The House Republican caucus has so far balked at a chance to meet with Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the former House Democratic strategist who has been named the new White House chief of staff.
I'm tempted to just write 'Waaaaaahhh!' and leave it at that. But it's worth pointing out that the Republicans are going to act like pricks and then whine about how Obama is being partisan instead of his promise to be post-partisan or something.
I didn't really follow the race for progressive caucus chair, but it has apparently ended with the election of Raul Grijalva and the reelection of Lynn Woolsey (who was going to step down but thought better of it recently). I don't really know Grijalva, but I suspect his ascension has to do with a sense that Hispanics needed representation within the progressive caucus leadership. Keith Ellison was running to replace Barbara Lee as co-Chair of this group (Lee left to step up her work with the CBC) and I suppose that I'm a bit surprised he didn't win, though I actually have no reason to be surprised since I didn't actually follow the race. Other CPC leaders are listed here. The challenge for progressives in the caucus is to become as organized as the Blue Dogs and New Democrats, and hopefully Grijalva will help make that happen.
The Democratic Party - and especially the Obama administration - is the most perfect creation in human history, and therefore requires no pressure or input from Dirty Fucking Hippies, or anyone really, to usher in all the change they have previously promised (ending the war, fixing our trade policies, protecting privacy rights, etc.) but previously helped thwart (votes to start and continue the war, votes for NAFTA, votes for FISA, etc.). To offer up any questioning - and god forbid any criticism - is to whine, moan, and cry like a baby, channel right-wing hate, and really, perpetrate a crime against America.
Oh, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an unpatriotic traitor, a know-nothing bloviator, a David Broder, a wild-eyed bloggy idiot, a self-important jackass who thinks everyone "died and made you king of all things progressive" - or all of the above.
Discuss :)
UPDATE: For all who took to the comments to take this post way too seriously, let's just say you're on Candid Camera. Get a grip, turn off the whaaaaaaaambulance - and lighten up!
Long-time Open-Lefter James Adomian, who posted his first Bush-vlog on OL's first week, has come full-circle, giving us a look at Bush's exit interview, as directed by Bob Odenkirk - another video after the jump.
Since it has been the subject of multiple front-page articles today on Open Left, and since I will be on Radio Times this Friday discussing the subject, I feel the need to weigh in on the relationship between President-elect Obama and the progressive blogosphere.
The long and short of my view is this: it's all true. Everything you are writing and / or thinking about the progressive blogosphere is correct, almost no matter what you are writing or thinking. There is one exception: if you are arguing that the progressive blogosphere is any one thing, holds any one position, or represents any singular group, then and only then are you wrong.
"And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President." - Al Gore
Based on the increasingly angry comments of many on this site and other progressive sites whenever the Obama administration is even vaguely questioned, we ought to remember Al Gore's harrowing words. He wasn't warning only against reflexive right-wing loyalty to George W. Bush, but against the larger principle of reflexive loyalty to any individual president, regardless of their decisions, leanings and ideology.
America is awash in a sports team, summer-camp-color-war culture and so the "digital brownshirt" impulse is not surprising. But it's still frightening. I fear - and have for some time - that the stampede to berate as "whining" or attack as a "hater" anyone who seeks to pressure, prod or question Barack Obama is something that is only intensifying. And that ain't good for movement building, nor for democracy.
Just to follow up on my last post about whether we're seeing a "Team of Rivals" or a rival team from Obama I wanted to pass on this comment from DKos's Meteor Blades:
Where's the evidence for the opposite claim? Reaching across the aisle is not a bad thing. But so far what we have seen is a reach in one direction: a turncoat Dem, a DLC Dem and feelers toward Republicans. Center right. Where, as david asks, are the feelers to the leftists in the party?
Currently, what we're hearing is that none of these "low-level" transition team appointments really matter. Or even, ludicrously, that the Chief of Staff doesn't matter. It's only the Cabinet that will matter.
I disagree with that. But, for argument's sake, let's go along with it. We've had two for sure Cabinet appointments, sans the vetting that will come later, the moderate DLCer Tom Daschle (no surprise given his close association with the campaign) and Eric Holder. There is talk of Senator Clinton for SecState, another DLCer. And talk of Chuck Hagel, an ultra rightwinger except on Iraq and some other foreign policy issues.
Look, I, for instance, like the Daschle for HHS pick. He's a left-of-center guy on those issues, based on his book. But Daschle isn't what anyone would call a movement progressive.
And so Meteor Blades is exactly right. And the fact that so many people seem so utterly divorced from reality - so utterly consumed and blinded by their support for Obama - that they cannot see this (or simply refuse to admit it) is really a bad sign for what's to come. As Obama himself has essentially said, without an independent reality-based pressure system on him and his administration, no change will be forthcoming.
Four year ago, as we Democrats were on the short end of a Republican trifecta, we had to engage in soul-searching similar to what Republicans face now. The conclusion Democrats arrived at was that our problems were mainly non-ideological and related to strategy and infrastructure. This conclusion could be seen with the DNC's election of Howard Dean on a fifty-state strategy platform, in the papers produced by NDN with their New Politics Institute, and also in the netroots as perhaps best exemplified with Crashing the Gate. The Democratic soul-searching conclusion of late 2004 and early 2005 was not that our ideas were either wrong or unpopular, but rather that we faced organizing and structural deficiencies that allowed Republicans to eke out 50% +1 victories through fundraising, media, grassroots activist, message packaging, and strategic resource deployment advantages.
Republicans seem to be reaching similar conclusions now. The post-election Pew survey shows they think they should move in a more conservative direction by a large 60%-35% margin. Further, according to Democracy Corps, two-thirds of Republicans think that McCain and their congressional candidates lost because of the media, and the same number think that McCain wasn't aggressive enough in his attacks on Obama. (This latter conclusion strikes me as particularly difficult to justify, given that McCain and the RNC went 100% negative with paid media during the final five weeks of the campaign.) Further, in their description of how to rebuild the Republican Party, The Next Right seems to be repeating what Democratic netroots activists said back in 2004: run a fifty-state strategy and build up media and grassroots infrastructure. The over-riding Republican conclusion seems to be not that their ideas are wrong or unpopular, but that they need to improve their organizing, get more aggressive with Democrats, become more conservative, and destroy the mainstream media.
So, Republicans seem to be reaching the same conclusions Democrats did four years ago: we are neither wrong nor unpopular, simply out-organized, out-strategized, and facing structural deficits. While the Democratic conclusion was quickly proven correct as Bush's approval rating dropped below 50% and then suffered a long, slow decline over the next four years, the Republican conclusion seems largely untenable. This is because, as I describe in the extended entry, the Republican deficit is much larger than the one Democrats faced four years ago. Further, it arose out of a more damaging source: Republicans have become highly unpopular in 2008 because of how they governed, while Democrats were unpopular four years ago because of their image.
My question to Stern was whether the current crisis in the auto industry changes the politics of health care. Stern pointed out that the cost of health care is easily demonstrated by going across the border from Michigan to Canada, and that health care is now an issue that is crippling our international competitiveness.
