroy the country,” then hypothetical incremental improvement is a pathetically weak response. If progressives truly believed the dangers facing us were so dire, they’d advocate for radical and immediate countermeasures.

Just to add a point that I did not make explicit, but which occurs to me as I read comments.

If change comes, it will come after a lot of damage is done, some of it irreversible. It will come because of mass populations of people who know each other directly are interpreting their life circumstances in a way that comports with the essential liberal/socialist critique of US government and society.

Bloggers won’t make that happen. It will happen according to its own dynamics and time. It can happen quickly, crystallized by sudden events, once the latent build up, the kindling, as it were, is sufficient. That means people need to live suffering and loss enough to get angry on a mass level. Ian talks about destroying street cameras. I look for mass general strikes.

The only thing the remnants of the netroots can do is keep a world view and critique current and fresh so that, as the population struggles to find a world view or meaning to attach to its understanding of the sources of its misery, our narrative is coherent, current and adopted.

But most of the population that may possibly make this switch does not even consume information primarily through the “blogosphere” as we knew it. That was a window in time able to reach a specific demographic, and even that window is gone.

Bloggers won’t precipitate the radical change that is needed. But we were wrong, in hindsight, to think that we could. Some of the comments here still look for change from the remnants of the liberal blogs, and that’s (in my view) an error.

To the extent that the liberal blogosphere loosely organized itself prior to 2008, that “structure” has been smashed to pieces. Some of tits members responded to this by eating their own and fracking their allies, but not all did. There has been a diaspora, and while there are certainly sellouts, there are still people finding whatever space they can to do something, around the edges, to try keep a flame alive, according to their own interests and talents.

@ Ché Pasa

Seems I’ve been tagging along behind you in the tubes and catching up with your various responses to Ian’s initial sally. Not much to add. Mostly, I agree with your points made here and there. But, given the above, I did want to flag this for you.

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/frustrated-blogger-made-expanding-social-security-respectable-idea-67226/

This is something to be said for endlessly repeating some things. It is in many ways how the right has “trained” its followers…and we are all of the human predilection irrespective of the color of the team jersey. I’ve not yet read the whole piece, so I can’t say that I’d recommend it… take it for what that’s worth.

I guess it’s kind of like some higher orders of “math.” Who was it that said, “You really don’t understand it, you just got used to it.”

I think the most important thing to remember is that positive change can still happen, but it needs to be viewed as ongoing long-term effort that will have tactical defeats along the way. In order for positive change to happen their needs to be a viable ideology with associated concrete policy goals that stem from it to provide an alternative to the current ideological flavors of neo-con/neo-lib. (which is why Ian’s initial forays are so timely and needed)

The millennial’s and their children are likely to be the flood that breaks the current dam of public inaction. For members of my generation (gen x and older) the social contract still stands though it’s in bad shape and getting worse by the year. As a result Gen X and older members are still too emotionally and financially tied to, and profiting from, the old system to expect widespread public action demanding reform or revolutionary system change. For millennial’s and their future children, the contract is broken and the system not only doesn’t represent their interests but actively, and shamelessly, exploits them.

So whichever ideology can captivate and gain acceptance in the Millenial and younger generations will shape the overton window of what is considered possible in the coming years. If prog’s refuse to provide that ideology then other groups can and will, as regressive groups are already laying the groundwork for their desired future.

I always thought blogging was about replacing the media, not becoming it. (A friend noted that it took her a long time to understand that “Talking Points Memo” meant exactly what it said. Nobody kidnapped Josh Marshall.)

The baseline there would be not making sh*t up. (I used to think it was a lot more difficult for Republicans to meet that baseline than Democrats. Now I’m not so sure.) For those of us whose first experience of what we would today call live-blogging was playing whack-a-mole with the Bush administration’s lies on WMD — lies fully supported by a compliant media — not making sh*t up was and is really important. A second baseline would be trying to maintain some level of critical thinking skill and bullshit detection, to avoid the defects of tribalism, factionalism, co-optation, etc.

