Edwards, Obama and Richardson...Where is Hillary??
Howard Dean in many ways brought the Democratic Party back to life. Although others share in the 2005 and 2006 success stories, Howard Dean in 2004 recreated the Democratic grassroots and since then has forged an alliance between progressives and moderates that has been winning big. He did this not by creating a rival force to the Democratic Party the way Nader did. He created a force WITHIN the party that led him to the head of the DNC. And under him the Democratic Party, with help from Rahm, Pelosi and Schumer, among others, has prospered.
Democracy for America was one piece of Howard Dean's revitalization of the Democratic Party. It brought back into the party thousands of activists who had lost faith with the system. It has focused people not only on national issues, but on LOCAl issues, events and campaigns, revitalizing the grassroots from bottom to top. DFA, along with groups like Progressive Majority and MoveOn.org, has given progressives ways of becoming a part of the political process without having to compromise their independence and ideals.
Three Presidential candidates have recognized the importance of Democracy for America and the new direction it represents. These three candidates are John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. These three candidates recognize the importance of the grassroots and of more independent, more progressive movements within the Democratic Party. Even Bill Richardson, a moderate on many issues, recognizes the importance of the progressive, more independent grassroots.
These three candidates responded to questions from Democray for America and made video statements for the members of DFA. Here are their video statements:
All three make excellent points and are well worth my consideration for support. But there is a glaring absence here. Where is Hillary? Hillary Clinton is ignoring the very developments within the Democratic Party that has been such a success in 2005 and 2006, the developments that reopens the party to more independent-minded, more progressive activists. Why did Hillary shun Democracy for America?
In the end, Hillary may be our candidate and she, like Edwards, Richardson and Obama, would make a good President. But it bodes ill when one of our major candidates fails to recognize the fundamental shifts within our Party that led to such success in 2006.
I am not yet advocating for any one of these four candidates. I would be happy with any of them, though Hillary's lack of appreciation of the progressive grassroots makes it impossible for me to support her in the primary. In the spirit of progress in 2008, though, offer this Act Blue site which will help whoever our nominee is to win November 2008. Please donate! For those who want to support the grassroots rather than a candidate, I urge a donation to Democracy for America.
I think Hillary will respond to DFA in good time. Remember it is early in the campaign and there is no hurry. She may have wanted to wait until the other candidates made their statements, so that she knows exactly what they all said and can make her own case in the most informed manner. This is a logical thing for her to do because she is the frontrunner, and it is fair to assume that if she put her response up first, that other candidates would use their responses to attack her either openly or in an implied manner. Btw, Kucinich just sent his in, which you did not mention.
This does bring up the question though of whether or how the netroots is evolving into yet another powerful special interest group. Just as the NRA wants republican and other like minded candidates to say "how loud?" when they are asked to bark, some netroots groups are starting to do the same thing. When I saw the blistering, relentless pressure put on Hillary for months by Markos and others for her to apologize for her Iraq vote, I got the sense that this wasn't just about an apology over the war. It was about demands for respect, about wanting an act of ass kissing to show appreciation for the new power order. If the mods on Daily Kos or Progressive Majority say "jump!", is the proper response for a progressive candidate to make up their own minds and do what they think is right or is the proper response to say "how high sir?"
It was I think in a way a test of power. It was Markos and others saying, "if we got Edwards to apologize, and get Hillary to apologize, we'll really be strutting our stuff. We'll REALLY get respect!"
I think Hillary and her people probably concluded that she couldn't apologize for that vote, without being roasted the following year in the general for pandering to special interests. You can be a progressive without going to all the meetings and towing all the lines.
Back in the 80's, we all learned the dangers of special interest groups getting control of candidates and their agendas, to the detriment of anyone who wasn't in those groups. On the left it was Labor and women's groups for instance, on the right it was the NRA and the Moral Majority. Is the netroots, as it becomes more organized and demands more mainstream respect, evolving into its own niche special interest? This is the feeling I get particularly when I read stuff like the long list Liza posted itemizing things using words like 'we' and 'you' and here's what 'we' want .etc If so, it is counterproductive. Voters, particularly general election voters, want INDEPENDENT minded candidates, those who have not constantly gone out of their way to kiss one group of voters' asses and not others. They want candidates who will think for themselves and not take positions, or apologize for past positions, simply because Markos or ten thousand other bloggers tell them to do so.
