Should We Be Surprised?

A question in the aftermath of Chairman Lieberman's heroic return to the welcoming arms of the Senate Democratic club: Should we be surprised?

No, really, this is a serious question.

With its congressional majority, the Democratic Party has refused to seriously try to end the war, to stop the bailout and to stop the trampling of civil liberties, just to name a few off the top of my head. In fact, with their votes, they have aggressively worked to start and continue the war, pass the bailout and destroy our constitutional rights to privacy. So, are we really surprised that they have rewarded Joe Lieberman with a chairmanship that he can use to investigate the president he said poses a danger to America?

As gross as the Senate statement celebrating the demise of "the Left" is, there's a truth in the part where the aide says progressives "can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes." That truth is that the progressive movement - as independent from the Democratic Party - is still incredibly weak.

Because so much organizing under the banner of the "progressive movement" is - in reality - electoral organizing on behalf of the Democratic Party, there's very little independent leverage over that Democratic Party, especially in non-election periods. As just one example, when, for instance, Moveon.org gets swallowed whole by the Obama campaign and turned into just another Internet appendage of that campaign, a group like Moveon.org subsequently has no real independent leverage over the Democratic Party because Moveon has trained its own members to believe participation in Moveon - and in the "progressive movement" - is always synonymous with reflexively supporting Democratic leaders (by the way, I cite this not to pick on Moveon - this is the basic construct of many progressive organizations, but I use Moveon just to give an example we can all relate to).

So, in many ways, the public attacks on "the Left" from congressional Democrats - while motivated from their Reagan-era cultural hatred of Dirty Fucking Hippies - is to be completely expected from a party that has failed to deliver on every major progressive promise it has made, and has nonetheless faced no real retribution. It is par for the course from leaders who quite understandably feel little fear from a still-weak progressive movement.

They believe - with justifiable reason - that come election time we'll all forget their failings, whether failing to end the war or failing to disempower Lieberman. They believe that most "progressive movement" activists will actually do what they did during the last election - berate anyone who floats the idea that movement organizing and carrot-and-stick treatment of the Democratic Party during election time is actually a good thing. They believe, in short, that come 2010, we'll all fall in line and be an ATM machine of partisan campaign contributions and candidate volunteer time because we are still very much organized as a party, not a movement.

And here's the thing: Except for a few fleeting primaries, most of recent history suggests their calculation is right.

If we want to avoid this kind of thing in the future, we better understand why this happened. Because if we don't, and somehow still expect "change we can believe in," we're epitomizing Albert Einstein's "definition of insanity" - we're "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Comments

[MBSS]

hey you guys, want to have some fun? go over to dailykos and take a look at the teeth gnashing and infighting over there. lulz. it's the pinnacle of hilarity. those partisan hacks want to believe that they know real politik and are so much more mature than 3rd party supporters and those to their left who support "dead enders" like Nader. they love to call themselves progressives and the big cheese himself, kos, is always talking about "more and better democrats" and how they are the progressives that make power plays and are "living in reality." its hilarious.

the fact of the matter is the two party system is a joke and the inauspicious start of the Obama admin. is proof. corporate party a and corporate party b are buddy buddy behind closed doors, and owe their ultimate allegiance to their corporate paymasters. 3rd party candidates are the only solutions for real progressives. there is no progress or change within the democratic party. they are much worse and corrupt than the republican party, and we all know how corrupt those guys are. the fact of the matter is that democrats are worse because they pretend to stand for some sort of principles, but in the end, once the facade is broken, we see what they are really made of.

[Stephen C. Rose - Huffpost Blogger]

The problem with this is that its presupposition is only partially correct. Actually only maybe a quarter correct. Barack was the main force behind retaining Lieberman in his chairmanship.

We should be paying attention to whether the DNC will be the future home of the wider Obama movement and whether the likes of David Plouffe will be around to help midwife a transition.

The latest round of "progressive" cavils looks like an avoidance of who Obama is and what he has said he was going to do.

