I highly recommend this piece in today's WaPo on the effort to create a lasting progressive infrastructure to help build ideas, messages, people, etc. I am glad to know that our side is finally beginning to learn how to effectively compete with the right wing. I will not go into the various reasons why this is necessary in this post; instead, I would like to point out where this effort is meeting some resistance. From the beginning of the article:
Democracy Alliance also has left some Washington political activists concerned about what they perceive as a distinctly liberal tilt to the group's funding decisions. Some activists said they worry that the alliance's new clout may lead to groups with a more centrist ideology becoming starved for resources.
When I read this, my gut reaction was that the DLC - I also find it telling that they are referred to as activists, as if they could be compared with someone on the ground in CT trying to replace Joe Lieberman and not a beltway insider with close ties to lobbyists, with no actual names, positions, and the organizations they work for - has been trashtalking Democracy Alliance because they were too centrist for them. Well,
But Democracy Alliance's decisions not to back some prominent groups have stirred resentment. Among the groups that did not receive backing in early rounds were such well-known centrist groups as the Democratic Leadership Council and the Truman National Security Project.
It is good to know that the DLC's motives boil down to their own funding. More importantly, however, is that they do not seem to realize why they did not receive that funding. If you place yourself smack in the middle of left and right - progressive and conservative - but label yourself as the chief representative for the left and bash anyone who is more progressive than yourself, which is to say anyone who has any real progressive values, then you do not belong to the progressive side of the discussion and funding as you only serve as an enabler for the right by marginalizing the left and shifting the center of politics. You belong to the
Bullshit Moose party.*
Who else is afraid?
Some Democratic political consultants privately fear that the sums being spent by alliance donors will mean less money spent on winning elections in 2006 and 2008.
People worried about their own pocketbooks and not the future of the Democratic party. People who are shortsighted and using old methods to try and win elections as opposed to investing for the long term health of the progressive movement. All this brings me back to the title of this post. We are the people whom our elected officials are supposed to represent, and we are crashing the gate of the corrupt establishment and consultant class to fix how things are being done.
*There are many types of moose, or meese, endorsed at this blog, but Bullshit Moose is not one of them.
