Word is that Master Rahm's departure from the White House to attempt to inflict himself on the good people of Chicago will become official tomorrow. He leaves behind a hornet's nest of right-wing "centrists" set to continue the war on the Left. Ian Welsh says we should embrace our putative power.
"Look, if the left is so powerful that is is responsible for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. . . . Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants."
by Ken
Contemplating the prospective, or should I say impending, political convulsions of November 2, I'm still where I was the last time I talked about it.
I recognize the argument that if we go on supporting these lame-ass closet-right-wing "centrists," we lose -- win or lose. Assuming the Democratic losses are as bad as the worst forecasts ("worse than 1994"), the Village and its fellow travelers in the land of conventional wisdom will take it as proof that those martyred souls paid the price for the Democratic government's wild lurch to the left.
We on the Left know, of course, that there has been no such lurch, just an uneven but very modest reining in of the Bush regime's crazy rocket-propelled missile launch to the right. But reality doesn't seem to figure prominently in the conventional wisdom. And of course if the rout should be less severe than currently projected, the purveyors of conventional wisdom will chalk it up to a miracle "save" by the hard-charging forces of do-little "centrism."
Meanwhile the battle rages on, at least in the organs of Village chatter and the blogosphere, regarding the culpability of us left-wingers for the precarious position of the administration and the endangered congressional Democrats. This despite official Dems' almost unbroken two-year run of what is now picturesquely known as "hippie punching," showing unbridled disregaard, even contempt, for the progressive cohorts who did so much to put them in office.
Our friend Ian Welsh has an elegant response to "what many see as the attempt by the White House to portray left wingers as responsible for Democratic losses."
What?
Look, if the left is so powerful that is is esponsible for Democratic fortunes, well, that’s not something we should shrink from. We should say, “Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”
Powerful groups get what they want, weak groups don’t. If the White House wants to portray us as that powerful, we should embrace that description, because it is a blade which cuts both ways.
And there is an argument for it. While certainly the economy is factor one, the people whom left-wing bloggers reach are the sort of folks who traditionally don’t just vote, they volunteer, they give money and they are themselves influentials, who convince others to be enthusiastic, vote, volunteer and give. When, last year, I felt parts of the blogosphere lose their patience with Obama, I knew it would cost him, and it has.
Don’t run from this, embrace it, wrap yourself in it. You are part of the left, and the left is capable of destroying governments which don’t do what it wants. And this is good, because objectively Obama has not fixed the economy, has presided over further destruction of civil rights, has reduced access to abortion, and so on.
Powerful people and interests give away nothing they don’t want to unless they are forced to by others with power. The left is either powerful and willing to use that power or it is nothing.
I like it! Until now the right-wing Dem "centrists" have acted on the assumption that we can be abused with impunity.
Meanwhile, I wish I had the courage to say, "To hell with them," and hunker down to live with the dreadfulness it's safe to say will come with the sweeping out of the Democratic weasels, while contemplating the work that will be needed to try to build a viable alternative to the Republican death spiral.
The one thing I can continue to urge on all kindred souls is to work like the dickens and contribute to the max to elect good new Dems, and to save the good ones like Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer and Alan Grayson who face the possibility of being swept up in the flooding of the swamp. You know, the people Howie has been writing about here, and that he and our friends Digby and John Amato have made official Blue America endorsees.
In this brave new world, we can at last face them down, in the name of sanity, the way the loonies of the Right have been doing for decades now, in the name of craziness and indecency, to Republican mandarins. Let's say it all together:
“Yes, we can destroy Democratic prospects. If you don’t do what we want, we WILL do so.”
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