Legal Commentary

There Are Two Kinds Of Progressive Bloggers

By Big Tent Democrat

At least according to Ian Welsh, who recently attended this year's version of Netroots Nation:

To put it crudely and unfairly to both sides, it’s the sell-outs without principles against the purists without realism. And many of them do put it that way. The netroots are split, in a very real way. [. . .] It’s not all-out war, not even close, but there is a disdain, bitterness and contempt between the two sides which is very real, and very dangerous.

That would have been fun to watch, but it sounds too simplistic to me. I'm certainly disappointed with both Democrats and the progressive blogosphere, but I do not think anyone is a sellout without principles or a purist without realism. But I place the disappointment on my own shoulders. My expectations were not realistic, indeed they probably were delusional. More . . .

With regard to Obama and the Democrats, I thought there was a real chance for dramatic sweeping change and that the urgency of the country's problems were such that President Obama and the Democrats might be able to meet the challenge. I was wrong. This does not make Obama "just like Bush" or even a mediocre President. It does smell of missed opportunity and, frankly, mismanaged policy in some respects. At the heart of the problem, both politically and substantively, was the timid approach to the stimulus and the economy in the first hundred days. And this timidity will extract a high political price in this year's midterms. Hopefully, the damage can be minimized. Less damaging politically, but, in my view, a missed opportunity on policy, was the favoring of the market based approach over the public sector approach to health care reform. Other disappointments can be listed, but the bottom line is this has not been 2 years of unvarnished progressive accomplishment but rather 2 years of incremental improvement. It could have been more in my view. YMMV.

With regard to the progressive blogosphere, well, expecting much of anything was unrealistic. There simply was no way that it would embrace a potential role as a Left Flank and all that entails. It was too wrapped up in Obama. Any expectation of change on this front was simply silly on my part. It was never going to happen and it probably never will.

The fact is both the Dem pols and the progressive blogosphere are what they are and likely will continue to be what we have seen.

Of course the funny thing from my perspective is that almost everyone in the progressive blogs, Obamabots (used affectionately here) to Firebaggers (also used affectionately) are to my Left on most issues. As regular readers know, I support the President on Afghanistan (and indeed, almost all of his foreign policy which I rate as excellent), am a free trader (I knew I would win on that one with Obama), and support the idea of a structured indefinite detention regime with real due process. On these issues, unlike most everyone else, I have little to complain about.

But on the domestic side, I think we all have a lot to complain about. But hope springs eternal. The Obama Administration is looking pretty strong on rolling back the Bush tax cuts, one of the 2 or 3 most important issues of the period of the Obama term. Holding the line on that issue will go a long way towards making me feel better about Obama and the Dems. We'll see what happens.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).