The beatings will continue until morale improves, or until the 'vast leftwing conspiracy' is quashed [View All]

[nashville_brook]

People of 'good faith' can disagree without accusations of traitorism

As progressive voices grow in the mainstream media, so does the anxiety that there's a monolithic leftwing conspiracy seeking to undermine Democratic candidates in the fall elections. Party partisans are selling the notion that criticism equals subversion, which was an odious slur when it issued from the other side of the aisle. As in a slur internal to our party, it has no place.

The truth is, many centrists have aligned with conservadems to *shame* the democratic wing of the Democratic Party away from our core issues. Criticizing party leadership for weakening their position on labor, LBGT rights, abortion, health care, war funding, and the environment is what people of good faith do when those interests are being given the boot. People of good faith do not act as if those issues never existed for us. People of good faith do not attack those who stand up for the disenfranchised, the unemployed, and the sick.

People of good faith seek to keep the party aligned with the interests of the people, and not the other way around.

When it's turned around, the party is acting as a bludgeon, expecting the beatings to coerce The People into voting for them. That's called hubris, and it's the hallmark of a failed ideology. See, you have to believe in something, because without principle all that's left is political expediency. "You will vote for these candidates because to do otherwise makes you an enemy of the party."

I'm just as invested in the Dems winning this fall as the loyalist sweating it out next to me. But I'd never utter these words to anyone. It's condescending. It's beneath us. And, it's ultimately not going to work, because no one is bullied into voting one way or the other. That's what tyrants do, and it's the antithesis of why we even go to the polls.

What I find most ironic is this irrational fear of a leftwing conspiracy to undermine Dems in the fall is the result of an amazing victory for the mainstreaming of progressive voices. If it weren't for reporting on these issues everyone would think that Obama really is a socialist, and that anything to the left of a Chamber of Commerce meeting signals a rebooting of the Communist Party. It's because Olbermann, Maddow and Schultz have their fingers on the pulse of The People of the Democratic Party, that any rational criticism happens at all. I'd much rather have a full and robust discussion of our state of affairs, complete with criticism, than to go back to having only FOX News, CNBC and CNN argue about how quick grandpa will die under Obamacare.

That the polls are showing weakening support for Dems in the fall isn't the result of a vast leftwing conspiracy led by Glenn Greewald, Jane Hamsher and David Sirota. It's the result of powerful Democratic party leaders demanding that political expediency be substituted for principled action, and then asking that we stick a feather in its cap and call it "pragmatic." The people who were 'fired up and ready to go' must now sit down and shut up.

But all this puts the cart before the horse. If Dems don't turn out for Dems in the fall, it's not the fault of the media or the left wing because they weren't the ones who horse-traded our best issues away. Party leaders did that, and now, instead of taking responsibility for their actions, they want to browbeat us into the voting booth. I've got news for you: U R DOING IT WRONG.

And you won't get love for that.