I've never been one to mind the disagreements on dKos. One of the strengths of the left-end of the political spectrum in the U.S. is its diversity and relatively lack of authoritarian tendencies. We neither can, nor should, walk in lock step with each other. Unity is a most overrated political virtue. Give me solidarity among those who disagree but are working for a common cause any day!
We can and should continue to have discussions about what Democrats, including this administration, have done well, what they've done well and poorly, and how they could do better. Before becoming President, Obama himself once asked this website to do so, in fact.
But I have been frustrated by the way in which our disagreements have played out on dKos in recent months. Lots of shouting. Not a lot of constructive engagement. But lately a new kind of low has been reached: the Presidents' self-appointed defenders appear to be pre-blaming the administration's progressive critics for the losses this November.
In addition to being defeatist, this line is going to play into the entirely predictable post-election attempt by DLC-style Democrats to move the party to the right. So I think it's important that we nip it in the bud.
Now I should say that the immediate inspiration for this diary was kos's post on the polling on the November election and deaniac83's response. But I think these posts are representative of a broader division on this site; they certainly seem to have struck a nerve.
To recap: looking at the polls, and echoing Nate Silver, who is if nothing else a sober and careful poll watcher, kos see a train wreck up ahead for Democrats in November. Clearly the strategy that the Democrats are pursuing isn't working. And something needs to be done in the next nine weeks or political disaster will strike. Like me, kos seems very little sign that any strategic change of direction is in the works:
It's a slow motion car wreck in the works, and the best the White House and its allies can do is complain that we didn't clap loudly enough.
To which deaniac83 replies: YOU'RE NOT CLAPPING LOUDLY ENOUGH.
My problem with this conversation is that whether we are or are not clapping loudly enough is simply not the cause of the Democrats' woes. Even if deaniac83 is 100% correct and progressive critics are totally off base in their assessment of the Obama administration, we are not responsible for the record GOP lead in generic congressional ballot.
First, there just aren't that many of us.
Second, the vast, vast majority of us are planning to trudge out and vote for the Democrats in November.
Third, these are mid-term elections. Barack Obama is not on the ballot. There's not even a symbolic, anti-Obama protest-vote-from-the-left available to truly pissed off progressives.
We're simply not the problem. (For a sober assessment of what is causing the Democrats' woes, see this Nate Silver post.)
In the midst of a discussion of how to avoid electoral disaster in November, arguing that progressives ought to happier with the performance of the Obama administration is, at best, changing the subject. This is bad enough. We need to face political reality. Pretending that the Dems' atrocious poll numbers aren't real or aren't a real problem is exactly the "strategy" that the GOP took in the fall of 2006 as it faced its own set of horrible polls. And we know how well that worked out for them.
At worst, however, yelling at progressives to CLAP LOUDER is engaging in the kind of hippie-punching blame-game that the right wing of the Democratic Party has returned to time and again since 1968. Whenever the Party loses, the DLC crowd blames "the left."
What I'd like to see happen over the next few weeks is a serious change of strategic direction on the part of the Democrats and a surprisingly positive electoral outcome. But if that doesn't happen, and the losses are as bad as they look likely to be, I'll be damned if progressives are going to shoulder the blame for an electoral defeat that has been in the works for months.