To me, the split in the blogosphere began when the Democrats took back the House, in 2006, intensified in 2008, and was completed by 2010, at the end of the health care reform battle. The split was between those who felt whatever their guy did was OK (see under surveillance), and who viewed blogging as a purely instrumental, “say whatever it takes” medium, and those who don’t feel that way. These latter necessarily have big business model and funding issues, but some of the hardier have survived, and in general through persistence and reputation have managed to punch far above their weight: Greenwald and Marcy are fine examples, but there are others in the political economy blogosphere is well.

For those who like a quantative approach, see Imminent Death of the Blogs Predicted, Except Not, which shows the progress of an idea (the platinum coin) from a comment on one blog, through the blogosphere, to the press, and thence to decision makers — and without any billionaire backing.

So I’d argue that Progressive Blog #Fail is not a fail of blogging, per se; blogs are all over! Rather, it’s a failure of “progressivism,” whatever that means. As the saying goes, you can’t beat something with nothing, and Armstrong realizing only at the last moment that he and Kos had never defined “progressive” in Crashing the Gates is a telling moment. “Progress” toward what and for whom was and never has been clearly defined by “progressives,” and so #FAIL was inevitable.

* * *

On another note, there are plenty of smaller blogs that ought to go on the honor roll with A listers Atrios and Digby: Susie Madrak’s Suburban Guerilla, Avedon’s Sideshow, and Arthur Silber’s Power of Narrative among them. These guys need the hits, so it’s a shame to leave them out of the history.

Hey, Lambert, good to “see” you. And thanks for adding those other blog examples to the thread.

Back when you and I were working on The Roots Project (does that site even exist anymore? I haven’t looked), I took my own stab at defining what “progressive” means. I put a lot of hours and work into it, trying to think and reflect both what I understood to be the common threads of all the people I was interacting with, shaped of course by my own take. I wrote it all and posted it.

That effort went nowhere, and I don’t just mean “The Roots Project” itself. The fact is, there was no unifying progressive vision to be shared and understood among the many people who become politically connected in opposition to the Bush administration. I’ve seen other people make their own attempts over the years, it goes nowhere, and turns into a clusterfuck of pointless intellectual masturbation and pissing contests.

(Ok, I just looked for the site. Seems the site is all gone But I digress).

I’m not sure there’s a consensus today either, if people were to try to reconnect again. Maybe there’s less naivete among many 2008 Obama supporters who have grudgingly, silently come to acknowledge that the DFH’s were right, but there is still space for someone to put forth a positive vision. That will require a successful standard bearer backed by alternative, multi-media megaphones and the kind of think tank stuff Ian is talking about in the development of an ideology.

I don’t know how we get there, but I don’t regret having been among some good people who really tried. You included.

Quick side note on my use of the word “tribal” — I’m a psychologist. I’m using the word descriptively as a way to capture human behavior in groups where there is perceived shared identity. I’m not using it pejoratively.

“Replacing the media”… with what? Blogs? Hardly.

The goal for so many in “Progressive” Blogtopia was to get a gig, as a talking head on the radio, their own podcast, the teevee (on Skype in a pinch) or as a political consultant. Barring any of those options, a gig writing books and articles for the market would do. In other words, make a living like anyone else in the media, doing essentially what anyone in the media would do. Only with “integrity.” Right.

Quite a few [bloggers] actually achieved their goal. They became media personalities or best-selling authors or Big Media players in their own right. How about that Ezra these days, eh? Some, like Markos, parlayed a idea of “community” that does most of the the work into a pretty decent income stream. Capitalism Triumphant!

Some still resist. They’d rather have the freedom from market constraints that the blog format provides (cf: Ian as one example.)

