Vague and Unproductive Rantage
I really really REALLY wish Markos would learn to shut up. Last night, he made a rather sniping post on some recent Hillary Clinton remarks and the DLC, here.
Marshall also hilariously calls the 300 elected officials at their conference as "grassroots". Um, my dictionary defines "grassroots" as: Ordinary people regarded as the main body of an organization's membership.
Elected officials are not "grassroots". The people licking envelopes and getting out the vote and manning phone banks and attending rallies and helping build the party from the ground up -- those are the grassroots. And they weren't at the DLC's little shingding. But it's cute that they're trying to claim the mantle. If they had real grassroots supporters they wouldn't have to try so hard. Democracy for Texas had over 1,000 people at their event down in Austin. But then again, the grassroots likes DFA.
See, but the thing is? A overeducated, highly paid political consultant in the heart of LiberalLand (Berkeley, San Francisco) who spends all his free time pushing social causes on the internet isn't really a Man of the People either.
It's frustrating for me to see people like Markos being put up as the face of the party. He's not representative of me or a lot of other Liberals or Democrats. The fact that he has health insurance alone sets him apart from a lot of Democrats.
I don't know much about the DLC, except they call themselves a group of "party moderates". Moderates are a good thing. Most of my favorite politicians are moderates. Even Howard Dean, who gets labelled an extremist, is really more a moderate than anything else. Bill Clinton is a moderate, and so is Hillary. If she wants to head up a committee of moderates, good for her. And besides, if she's off defining the party agenda? That's more than what I see most of the blogosphere doing. I know it's hard to come up with a party agenda between posts, but it's probably a good idea. Why all the bitter vitrol towards the DLC? What exactly is that supposed to accomplish?
I don't know. This is part of a larger annoyance I keep wanting to address but can't quite get the energy to tackle - the disconnect between the people at the top & everyone else/reality. Like, NARAL and the pro-choice groups going into high gear over Roberts... even though we're gonna have at least 1 if not 2 more nominees, and we should be saving our ammo for the next (and worse) guy. Or that DFA training the other week, where they kept pounding "focus on the big political donors" and "talk to the major media" instead of raising money thru small donations and utilizing blogs & the internet to get your message out. Or, media groups bitching about Hillary ragging on Grand Theft Auto instead of realizing, "Hey, maybe the Democratic Party needs to reach out to these Values Voters after all, and besides kids shouldn't be playing GTA in the first place". Or, all the Labor Unions trying to hold on to a long-gone era & delusions of political power, when their time is over & they should be focused on other means of worker empowerment.
Lots of issues & topics, none of them easy to address.
Really, most of this annoyance is because I never got over Kos making that "sactimonious women's studies set" comment. And I'm irritated that he & the other major bloggers aren't giving Virginia's governors race any attention. There's only 2 governors races in the country, and the other state (New Jersey) is a Democratic lock, so why can't they give us a shoutout? If there's any attention at all, it's with snipy throwaway posts like this one, with comments like "this is still Kilgore's race to lose" after Kaine made an impressive 5 point poll jump. It's like, wow, thanks for the backhanded insult, y'all. So I'm in a frustrated mood all over the place. *sigh*
Marshall also hilariously calls the 300 elected officials at their conference as "grassroots". Um, my dictionary defines "grassroots" as: Ordinary people regarded as the main body of an organization's membership.
Elected officials are not "grassroots". The people licking envelopes and getting out the vote and manning phone banks and attending rallies and helping build the party from the ground up -- those are the grassroots. And they weren't at the DLC's little shingding. But it's cute that they're trying to claim the mantle. If they had real grassroots supporters they wouldn't have to try so hard. Democracy for Texas had over 1,000 people at their event down in Austin. But then again, the grassroots likes DFA.
See, but the thing is? A overeducated, highly paid political consultant in the heart of LiberalLand (Berkeley, San Francisco) who spends all his free time pushing social causes on the internet isn't really a Man of the People either.
It's frustrating for me to see people like Markos being put up as the face of the party. He's not representative of me or a lot of other Liberals or Democrats. The fact that he has health insurance alone sets him apart from a lot of Democrats.
I don't know much about the DLC, except they call themselves a group of "party moderates". Moderates are a good thing. Most of my favorite politicians are moderates. Even Howard Dean, who gets labelled an extremist, is really more a moderate than anything else. Bill Clinton is a moderate, and so is Hillary. If she wants to head up a committee of moderates, good for her. And besides, if she's off defining the party agenda? That's more than what I see most of the blogosphere doing. I know it's hard to come up with a party agenda between posts, but it's probably a good idea. Why all the bitter vitrol towards the DLC? What exactly is that supposed to accomplish?
I don't know. This is part of a larger annoyance I keep wanting to address but can't quite get the energy to tackle - the disconnect between the people at the top & everyone else/reality. Like, NARAL and the pro-choice groups going into high gear over Roberts... even though we're gonna have at least 1 if not 2 more nominees, and we should be saving our ammo for the next (and worse) guy. Or that DFA training the other week, where they kept pounding "focus on the big political donors" and "talk to the major media" instead of raising money thru small donations and utilizing blogs & the internet to get your message out. Or, media groups bitching about Hillary ragging on Grand Theft Auto instead of realizing, "Hey, maybe the Democratic Party needs to reach out to these Values Voters after all, and besides kids shouldn't be playing GTA in the first place". Or, all the Labor Unions trying to hold on to a long-gone era & delusions of political power, when their time is over & they should be focused on other means of worker empowerment.
Lots of issues & topics, none of them easy to address.
Really, most of this annoyance is because I never got over Kos making that "sactimonious women's studies set" comment. And I'm irritated that he & the other major bloggers aren't giving Virginia's governors race any attention. There's only 2 governors races in the country, and the other state (New Jersey) is a Democratic lock, so why can't they give us a shoutout? If there's any attention at all, it's with snipy throwaway posts like this one, with comments like "this is still Kilgore's race to lose" after Kaine made an impressive 5 point poll jump. It's like, wow, thanks for the backhanded insult, y'all. So I'm in a frustrated mood all over the place. *sigh*