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Democrats, Progressives And The Media

By Big Tent Democrat

Greg Mitchell asks:

I think that at least the groundwork has been established for powerful, even possibly semi-radical, reform to get a fair hearing from the media, and the public, in the years ahead. What happens after that hearing--who knows?

Not if actual progressive ideas are not championed by Democratic (as opposed to progressive) bloggers. For example, in extolling this Las Vegas newspaper column, Markos misses the Progressive forest for the Democratic trees. Even his mild criticism of the article misses the point in some respects:

And here's one lagging piece of CW that still gets it wrong:

[Dean is] usually associated with the loony wing of the party, the MoveOn crowd and the liberal bloggers. But in reality, he had a vision for Democrats capturing the center, and it’s coming to pass.

Ah yes, us loony bloggers, fighting for universal health care, to protect social security, to keep our government from unconstitutionally spying on us, and to promote a sane foreign policy that doesn't unnecessarily cost us blood and treasure. You know, loony things supported by a majority of the (apparently also loony) American people.

One point that the "loony" bloggers seem less interested in is a woman's right to choose. See, here is the part of the article that bothered me:

Democrats have let their candidates — even encouraged them — to come out against gun control and abortion. That means Heath Shuler in North Carolina and a bunch of other moderates in red states have become an important part of the Democratic majority.

"Letting" them be against a woman's right to choose? "Encouraging" them to be? Let's get one thing straight. Democrats in the Deep South have been anti-choice forever. And likely will be for a long time. Heath Shuler is not the first Blue Dog to win in the South. Gene Taylor, Jim Marshall and a host of others have been anti-choice for a long time. That is where the South is.

The New York Times ran a similar article on Sunday:

The political advertisement that aired in Montgomery, Ala., spoke plainly to conservative voters’ values. As an image of three toddlers in diapers flashed across the screen, a narrator intoned that Mayor Bobby Bright, who is running for Congress, “supports their right to life.” The anti-abortion pitch is standard fare in Alabama’s Second Congressional District, a deeply conservative area that President Bush carried twice and that has been represented in Washington by a Republican for four decades.

What makes the spot unusual is that Mr. Bright is a Democrat. And that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been pushing hard for Mr. Bright’s election, paid for it.

In fact, Mr. Bright is one of a dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers the party has recruited to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party. That is the highest number of anti-abortion candidates the party has fielded in recent memory to run either for open seats or against Republican challengers, according to party strategists and a leading anti-abortion organization. It is a strategy that that has received little attention in an election year dominated nationally by a grim economic picture and an unpopular president.

There are 435 seats in Congress. the Democratic Party is running probably 180 challengers. About 5%, no doubt all in Ruby Red states mostly in the Deep South, are anti-choice. But this is a news story now.

Why? Because, for the Establishment, progressives must lose even if the Democrats win a landslide.

When the Netroots decided to back Travis Childers, I thought it was a bad idea. Why? Because on too many issues, including choice, Childers held the positions of an extreme Republican.

The Netroots never seems able to focus on the BETTER part of the "more and better Democrats" mantra. Markos wrote:

We didn't rally around Webb, Tester, Schweitzer, Trauner, Brown, Massa, Burner and so many other moderate Democrats because they were little Kucinich clones, but because they were perfectly suited for the states and districts they seek to represent. It's that simple. Howard Dean wasn't an anomaly. He was our ideal.

The problem is the Netroots too often rallies around the extreme Republican-like Democratic candidates. Too often, the Netroots thinks like the DCCC.

This remains the danger for the Netroots - that it is all Democrat, and not much progressive. After the landslide next Tuesday, what then for the Netroots?

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 28, 2008 (boomark / email).