Duncan set out to “change the conversation” on SS, but he didn’t do it on his blog; he had an op-ed in The Big Media — USA Today. It didn’t change the conversation, but at least for a moment he went beyond his “pith” to actual substance.

“Tribal”has long been used pejoratively throughout “Progressive” Blogtopia; there’s no mystery about it. It’s not used as a neutral descriptive at all. It is used as a denunciation of The Other, often as a shorthand way of saying “mindless.” Whatever The Other does is, after all, by definition mindlessly tribal. Unless of course the goal is to form a coalition with or profit from The Other in which case they are “critical thinkers” at the very least.

The overriding interest “Progressive” Blogtopia has had in forming coalitions with libertarians and even radical rightists, while rejecting “the left,” has been one of its most problematical and alienating aspects. We see it throughout this discussion, “how can we form an alliance with the libertarians?” It’s the wrong approach if there is to be any meaning to the Progressive brand at all.

Instead of constantly seeking common ground with libertarians, it makes far more sense for Progressives to seek common ground with the remnants of the actual Left (what little of it remains) — or start anew with the principles of the Left which are not hard to find and which resonate strongly with the public.

Uh, Ché Pasa

Contrary to what one might imagine, I’m not singing Duncan Black’s praises. I’m advancing the idea that repetition, no matter who pounds the sand, can overcome a bit of inertia. I carry no particular brief for the individuals who see working within the system, chipping away at the margins, singing the praises of incrementalism, as the solution. I also carry no particular brief for those who assert that only blowing the institutions up, burning what can be reduced to carbon, bulldozing the rest into the ground and salting the earth above is the solution. In my experience – humble though it be – it takes both; often working at odds with each other.

Radicalism is relative. You may be more “radical” than me, and someone else could claim that they are more radical than you. I appreciate radicalism. We need radicals. The louder, noisier, and more attention grabbing the better. But, I also appreciate those who can bang their heads against the keyboard day-after-day repeating an idea that is pedestrian – if not utterly ineffectual – to you but radical to a number of others.

My point is – whatever idea/concept/agenda/ way to be/ world view you’re trying to sell, if it ain’t the way we did things yesterday, then you have to repeatitandrepeatitandrepeatit until it becomes at least familiar, even if not fully understood. And, the only way it becomes part of some larger conversation is because enough people are repeating it.

Denigrate the “idea” all you want, but in the same way that humans are tribal they also respond to the familiar. Identify, discriminate, associate… Say what you want about the “idea” but the method of drilling it in is as old as humans.

@Ché Pasa October 29, 2013

Instead of constantly seeking common ground with libertarians, it makes far more sense for Progressives to seek common ground with the remnants of the actual Left (what little of it remains) — or start anew with the principles of the Left which are not hard to find and which resonate strongly with the public.

Not too sure how strongly those principles resonate with the American public who are fundamentally small ‘c’ conservative. But the first part of your that paragraph is spot on. Libertarians are about many things – chiefly selfishness and greed, lefties (it’s your great strength and I say that as a conservative) tend to be about fairness. Or at least lefties (mostly) try to be about fairness when it comes to domestic American political economy. If you express your principles and the policies derived from them in terms of fairness – that might well resonate with enough of the American public to give you some political punching power. Particularly if you can dress up the concept of fairness in the clothing of enlightened self-interest.

mfi

For what it is worth, my time spent on Proggy Blogs filled my head with so much information that I can hardly stand to hear myself talk. I just can’t stfu. I learned a lot but never knew what to do with the information. I simply became a know it all.

I wondered then and I wonder now, was I wasting my time? Did it keep me sane or did it drive me around some weird bend that ended up being a blind alley?

One of the factors of the sixties success by DFHers was that we were the first TV generation and understood a level of co-optative potential by us of the political scene that the elites did not yet understand. Very much as bloggers on the internet used a similar understanding head start. So am I saying that the oughts failed like the sixties. Oh I suppose but…

Unless we develop a social medium that allows, first, us to organize ourselves around and then second to create links to non-radical tribal members, and then further links beyond that circle then I don’t see any peaceful ( and especially not any sort of warful ) revolution collaring the rich elites through our actions.

