Condescension.
It worked wonders for Digby, for the Firepups, for Atrios, for all the top-of-the-line bloggers who went to the weekend’s YearlyKos conference.
This was not Kos’ idea when he brought in the Democratic Presidential field and top media types like Matt Bai to his Chicago confab.
But that was the result. It was like a slap to the face, a cold plunge, or a visit by your rapist.
The bloggers felt doubly-dissed by the House Democrats’ passage of Bush’s new FISA mis-rules. It hasn’t seem to have occurred to most of them that a Democratic majority does not mean a progressive majority, that there are many Democrats (and not just from Red states) who remain either in awe or in thrall to the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, and that their work isn’t half-done (as they hoped) but barely begun.
This is a very good thing.
It’s something Howard Dean tried to give them in his first big speech, in early 2003. The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, he said, quoting Paul Wellstone, just months gone and replaced by rubber-stamp Republican Norm Coleman.
The party does indeed have two wings, still. The wonder of the
Netroots is that the party’s Democratic wing is now the dominant side
of the party. But it’s still just a side. There remain plenty of Blue
Dog, DLC, and Lieberman-for-Lieberman Democrats out there, nominal
Democrats whose heads are either locked into 1998 (we dare not shout),
1993 (we dare not confront), or 1984 (we dare not question). This is
not just true in the party’s leadership, it’s true throughout the
rank-and-file. And the higher into the party’s leadership you go, the more ingrained these attitudes are. A generation’s assumptions aren’t unlearned in a single election.
It’s also important for liberals to understand that the Media Is Not Their Friend.
Despite the Big Lies told by Republicans that there is some "liberal"
slant to the media (it’s a corporate slant, driven by conservative
businesspeople) or that Hillary Clinton is the apotheosis of leftism
(she’s not, she feeds the left rhetoric but generally acts right) the
trifling successes of the last several months had lured many bloggers
into a false sense of security, best exemplified by the bumper sticker "Is It 2008 Yet?"
Is It 2008 Yet is the left’s magic pony plan. But wait til’
next year was the cry of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, and it hid a streak
of loser-ism that was not banished completely until after the club
moved to LA.
There is an enormous amount of work which must be done between now and November of 2008:
- Developing people we can put on the TeeVee.
- Banishing the idea of "left" or "liberal" as a curse word.
- Killing the meme that any Big Media figure deserves trust. Trust must always be earned.
- Killing the meme that any candidate with a D next to their name deserves trust. Again, Trust Must Be Earned.
- Summarizing arguments against Bush-ism into smaller, bite-sized chunks for injection into the body politic.
None of that is going to get done if the Netroots allow the kind of condescension we saw last weekend to stand unchallenged. The best bloggers of the Netroots now understand this. Even Kos understands this, which may be one reason he was so anxious to take his nickname off next year’s confab.
We can start with some one-liners:
- Rebuild that Bridge to the 21st century
- Killing is just a tactic, not a strategy
- The War is against Oil, not Islam
- This Land is My Land, not just your land
Slogans are fun. Send in your own.
And get back to work. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.
So do we all.
