Boy, was daily kos embarrassed today. Senator Obama is probably too good a man for this, but I would bet some of his staffers are seriously rolling their eyes at some of the diaries and comments that were posted in response to his words.
Here's basically what happened. Senator Obama tried to bust a frame. And like Lakoff says, when someone tries to bust a frame, more often than not, the people caught in the frame just react by trying to reinforce the frame. And then they stay within the frame.
That's exactly what happened.
According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.
I think this perspective misreads the American people.
First, can we acknowledge that Senator Obama did an absolutely great job at succinctly rephrasing the driving philosophy behind this community?
In order to buy into that perspective, though, you probably have to buy into one or more of the following frames:
Democrats Are Weak: Face it. If you've bought into this, you are already partially beaten by the Republicans. This is a GOP frame, and even now, they are still trying to milk it by calling us weaker than their currently weakened state.
Democrats Are Visionless: This is the one I've never understood. Think about any serious policy-minded institute that actually cares about policy. They're Democrats. Contrast that with the Republicans' "vision", entirely driven by reactive politics.
Democrats Sacrifice Too Much: I'll get to this one.
I have to pick on Rena for a second, which I don't like because I found her diary vulnerable and endearing (unlike that turd of expatjourno's):
Ask yourself this: why is it that the vast majority of progressives who frequent Daily Kos are able to sum up the Republican party's platform in six words? Strong Military. Lower Taxes. Family Values. Yet this pool of often brilliant thinkers can't do the same for our own party.
The reason is because "Strong Military. Lower Taxes. Family Values." is dumb policy. And Democrats tend to care more about smart policy. And smart policy tends to be more complicated than dumb policy.
Why do we insist on using the GOP's braindead Orwellian brand strategy as the standard we should be living up to? Maybe we're not supposed to be able to boil down responsible Democratic policy and vision to six words or less.
That's what brings me to my final point.
Democrats Sacrifice Too Much: Compared to what standard??
Here's what this community is based on. We pride ourselves on being united in partisanship, if not in policy advocacy. We understand that there is a wide variety of opinions in this community about policy. And we treat this as a good thing. And yet, we criticize our leaders for that same wide variety of opinions!
We're holding our leaders up to some ideal standard that we can't even define. We can't communicate it to them. We don't even know what it is. So no wonder they don't live up to it. There is no room for any legitimate disagreement anymore, and so any failure on their part to act as our own personal and independent vessel is evidence of their weakness. It's not fair.
I think Senator Obama was trying to point that out to us. He's already proven in his term that he is someone that cares about policy. But he came up against a frame.
If we came to the political arena believing that Democrats are weak, visionless, and that they sacrifice too much, then we will see every vote that goes against our ideal vote as being confirmation of that frame. And I believe that both of the response diaries I mentioned are examples of being caught within the edges of that frame. It's harmful to us and I think we all need to do a better job at challenging our own views that Democrats are weak and visionless. I doubt this community could ever come up with an actual policy document or vote guideline that we could all agree on and measure every legislator against. So barring that, we should quit holding them to an ideological purity test that we don't hold ourselves to.