But there is another disruptive technology now above the horizon that will have an even greater disruptive effect than television and the internet and that is clean and dispersed local energy sources. Created and funded by elites in order to combat global warming (as well as opposed by other elites) the disruptive potential is barely understood. At the moment coal is feeling the pinch as coal plants all over the world are being mothballed because they can no longer compete. Now granted it may be widespread yet it is very thin and merely a small percentage of the total coal generation world wide. But the point is that coal elites very much see the hand writing on the wall.

Oil may be seeing it as well. How much of the Saudi freak out is potentially sub-conscious recognitions I have no idea. But it’s possible. Keep in mind that Germany is currently supplying about 22% of it’s own energy via wind and solar.

When this classic paradigm shift becomes an energy race then you will really see sparks fly quickly.

But here’s the thing. There will be political shifts occurring beneath it all. The dispersed nature of clean energies means dispersed power as well. It means that smaller political units like Iceland for example can begin to safely create local democracies that can become really democratic and independent of global corruption. Done right such social/political units will become successful competitive alternatives for ideological change as Ian correctly identifies as necessary.

Not mentioned in the pantheon of blogger heros mentioned here at Ian Welshland is Juan Cole. He has influence and it can be wrong headed. Look at his support for the Libya invasion. But we all get things wrong. What he gets right though is following the clean energy shift. I don’t know that he sees the political affects that such an energy change will effect though. That is not his forte. But it is ours.

Mahalo, Pach, and congrats…!

Mahalo, Ian, and all the commenters…!

Let’s all reflect upon the old idiom that ‘United We Stand, Divided We Fall’…!

In that, we all collectively have suffered significant losses in the Class War, the Transnationals have us all, globally, over the proverbial barrel, but, if we get off our collective duffs and educate, engage, and/or interact with your neighbor et al., ‘we’ just might win…! 😉

If the discussion here is about the failure of the “Progressive” Blogs, it may be that Duncan’s repetitive pith — without substance — was part of that failure.

We get it! You don’t like him. Not every blogger is going to float your boat.

@ Phil Perspective October 30, 2013

The complacency and dilettantism of what passes for the American left never ceases to amaze me. By all means continue to delude yourself. The fact is that Americans have consistently elected right-wing to very right-wing governments starting with Ronald Reagan.

An extreme right-wing movement has a significant hold on one of the two main American political parties and can and will bring government processes to a crashing halt whenever they feel like it.

Another extreme right-wing movement – the Libertarians are rapidly occupying the political space that should be occupied by the left. The right-wing are the ones setting the intellectual agenda and the terms of the debate and what passes for the ‘left’ have ceded the terms of the debate and now can do nothing more than react.

Coupled with that the militarisation of American government in general and law enforcement in particular is accelerating while at the same time both economic and civil liberties are increasingly for the top tiers of society alone. To compound this access to means of communicating with the public are increasingly a right-wing and ruling class monopoly.

As to same-sex marriage and marijuana and similar issues they’re an absolutely excellent distraction. They’re worthy causes in and of themselves but they have nothing to do with breaking the American ruling class’ stranglehold on economic and political power.

mfi

@ markfromireland

Regarding how [small c] conservative Americans are… yes and no. It depends in part on where you are. This is a big country, way too big in some ways, with such a wide diversity of political interest and opinion that generalizations about how ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ Americans are don’t really work. Certainly our anachronistic and unrepresentative political and governing system isn’t a fair reflection of the public interest[s] and it can’t be. But I never saw what passes for “Progressive” Blogtopia get into that issue more than tangentially and superficially.