I have been in DFA since the beginning, but I don't regard a candidate bowing before that group, or any other group I'm in or support, to be some kind of pre-requisite for my support. I am not looking to have my ass kissed, and I am not requiring some public show of respect. I will not base my support of Hillary or any other candidate on whether he/she posts something on the DFA site, or goes on Daily Kos and grovels. What are you are asking for, in insisting Hillary or any other candidate go to this or that site, is symbolism. What we need to ask for in all candidates is substance and independence.
As usual, no. I am expecting respect from a candidate who wants my vote. I am expecting a candidate to recognize the changing political terrain. I am expecting a candidate to recognize the great success of the last couple of years.
When I see a candidate ignore changing political lanscapes, ignore what has been working in favor of what didn't work, and a lack of resepct for me and my political compatriots from someone who wants our vote, then it raises an eyebrow.
But if you are okay with a politician sticking with what didn't work on a national level and disrespecting her constituents and possible supporters, that is your right.
Why do you demand respect? This isn't supposed to be about ego gratification. This isn't about you. Or your compatriots. It is about making this a better country. If you are in politics to get respect and appreciation, you are in it for the wrong reasons. All of these candidates recognize the changing political terrain, and all have put great time and effort into their web efforts. The fact that one candidate doesn't bend over and kiss the asses of one particular group shouldn't matter. Like I said, I think Hillary will respond to DFA in good time, and it is unfair to assume at this point that she will not. But it is also unfair to make that a prerequisite for support. Also DFA does not= the netroots.
Believe it or not there were people volunteering for Dean, I met some of them in Iowa, who did not use computers. They were just plain liberals who were involved, and always had been involved. Some netroots types, not you necessarily but certainly others, have gotten so full of themselves that they act like there wasn't a vital progressive movement, better yet, a LIBERAL movement before they started being active. That this "movement" is something new. It isn't. There was and there always has been a progressive movement. The attitude some seem to have is that most people were dumb and stupid until the internet brought the few smart ones together. There is an interesting cover story in the current New Republic on the netroots, and the author correctly points out that there is the same kind of eliteness and insider snobbery evolving in this new "movement" as the participants have always accused political insiders of having.
When you talk of wanting "respect" and demanding proper respects be paid, you sound like a typical political insider. Suddenly your interests matter more than the next person's. When I see Liza threatening to ban people who criticize Markos Zuniga, I realize the author of that New Republic article is right, the netroots "movement" is starting to become insular, the insiders protecting each other over and above protecting the common cause. It is becoming a clique. A typical political power clique. When that happens, it becomes everything that we have been fighting against.
You demand respect, you want politics as usual. Period. True "people power" only comes when the average person doesn't have more respect, more power than the next person. When no one person or one group can make politicians serve their interests above the great common interest, no matter how great a 'movement' is involved.
I can't tell in the remarks from either of you, whether you are focusing more on the preferred degree of "progressive" positions, or the preferred degree of online communication and organizing -- are you are equating the two, using them interchangeably because you see them as so directly correlated?
Wallner does have a way of confusing the issue. Sorry if my responses to him add to that. I forgot I was going to stop responding to Wallner because I find it frustrating and unproductive. Was there something in my original post that is confusing? My basic point is that I find it hard to support a candidate, at least in a hotly contested primary, that has little respect for the leading organization of the grassroots which has brought back into the political debate many people who previously felt excluded.
If it was simply a difference in ideology, okay. But Richardson is the most conservative of the top Democrats and yet he recognizes the value of reaching out to the grassroots even though he has differences with progressives on some issues. Hillary is playing an old game and one that a.) excluded many voters from the debate and b.) didn't really work all that well in terms of winning except on limited scales. Edwards, Obama and Richardson are playing the newer game where people are better integrated. Hillary wants big donors and big names and is like that Peter Gabrial song "Big," with a big fat pillow for her big fat head. Obama, Edwards and Richardson give at least the appearance (and I genuinely think the reality) of a dialogue with voters the way Dean did. To me that's progress.
As to populist vs. progressive, there is a real difference, although Wallner has denied this in the past. And sometimes I am sloppy in my usage since often they DO overlap. In this case what I refer to is a little of both: mainly populist because it really means "people powered politics" as Dean puts it, but also progressive because bringing greater participation for a wider number of citizens in government is a progressive goal (as can be seen in parts of the original progressive agenda, including recall, referendum and whatever that other one is.)
is on my mind -- Favorite Daughter and I were watching "Inherit the Wind" this week, the original and then a color remake with George C. Scott in the William Jennings Byran role (also a perennial presidential candidate!)