I came to Barack via the civil rights movement. Most of what I believe is not high on the radar of people who are progressive. Like ending the prison warehousing of black youth and dignifying the refusal to "serve" in the armed services.

[knowBuddhaU]

I second the call for Progressives to become independent of the Democratic Party. However, I don't want to see us try to out fear-monger the pros. We need to take those seats for ourselves, change the tune from within.

JL isn't the only war-monger being recycled.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/17/obama_taps_ex_cia_officials_tied

"NPR attributed Obama’s reversal on FISA and telecom immunity to ...relying on the advice of John Brennan, an emphatic supporter of these policies."

[...]

"Jami Miscik was...the Deputy Director of Intelligence during the run-up to the war and in the immediate postwar period. That was a period of politicized intelligence. That was a period of the corruption of the process. That was a period when all analytic trade craft, all of the rules of analytic trade craft were ignored...­."

"And now, for Obama to turn around, put Jami Miscik back in the CIA in transition and Brennan in the transition process, ... you know, you have to wonder, who is Obama relying on for advice on the Washington community?­.. [O]bviously, he’s listening to the wrong people." [End Dn!]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/110708c.html
Ray McGovern has seen presidents be propagandized with "the particular brand of 'shock and awe' that can be induced by ostensibly sexy intelligence to color reactions of briefees, including presidents. [He has] seen it happen."

What makes us think this gov't is ours any more?

[Romulus]

This is interesting. The conservatives are saying basically the same thing about the Republican party.

[PATina]

Progressives need their own party. The Democrats have been taken over by the DLC/Republican light I used to think that the Dems were just wimps. Now, I'm wondering if their wimpish behavior is just a farce... w/ their real goal of being the good cop to the Repub bad cop.

[knowBuddhaU]

WORD! That's what I'm sayin'.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/30/house_speaker_nancy_pelosi_defends_her
Nancy "No Impeachment" Pelosi: "If somebody had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story...."

"JUAN GONZALEZ: ...Congres­sman Kucinich, your response to her take on the situation with impeachment?"

"REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, now that I’ve heard that the Speaker is looking for evidence that crimes may have been committed, I certainly want to direct her attention to the thirty-five articles of impeachment that I presented, which assert quite directly that crimes have been committed,­...There are many examples of laws that have been broken." [End DN!]

We have the goods. Do we have a democratic republic, or feudalism?

"[F]eudalism in this sense is... based on the relation between lords and the peasants who worked their own land and that of the lord. The peasants owed labour service to the lords, who provided military protection and also had extensive police, judicial, and other rights over the peasants. In this view, feudalism came to encompass all aspects of social organization and was characterized as a system that was both oppressive and hierarchic­al...feuda­lism involves the exchange of allegiance for a grant of land (fief) between two people, usually men, of noble status." [Encyclopedia Britannica 2008]

Congress and its committees are ours, not fiefs of either party.

[bayman]

We don't need more democrats, we need BETTER democrats. We need to move from 'a few fleeting primaries' to more important primaries. Let's take out someone big. As the progressive movement builds, we can do it. Are you listening, Harry Reid?

[mommadona]

"If we want to avoid this kind of thing in the future, we better understand why this happened. Because if we don't, and somehow still expect "change we can believe in," we're epitomizing Albert Einstein's "definition of insanity" - we're "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.""

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

First step for this Independent:

UNSUBSCRIBE from every Democratic fundraising email entity.

DCCC
out you go
DLC
don't bother me
DP
Dean's 'gettin' along'
"CHANGE we can BELIEVE IN"
What a song
Hum along.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKcnWa2ABGA

[knowBuddhaU]

You go girl! Good to see you here, mommadona. I bow in your virtual direction.

[philistine]

Agreed. We must keep their feet to the fire. Big Money buys votes on both sides of the aisle, so we must continue to pressure our representatives, and replace them if/when they refuse to listen. We shouldn't settle for half a loaf this time.