The actual Left has been essentially expunged from American consciousness, no less so among so-called “Progressives.” It is almost at the point of being seen as something altogether new and largely correct. Marx is being rehabilitated, reconsidered, and even recognized by self-proclaimed conservatives as someone who understood capitalism and its inherent self-destructive tendencies better than just about anyone. American Democratic Socialism must be nigh! It may be closer than many of us realize, though I’m not ready to place bets.

What I was getting at is that the continuing efforts of “Progressives” to align with libertarians — while rejecting the Left — is a dead end. Libertarianism leads nowhere but backwards toward feudalism and worse.

If the “Progressive” Netroots movement failed, part of the reason may well have been the widespread blogospheric proprietary interest in making common cause with libertarians — rather than trying to find common cause with remnant social democrats and other actual lefties. And then some of the proprietors and their adherents allowed themselves to be bought off and subsumed in the increasingly conservative Democratic Party apparatus. There was nothing particularly progressive about this. Those who may have seen hope in the Progressive Netroots were to be sorely disappointed, though hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?

@Phil Perspective

I get it, you don’t want to hear it.

@Compound F

I have read it.

The point I was making was that it’s difficult or impossible to build a better future — or build a movement to build a better future — by focusing largely on what you’re against, or on negativity and/or denunciation of the Old Order. Old Line Progressives, for all their many faults, rarely considered the Old Order (in public at any rate) and they spent little energy trying to tear it down or denounce it or hold it up to ridicule; they simply went forward with their own image of what the Better Future should be.

On the other hand, you might want to examine aspects of Old Line Progressivism such as its deep-seated authoritarianism, elitism, racism, classism, sexism, imperialism and so forth and compare and contrast those aspects that led to some of the problems and ultimately the collapse of Old Line Progressivism as it used to be and what’s come to be called “Progressive” today.

Just a quick note to thank Ian for prompting me off the sidelines for a post. It’s been a long time from blogging for me. I do tweet at @pachacutec_, but it’s half politics, half aimless diversions and wisecracks, nfl football, etc.

And also a thank you to all the commenters, those that liked the post and those who manifestly did not. Heh. Special shouts to old friends Jerome Blogfather Armstrong, Jay Ackroyd, mark from Ireland, eurekasprings, ctuttle, Phil Perspective, Celsius 233, Mary McCurnin. . . heh , pretty much everyone. Ché Pasa, I’m not sure if our paths have crossed before or not, but thanks for your dissenting take as well.

The subject has largely been ‘Progressive blog #Fail’, by which almost everyone has referenced ‘influencing electoral politics’, i.e. winning seats for ‘Lefties’ or something.

The many dissenters to making common cause with Libertarians, even on certain *issues* seem to be thinking electorally, not in terms of movement politics, which many of us see as likely to leading toward a) more sustainable communities, including horizontal decision-making, and eventually to nonviolent revolution.

There’ve been so many erudite comments, and the vast majority of them are quite intellectual. The many barbs aimed at ‘Libertarians’ consist of tribal accusations, imo, and nowhere did anyone mention that we are all human beings, and as Uncle Albert said, believing we are separate is the biggest illusion of all.

No one here seems to have any faith that we are on the cusp of the revolution of consciousness that the Indigenous see, and MLK said was a requirement, including a revolution in love and values, which would arguably include all the good stuff that ‘Lefties’ purportedly believe in, and aspire to for the 99% around the globe.

‘Lefties’ used to be Labor, and Wobblies, and Strikers; ya know, working people. And the oppressed ones on Turtle Island: the Indigenous, in the main (and we are becoming they more every day), and African Americans. How many ‘progressive bloggers’ blog about the valiant protests First Nations’ people are waging against the extractive energy companies, fighting them right where they live, in order to save their water and soil? How many intellectual bloggers fail to really feel connected to those fellow human beings and their struggles in any deeply personal way, not just as statistical fellow travelers, or something.

