This is the Midnight Oil Super Tuesday Open Thread and Diary Accumulator
Welcome to the Midnight Oil. This diary is open for discussion from a few minutes after midnight through a few minute before (consider the lamp off for wick trimming and oil filling from 11:45 pm to 12:15 am, nightly). The intro remains the same, but the body is always changing.
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Populist movements don't build themselves, they grow from a process of people learning how to support a series of populist campaigns in a populist way, rather than as passive consumers of corporate political marketing campaigns.
It doesn't matter what the "horse race" outcome of the campaign is, if we fight the campaign. Fighting it, we learn how to fight. Learning how to fight political battles, we become citizens again. Becoming citizens again, we reclaim the Republic that lies dormant beneath the bread and circuses of modern American society.
Picture Credit: David Leeson (#8)
House Rules: This is Not Your Everydaily Kos
- You are allowed ... encouraged ... to say something hours and hours after the Oil is lit
- Say something, come back eight, twelve hours later to see if there was an answer
- Feel free to use the Rec button to let people know you passed by ... but be careful not to overdo it, we don't want this thing up on the wrecklist!
- Teep Jar? We don't need no steenking teep jar!
Backwards : Upwards : Forwards
Daily Diary Roll
Spreading fires
Is Lieberman-Warner a "Strong" Climate Bill? by The Cunctator
OneCorps Online
... not a diary, but a link to the OneCorps Online chapter page.
John Edwards supporters...Our Calling by Acebass
Screw the Mess Media, Vote Edwards! ... by me.
Banks create "Carbon Principles:" Increased coal finance costs? by woolie
FIX or DITCH the Lieberman-Warner Global Warming Bill by FOE action (h/t A Siegel)
was there for John Edwards ...
... because Edwards was forthright about being there for the future of the Earth
On being called out by Environmental Defense by A Siegel
Global Warming and Hurricanes: What's the Latest? by ClimateLurker
Anyone with the temerity to post a Global Warming science diary the day before the Big Contest between Mr. and Mrs. Coal deserves a round of applause.
EENR for Progress, a New Beginning. by TomP The Journey Continues
John Edwards Supporters Are Going Nowhere (Updated) by poligirl
Original Sparks
Edwards votes in NJ do count by Mares (OAC Blog) Actually called the State Senator cited in the account being circulated by the Obamapalooza ... and, yeah, its a fabrication
HRC's NEW Stump speech?? by Deborah63
(OAC blog ... Deborah notices something ... uh ... "interesting")
Edwards or Bust !!! And the rest of ya..(videos) by LaEscapee
Twice inspired by Elizabeth Edwards by KY sw
Why I'm Still voting For John Edwards Tuesday by MA Liberal
Judicial Races--Wake up 12th district S.W. Ohio!! by Michelle (AsOhioGoes)
Steal this Letter by Julia02110 (OAC blog)
When Art and Reality collide ... by jamess (OAC blog, x-posted to dKos)
Rocky Mountain Realities by David Sirota
... because Stalwart Edwards Democrats remember their friends...
Boxing our way to disaster? by A Siegel Better late than never!
It's only been 2 days. Seems like forever since John Edwards stepped aside. by AntonBursch
The Heart Of The Democratic Party By: Christy Hardin Smith
(Firedoglake, h/t planetclaire4)
Edwards' Withdrawal is Our Loss and America's Loss by Earl Ofari Hutchinson (Huff&Puff&Post, h/t planetclaire4)
How dare homeless veterans not watch The O'Reilly Factor! by Kevin Holsinger
My vote will go to Obama, my money will go elsewhere by TigerMom
Something to consider (no, not the candidate position, the elsewhere part).
I'd Almost Forgotten...Why Edwards Lost by Mark Adams
Midnight Thought
Did the A-listers let us down?
Whatever kind of progressive populists would we be if we were banking on a collection of unelected bloggers that each happened to be at the right place at the right time for what they had to say in order to climb to the top of the blogosphere power law distribution?
Well, I guess that, in their multiple quests for readership hits, advertising revenue, appearances on punditry talking head shows ... most of them ended up being complicit in supporting what the Establishment system most needed.
But ... well, an establishment system does not hang together by some massive secret conspiracy meeting in a hotel in Switzerland to sort things out. It hangs together by a series of small conspiracies to pursue ambitions within the definitions of the system, which then as a side effect reinforce the system.
An establishment is an establishment because pursuit of self-interest within the establishment also, as a side effect, reinforces the establishment.
If that side-effect is not present, then pursuit of self-interest keeps changing things until some new pattern emerges where it is present.
However ... that is not a counsel of despair, its just recognition that we have a hard job ahead of us.
The particular components always originally emerge because someone was pushing for that particular rule of behavior/punishment/reward for some particular reason. That provides the kernel of support that keeps the push for a rule around, until it becomes part of some self-reinforcing subsystem that grows in scope until it is co-opted or shoulders its way in to become part of the establishment system.
But if we think that through ... that original kernel of support can fade, and because the system is self-reinforcing, we won't see it right away. A pattern of social rules in an establishment can reach a point where the self-reinforcement is the main thing hold the establishment system up. And that's when fundamental change can take place, if people push hard enough.
Which is why I disagree with Mark Adams appraisal of John Edwards' campaign.
If Edwards had played the game entirely by the rules as they stand, the outcome would not be very much different from having Senator Clinton or Senator Obama adopt his issues to prevent him from maintaining a clear gap.
He played the game by a set of rules that might work if the system is in a pre-change condition.
And when it did not give way ... which it normally does not, so that is not at all surprising ... I look around for indicators of whether there has been any movement. Seeing none is normal, if discouraging. Seeing some is unusual, and encouraging.
I see some, so I am encouraged. And, yes, to bank a Presidential campaign on it ... that was truly a far more audacious hope than writing a book with grand sweeping phrases and tiny little incremental policy proposals.
In the end, a progressive populist campaign has to reach a point where it lives or dies based on the effectiveness of the grass roots support for it. That is far more important than any policy detail, if we are going to lay the foundation for change in this country, under a Madisonian Constitution.
Because we get fundamental change when the comfortable politicians of the status quo are waking up in a cold sweat at night about what their constituents are up to. For my adult life, its only The Conservative MovementTM that has had status quo politicians in that sweat.
If we can harness that for goals that most people fundamentally want, rather than for goals that most people fundamentally do not want, we can get some fundamental change.
In the short term, certainly, a member of the moderate wing of the Corporate party is better than a member of the radical right wing of the Corporate party.
But in the long term, we need standard bearers who will continue to break the rules as they currently exist, and we need to keep on developing our capabilities to bring the new rules into existence that will make that a winning strategy.
So we came and we conquered and found
Riches of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything
Now I'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
Whats taken is never renewed