Lend a hand

Labels: Progressive, YouTube

posted by Stash @ 11:47 PM

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Where have all the voices gone?

Air America filed for bankruptcy today and ceased all broadcasting. The 214 people still listening to them said, "So, fucking what?"

I haven't listened since the dingleshits dropped Randi Rhodes a couple years ago.

Labels: Politics, Progressive

posted by Stash @ 7:38 PM

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Liberals Are Useless

by Chris Hedges
Commondreams

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.

“You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. “The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a ‘least-worst’ voter you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.”

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Labels: Democrats, liberal, Obama, Politics, Progressive

posted by Stash @ 7:05 AM

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Framing

Thanks to Stash for the invitation - and the prodding.

I had an epiphany.

Well, actually the author of "Being Right is Not Enough" - Paul Waldman, had the epiphany and I'm getting a contact high from it.

The basic premise is that we progressives don't get anywhere by talking about policy. We should learn from conservatives, for whom details are anathema. The lesson to be learned is: talk about basic principles and our moral code. This basic principle, the "master narrative" is; we're all in this together.

From this first principle (which compares favorably to the darwinian conservatism which rules today) all other progressive values flow. Further, these progressive values have broad support. What has been missing from progressives isn't good policy, it's communication of a good ethical framework.

Further, conservative ought to be a dirty word. The word should be spoken only to disparage it. Republicans don't try to appeal to those who are hard to attract - they ridicule them. Here's an example from the book;

...consider this television ad, aired in Iowa by the conservative Club for Growth during the 2004 primary season:
Announcer: What do you think of Howard Dean's plans to raise taxes on families by nineteen hundred dollars a year?
Man: What do I think? Well I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading...
Woman: Body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.
Man: Got it?

You may have heard of this ad; its appearance was a minor story, discussed by cable anchors with amused smiles. But imagine for a moment the outrage that would have resulted had a liberal group aired an ad telling George W. Bush to "take his tobacco-chewing, trailer park-living, NASCAR-loving, Field & Stream-reading, grits-eating, right-wing freak show back to Texas, where it belongs".

It's okay to disparage both coasts - in fact, for Republicans it has proven to be a winning strategy. It would be equally effective for us to disparage the south. We won't win there anyway, and we don't want to pander to the chronic racism that being effective at it would require. True progressives in the south (like conservatives on the coasts) know that it isn't them who are being addressed.

Does this conflict with the 50 state strategy? Not at all. The 50 state strategy requires a grass roots effort. Running for the presidency requires mobilizing one's base, and calling ones self "a fiscal conservative" as if it were praise does nothing for the party. Is this writing off the south? In the short term, yes. Progressives won't change hearts and minds from the sidelines.

Another example of the author's point is provided by Bill Clinton. Did he win election because he expanded EITC? No. We elected him because he "felt our pain" - the EITC was an outgrowth of those values.

One last thought. At one time, I thought that taking the high road was the better long term strategy. I rationalized the idea that if we only communicated our policy better, eventually voters would see the light. It's been 25 years now. "Eventually" ain't ever gonna get here.

In politics, it's not useful, productive, effective or moral to roll over and take it. To succeed in politics, we need to hit hard and not just in retaliation, and certainly not to turn the other cheek. Everything depends on it.

Labels: Conservative, Framing, Paul Waldman, Progressive

posted by Lumberjack @ 1:25 PM

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