How do we change minds *but by* inter-connection, listening to those in different ‘tribes’, and offering our own stories to them? Persuasion, and on a larger scale: statesmanship, as in: the power of ideas to rule the day, week, or year? By allowing folks to imagine a better world, one underpinned by reverence to the planet, each others’ welfare (justice of all sorts), than by making those connections? Yes, people have been propagandized into greed, into selfishness, and the circus of a two-party, one Oligarch, system.

What scares the PTB isn’t a Leftie ideology, it’s when we decide to ally on issues, and build what better communities we can, and many are doing so very well. I live in one of the most conservative counties in the US, I reckon; almost no sacrificial idiots even run as Dems anymore. And yet, when we Occupied Mancos, Co, we found loads of agreement when folks stopped by to find out wtf we were standing on the corner in aid of. The R’s and L’s and T’s were easier to persuade on big ticket items than the Move-on Occupiers who’d stop by and advise that reversing Citizens United was the only worthy issue to push, and they wasted all their time on that one.

Anyway, the limits on this discussion have saddened me. No, there isn’t much of a coherent Left any longer, and most blogsites are Dem gatekeepers; but it’s a class war now, and we all need to recognize that, and reach out to those we label as *so other* that they can never join the movement that must become a tidal wave toward change: anti-war, constitutional and economic justice for all, sustainable energy solutions, and all those good things.

@ David Shaughnessy: A virtual friend in Prague and I were discussing the ‘the golden days of blogging are over’ meme; he said exactly what you did: the election of Obomba killed them. 🙂

@ markfromireland

[If Ian comes across the other other — long — post I did this morning that went into moderation hell, feel free to discard it]

Re: American small c conservatism. It depends a great deal on where you live in this vast country. Parts of the country (mostly rural) are very conservative. Other parts (mostly urban) not so much at all. But our anachronistic and unrepresentative governing system makes it seem like the whole damn country is pre-fascist.

My point was that actual Leftist policies and programs would probably have a much broader appeal — across political lines — than the constant attempts to hook up with libertarians and their policies that online “progressives” have been undertaking for years. Part of the failure which has been under discussion here may have to do with that misplaced desire for coalition with libertarians.

@Phil Perspective

I get it. You don’t want to hear it.

@Compound F

I’ve read it; thanks for the recommendation.

You might want to consider the nature of Old Line Progressivism — its authoritarianism, elitism, racism, sexism, imperialism and on and on — and compare and contrast that nature with an honest assessment of today’s “Progressivism.”

As flawed as the Old Line Progressives were, they were in my view far more focused on positivism, progress and the Future That Could Be than they were on denouncing the negative aspects of the past and being against this or that. I argue that’s an important factor in their success. Yes, they got lots of things wrong, and I wouldn’t want to re-capitulate their errors.

But if this discussion is about [success and] failure, we might want to consider some of the reasons why Progressives back in the day were so successful, despite the odds, whereas the “Progressive” Netroots hasn’t been anything close to as successful.

Yes, Wendy, your comment reminded of something I forgot to include in my post. The reason the Democratic Party is a wreck and in no position to clobber the lunatic GOP is due to the Obama betrayal.

All presidents have enormous power, especially within their own party. Once Obama revealed himself as a neoliberal ideologue, the Progressives who supported him were first shocked and then appalled at the treachery. Instead of attempting a rapprochement, which Obama could easily have done, Obama instead unleashed attack dogs like Rahm Emmanuel to savage the Left. That was a signal to Obama’s most loyal supporters — the ultra-partisans and the African American community — that it was open season of Progressives. That’s exactly what happened in the blogosphere: Firebaggers, purists, fools, Leftards, etc. It got very ugly but Obama’s tactic worked and Progressives were marginalized within the Democratic Party.

