HA ha...
and the RATS take another one in the...
Posted on 03/18/2006 4:29:50 AM PST by billorites
JEROME ARMSTRONG AND MARKOS MOULITSAS are pioneers. Armstrong founded MyDD.com, arguably the first political blog of real prominence. As for Moulitsas, he's the founder and proprietor of Daily Kos, by far the most widely read of all political blogs. Pioneers they may be, but neither Armstrong nor Moulitsas has developed a reputation as a particularly skillful prose stylist.
Yet their new book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, is a crisp and well-crafted work. The authors sharply diagnose the Democratic party's ills in a blunt and entertaining fashion.
Less impressive is the political philosophy they espouse. Crashing the Gate is a candid (indeed, shockingly candid) look into the morally vacant motivations of the movement that Moulitsas and Armstrong represent. In spite of confessing that the Democratic party stands for very little, Armstrong and Moulitsas fight for it passionately.
CRASHING THE GATE begins with a bit of red meat for the liberal base. In the first sentence, the authors decry how George W. Bush ascended to the presidency through "non-democratic" means. A tiresome laundry list of hackneyed liberal complaints ensues as the authors survey "American reality, circa 2006."
They call Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Dick Cheney "warmongers." Referring to the Valerie Plame affair, they lament how a CIA agent was "outed endangering her work on nuclear proliferation." Referencing the Gannon-Guckert imbroglio, they decry how the "conservative propaganda machine" infiltrated "hollowed [sic] journalistic ground such as the White House Briefing Room." But the heart of the book is a rundown of the problems plaguing the Democratic party.
Democratic political consultants receive particularly harsh treatment. Moulitsas and Armstrong take shots at Bob Shrum (who is now 0 for 8 in presidential elections) , and yet is seemingly entrusted every four years to run another Democratic campaign into the ground. Crashing the Gate also exposes the astronomical fees that Shrum and his ilk charge and acidly observes how even the notoriously spendthrift Bush campaign was able to pay less than half as much for better service.
Armstrong and Moulitsas astutely highlight another critical challenge facing the Democrats--the party has devolved into a gaggle of squabbling factions who care more about their own pet issues than they do the fate of the party. NARAL, for instance, comes in for a bashing for its endorsement of pro-choice Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island.
The authors conclude that the Democrats' big tent is crammed with special interest groups is because the party has no unifying principles or goals. Moulitsas and Armstrong declare, "It is difficult to overstate the need for the Democratic Party to develop its own ideas, not just argue against the Republican ones."
IT IS ONLY WHEN attempting to provide a grand solution that the authors stumble. Moulitsas and Armstrong neither identify nor propose core principles that should guide progressives. Instead, they point to the conservative think-tank model and lament the absence of similar Democratic-oriented organizations. They admiringly point to 1980 when the Heritage Foundation plopped a 1,077 page blueprint for conservative leadership on the newly elected Ronald Reagan's desk. The authors suggest this document provided the intellectual framework that subsequently guided the Reagan administration.
Moulitsas and Armstrong's solution? The Democratic party should develop appendages like the Heritage Foundation--and from those newly spawned organizations, a raft of brilliant ideas will emanate telling progressives what to believe in and what to fight for.
The idea doesn't bear much scrutiny. What would happen if the Democrats' version of the Heritage Foundation decided to focus on education and developed a policy prescription that antagonized the teachers unions? Or what if the progressive policy thinkers came up with changes to the legal or healthcare systems that didn't diligently protect the interests of trial lawyers?
BUT THE MOST DISTURBING question raised by Crashing the Gate is if progressives don't know what they're fighting for, then why are they fighting so hard?
Crashing the Gate provides an invaluable snapshot of the Democratic party and the progressive movement circa 2006. Moulitsas and Armstrong are at the vanguard of the progressive movement, and even they don't know seem to know what it stands for.
The idiots confuse the use of the word progressive with the concept of progressive. Its real progressive to tax away those who create wealth for those who play video games in their souped up Honda Civics.
I have voted for more than a few Democrats in my life. Given the current ideological makeup of it today, I don't expect to ever do that again.
Their in-party interest groups are not for America, they're just for themselves.
There are reasons the Dems have lost both elective branches of government and are on their way to losing the courts: they are anti-Christian, anti-capitalism, and pro abortion to a point where other ideas will not be entertained.
There's a smell of naziism about the party today.
The 'progressives' already have a book they draw from... it's the little 'red' one.
Yes they do.
Look at the Daily Kos and find them all unified in demonizing W.
"Moulitsas and Armstrong are at the vanguard of the progressive movement, and even they don't seem to know what it stands for."
Yes, they do. They know EXACTLY what it's about: POWER...who has it ["we don't"], and who deserves it ["people like us -- people with kinder hearts and higher motives"]. And what makes them wet themselves with rage? The simple fact that over the last 30 years, an increasing majority of the voters have told them to go pound sand...
We have a glass house of our own.
The 'Rats are confused, with no ideas and no direction.
But Bush still managed to carry the bum Kerry 15 rounds.
And it doesn't look like it's going to be any easier for "Republicans" this year, either.
Correction: The Democrat Party has NO PRINCIPLES. It has a GOAL: POWER FOR ITS OWN SAKE.
They use the word "progressive" in the Marxist sense that socialism and then communism are inevitable. They believe history is progressing toward communism. Thus anything that gives more power to the state (socialism) is "progressive."
Besides the idea of giving special interests more money and power, the only ideas the Democrats champion nowadays seem to be based on Marxism. I think flirting with the Islamists (because Islamists are anti-Western, anti-modern and anti-capitalist) will be the left's undoing. I cannot see how a coalition of man-hating feminists and woman-hating Islamists can stay together. I don't see what doctrinaire atheists and Islamic theocrats have in common (except for their hatred of Christianity and Judaism). Political correctness can help hide these contradictions from the true believers but it cannot make these contradictions go away.
Going from liberal; to progressive is retro. Because they represent special interests they are the reactionaries defending the indefensible perks of trade unions, for instance. The day they made a pilgrimage to a statue of FDR instead of reforming Social Security said it all.
Exactly
Progressive = cover name for liberal
Liberal = cover name for socialist
Socialist = cover name for communist
What the "progressives" refuse to acknowledge is that "progressive" ideas were implemented on a massive scale starting with the bolshevik revolution and continuing now almost 90 years later. I would prescribe some serious reflection on this fact and the disasterous results, rather than infantile fits of anger of being out of power.
OK, I coud make a more sophisticated argument, but I have found one that satisfies me. They're fighting for Satan.
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