The long haul
Daily Kos: The long haul
by kos
Wed May 23, 2007 at 09:33:13 AM PDT
Meteor Blades:
Amazing how people who talk about standing tough and fighting back surrender so easily.
I've got to say, of all the things that get me down about this job, there's nothing worse than the people who want to quit the game and take their ball home every time we face a setback. It's as if every word I've ever written about this being a long-term battle means zero. As if it's instant gratification or nothing.
We face a multiple-front war -- against conservatives, against an out-of-touch and corrupt beltway consultant class, against corporatist Democrats, or Democrats that long ago lost the fire in their belly, and against a compromised punditry elite. Those are tough opponents, and it'll be a decades-long fight.
Did any of you really think we won that war in 2006? I sure as heck didn't. 2006 was incremental improvement, just as 2008 will be. And hopefully 2010. Along the way, we'll likely lose some ground, but we must always remain focused on the long term.
The conservative movement spent three decades building up their machine and completing the takeover of their party. And some of you want to quit after one setback?
That's embarrassing.
Buck up. We still haven't completely lost this Iraq supplemental battle. And if we do, instead of crying and taking your ball home, resolve to fight even harder. We owe it to our troops in Iraq, to our families, to our neighbors, to ourselves.
We have a lot of deadwood to get rid of in DC -- both Democratic and Republican. We have to combat the lies of the right wing noise machine and its allies in the traditional media. We have to build an electoral machine that can go toe-to-toe against the GOP's machine and win -- even when Republicans aren't shooting themselves in the foot.
This movement is about fighting for what we believe in, doing the hard work to transform both our party and our nation. It won't happen at once. We'll have to do this incrementally one issue fight and one election cycle at a time.
He wraps up 90% of what being a Kossack is about, its pragmatic, not radical, infact it's extremely pragmatic, but not to the breaking point...we still ratchet up the pressure and call senators, our congressmne, etc to try and get them to tilt left, on a few bills, like the Iraq supplemental, I believe we made a difference, and on ethics reform, we created enough buzz that the media brought it up to Pelosi's attention, we cause as much of an uproar as possible, but stop short of hurting the Democratic Party
When it comes to elections, we do things "left wing" groups are usually considered to abhor...in Virginia, the democratic machine picked Morrison, and he was riding high, however, we picked a conservative-looking candidate with a military record that quite frankly was deep red, even though in the end Morrison was more progressive, we were practical and picked who could win, and thanks to constant netroots buzz we were the tipping point of atleast a few thousand votes, probably much more, that gave the Democrats the Senate...in Montana we picked a more progressive candidate because he just was an incredibly charismatic and better candidate, left or right we back who can win and be a significantly more progressive voice than the one already in place...Burns and Allen were very anti-progressive, we played to win, and both primary candidates we sided with went on to take the lead in the polls and win, and that happened across the country with the netroots movement
Are we disappointed with how the Democratic Senate acted today, yes, but as Markos points out, it's just one part of a huge situation, one that will take decades to work out...people who want to quit need not apply
Reid and Pelosi are in incredibly tough situations, they are moderating establishment democrats who are fighting reform democrats, blue dogs v. die-hard liberals, black caucus and other minority groups who worry about racism in the party, and many other problems, it is 1000x more complicated than the evangelical right who swept into office in 1994, and look how they crumbled...there was no debate in 1995 between Gerald Ford Republicans and Ronald Reagan republicans, all that was settled, they had it easy
So, we give them leeway and to be honest, recognize that they had valid reasons many times for things that are simply the wrong way to do things, but they are by far the best party out there, 3rd parties don't exist, and if we tried to make one now it'd be back to 2003 all over again, we work with what we have in a long effort to overhaul the Democratic Party that even during its "Golden Years" of the New Deal, had a deeply segregated society that was disgustingly cruel...Democrats had total control during that time, and did nothing in the 1930s...
However, no one seriously thought "ok let's hand the country back to Herbert Hoover", that's insane, and when people talk about leaving the party, either because they didn't impeach Bush, or because all the 100 hour bills haven't made it through the senate, or because of the new iraq bill...its people that aren't really a part of this movement, and don't understand it
Reid/Pelosi had many good reasons to do what they did, but they did have more reasons to NOT do what they did...in the end, that's disappointing, but it's not a failure of the party, or a reason to throw up your arms, its the reality of politics
Sidenote: Saying I'm a Kossack and follow their philosophy does not mean I follow their talking points (indeed they conflict several times) it just means it's the most sensible and important american political activisit philosophy I hold on to, but I keep in mind others, I am not close minded and "fixated" on dailykos, infact I still firmly reject the reasoning behind abandoning Paul Hackett
05-23-2007, 06:19 PM
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