The strategic political problem for the Democratic Party is that Progressives provides the party with its philosophical core (albeit honored more in the breach today) and much of its energy. Without that Progressive component, there is nothing for the Democrats to offer other than — as I mentioned before — identity politics and the Lesser-of-Two-Evils. The more acute electoral problem was that the American People WANTED Progressive solutions and, when the Democrats failed, the voters responded by punishing the Democrats in 2010 and, really, ever since. When one considers how repugnant the present Republican Party is today, it is astonishing that it even remains a viable enterprise. The GOP has the Democratic Party Establishment — and most especially — Barack Obama to thank.

One last point: We have not failed. We were deceived. We were tricked by the ultimate trickster. We must vow not to let that happen again.

@David Shaughnessy
You make some excellent and brutally honest points. I agree with all of them–except one. Being from Illinois, I knew darn well Obama was a nobody–just a phony with a fancy resume. Some of us in the blogosphere tried to point this out in the run-up to 2008, but most frustrated Dems wanted so desperately to believe that Obama embodied all their liberal views that they didn’t want to hear the truth, probably because they were frustrated by the alternative candidates that seemed to be heading for the finish line. Heck, Black Agenda Report had Obama pegged well in advance of 2008; but people didn’t want to hear the truth. Maybe they just didn’t want to be duped one more time.

In all of the commentary here, I can’t help being reminded of the classic remark by Edward Snowden when he was first interviewed by Glenn Greenwald. Asked why he hadn’t acted previously, Snowden said: “I kept waiting for a leader.” Once he realized Obama wasn’t the kind of leader he had envisioned, Snowden said he came to understand that a leader is simply the person who is willing to step forward first. Progressives, liberals, whatever you want to call them, all keep waiting for that mythical “leader”. Ned Lamont was one of the few who decided not to wait for a leader, but to step up to the plate. Of course, he also had scads of money to fund his own campaign. Not so easy to run at the national level without deep pockets if you want to blow off the campaign committee fundraising of the legacy parties.

grayslady:

Yes, I realize that not everyone was tricked by Obama. I was. Many others were. And enough were for Obama to achieve critical mass as a Progressive. Undoubtedly, many — myself included — were so desperate after Bush that we saw what we wanted to see. I think that Team Obama — and the plutocrats who sponsored his candidacy — saw this desperation and exploited it quite consciously. And Obama is the best liar I have ever seen. He lies from the very core of his being. When Bill Clinton lied he was almost ridiculously obvious. Obama is a magician.

Ian, when you say Obama didn’t fire Bush’s “USDAs,” are you referring to the United States Attorneys? If so, I recall reading a news article from shortly after Obama’s 2008 inauguration. There was a hearing in Federal court, I believe in California, in one of Bush electronic surveillance cases (FISA?). The Bush DOJ lawyers had been their presenting their best John Yoo authoritarian rationales. When the Obama DOJ lawyers showed for the hearing after the election, the judge sort of chuckled and said, “Well, I imagine the Department will be revising its position now.” When the Obama DOJ lawyers said the Department’s position was the unchanged, the judge was shocked. Another dupe, I imagine.

Voting for FISA before being elected president was the big clue. I knew we were screwed. I voted for him anyway. I regret it now.

I take every opportunity to complain about the injustices I see every day. Never in a million years would I dream of using terms like liberal or conservative. ( And I don’t use the words Democrat or Republican for the same reason I don’t go around saying fuck fuck fuck all day – one tries to avoid using profanity in public when possible.) Why shoot yourself in the conversational foot right out of the gate by self-applying a label that makes normal people immediately write you off as an opportunist and liar?

I’m a fairly well-read secretary working for a bunch of engineers. My job gets done and my work is bearable because of the survival network I share with the other secretaries. Fuck age, race or any of that shit. Those things exist, but don’t matter as much as you might think they would in my world. Every day I watch the engineers preen and play their depressing games to jockey for whatever advantage-du-jour they cherish in their horribly foreshortened little hearts. I watch me and my administrative colleagues do the work and then watch the fucking engineers really, I fucking kid you not, really believe that they were the ones who got it done.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m a foot soldier in an economic class war.