He is SO populist and somewhat progressive in some ways, but also SO reactionary as an individual . . .
I know that there was a strong religious, anti-science aspect of the early populists. Progressives I associate more with Teddy Roosevelt...whose foreign policy was a bit, shall we say, aggressive. So I don't assume populist OR progressive guarantees good. But there is something appealing about both at their core. Each candidate is an individual and I have been comfortable with some pretty conservative candidates because I liked who they were and how they thought. Howard Dean and Bill Richardson are conservative on some issues, liberal on other issues...but their basic integrity, intelligence and populist approach (LISTENING to the voters) is appealing. Progressive and populist overlap a lot. But Gingrich was arguably populist, but NEVER progressive.
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... toy maker Hasbro announced earlier this week that they will be producing "glittery, 12-inch figurines decked out in short skirts and lace tops" that sound perfect for little girls to play with:
[The dolls] will hit stores just in time for the holidays at the suggested retail price of $14.99. "We expect the appeal of these dolls to be broad, because PCD's fanbase is just that," Sharon John, Hasbro director of marketing, told MTV News. "We expect people to do a lot of different things with the dolls, from collecting them and keeping them in the packaging to people who want to take them out and have them for their fashion and their looks." Uh yeah ... kids should really be playing with dolls that are dressed up like hookers and transvestites. Unfortch the pimp action figure is sold separately ... obvs, any thing in order to make more money.
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I think Hillary will respond
I think Hillary will respond to DFA in good time. Remember it is early in the campaign and there is no hurry. She may have wanted to wait until the other candidates made their statements, so that she knows exactly what they all said and can make her own case in the most informed manner. This is a logical thing for her to do because she is the frontrunner, and it is fair to assume that if she put her response up first, that other candidates would use their responses to attack her either openly or in an implied manner. Btw, Kucinich just sent his in, which you did not mention.
This does bring up the question though of whether or how the netroots is evolving into yet another powerful special interest group. Just as the NRA wants republican and other like minded candidates to say "how loud?" when they are asked to bark, some netroots groups are starting to do the same thing. When I saw the blistering, relentless pressure put on Hillary for months by Markos and others for her to apologize for her Iraq vote, I got the sense that this wasn't just about an apology over the war. It was about demands for respect, about wanting an act of ass kissing to show appreciation for the new power order. If the mods on Daily Kos or Progressive Majority say "jump!", is the proper response for a progressive candidate to make up their own minds and do what they think is right or is the proper response to say "how high sir?"
It was I think in a way a test of power. It was Markos and others saying, "if we got Edwards to apologize, and get Hillary to apologize, we'll really be strutting our stuff. We'll REALLY get respect!"
I think Hillary and her people probably concluded that she couldn't apologize for that vote, without being roasted the following year in the general for pandering to special interests. You can be a progressive without going to all the meetings and towing all the lines.
Back in the 80's, we all learned the dangers of special interest groups getting control of candidates and their agendas, to the detriment of anyone who wasn't in those groups. On the left it was Labor and women's groups for instance, on the right it was the NRA and the Moral Majority. Is the netroots, as it becomes more organized and demands more mainstream respect, evolving into its own niche special interest? This is the feeling I get particularly when I read stuff like the long list Liza posted itemizing things using words like 'we' and 'you' and here's what 'we' want .etc If so, it is counterproductive. Voters, particularly general election voters, want INDEPENDENT minded candidates, those who have not constantly gone out of their way to kiss one group of voters' asses and not others. They want candidates who will think for themselves and not take positions, or apologize for past positions, simply because Markos or ten thousand other bloggers tell them to do so.
I have been in DFA since the beginning, but I don't regard a candidate bowing before that group, or any other group I'm in or support, to be some kind of pre-requisite for my support. I am not looking to have my ass kissed, and I am not requiring some public show of respect. I will not base my support of Hillary or any other candidate on whether he/she posts something on the DFA site, or goes on Daily Kos and grovels. What are you are asking for, in insisting Hillary or any other candidate go to this or that site, is symbolism. What we need to ask for in all candidates is substance and independence.