Just fuckin’ pathetic. Say what you will about Clinton (and I am not a fan) she would have purged.

But, it still would’ve only replaced the zealous Neocons with the equally dangerous NeoLibs, Ian…! 8-(

Argh! A kingdom for an edit!

above, 2nd line: you have before your lying eyes door number three, …

An additional observation on Libertarianism: Libertarianism was the ideology used by the John Birch Society to clothe itself with pseudo-credibility. Libertarianism is a designed construct, woven out of interpretations, propaganda, disinformation, political fantasy and marketing to meet the requirements of a particular agenda, much as neoliberal economics has been constructed to erase all other options for consideration, leaving only itself the sole beneficiary of TIna – There IS no alternative.

Not an “A-lister” here but as an avid reader of those blogs I think I represent a large group. When something happens in the political world I go to those blogs for analysis. I like the spectrum of views from Digby to Ian. I don’t always agree, and there are some I used to read but no longer. Many withered and died of Obamadoration .
I like “pith” with a pertinent link. I have a life and appreciate brevity.
I farm, live in a conservative community, most of my acquaintances are Tea Party Libertarians. My friends are socialists. We have common ground on some issues and worked together during the Bush years to oppose war but I have no illusions about a joining of ranks.
One or the other of us would have to sell out a lot of our principles.
The Tea Party has traction because it appeals to white male anger at losing the little piece of the pie they had control of and having to share with the “wimmin”and “the other”.
People with money recognize this and feed the anger with money. It is useful to them.
People with money will never feed what the left wants. We want to take the whole pie back and share with everyone. Hell, I don’t even care if they work for it.

Peon said, “People with money will never feed what the left wants. We want to take the whole pie back and share with everyone. Hell, I don’t even care if they work for it.”

Well put. Of course the problem with most of the “progressives” in this country is that theyre not actually leftists. Its a sham to ease their conscience. Give a penny, take a dollar… Sadly its enough for many of our species.

These posts and many of the comments are the most depressing things I’ve read for a long time. As a non-leftist interested in what the left has to say, I want to scream “Do you really think you can capture the political zeitgeist with such bleak analyses and such downer messages?” The old left enjoyed the successes it did because it was able to inspire the electorate with dreams of a better world in response to real conditions and a better life for real people and their families. Remember the eight hour day, “I have a dream”, the fights for j0b security, pensions, public education etc.? Today’s left often reminds me of aging Boomers wanting to take everybody’s toys away from them to forestall some vague future apocalyptic economic or environmental doom. A lot of the comments here sound like they’re from folks posting their despair as a farewell message just before they head home to die.

You can infiltrate Tea Party rallies and play Spot the Racist with you camera for YouTube all you want, but if you don’t understand that underneath all their anger lies a message of hope for a better world that gives them energy and commitment, you won’t offer much of an alternative. Trying to pretend the embarassingly childish OWS protests were the seeds of sweeping transformative change or blaming all your failures on the Koch Brothers and shock jocks will keep you on the margins for a long time. How about looking into a mirror to see whether you played a role in your now being seen widely as the answer to the challenges of another century?

I’ve read Ian’s 44 points several times. However stimulating on an intellectual “undergrad seminar” level, as a political program I can’t imagine them exciting anybody under fifty, but I can imagine lots of people resolving to fight them to their deaths. They seem to be largely a combination of old-fashioned Marx-lite and denying people things to save the planet. But it’s the timewarp that strikes me. Get rid of the suburbs? Do you really realize just how huge that demographic is and how psychologically invested in their homes and communities they are? Let’s undo LA and Manhatten while we’re at it. Sorry, Ian, you aren’t telling the average American, whoever he or she may be, why tomorrow will be better for them than today. Why would a young American setting out to build a career and family sign on to such a defensive ideology?

It’s about the optimism, stupid.