This afternoon mcjoan had a diary about your discussion with some of the netroot bloggers, explaining how we need to prioritize (pick our battels) and practice patience in the political field of battle.
Much of the premise for your defense of allowing the netroots to be sabatoged by the Democratic leadership's keeping Senator Lieberman, not only within the Democratic caucus, but chairman of commitiee(s) had, IMHO, a flase assumption.
I quote mcjoan's article here:.............."So if you run and get a mandate for reconciliation is your first act to kick this guy out of the party? Well, people of my generation think yeah, damn right we should. But in this new spirit of reconciliation, which is why I think Barack Obama got elected by 66 percent of the under 35 vote, maybe if not (unintelligible) I'm very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Senators and to Barack Obama on that one."
I ask, was the mandate for reconciliation at all costs, or was reconciliation the point of so much of the mandate? Reconciliation based on principles is my assertion.
First of all, I want you to understand, that the subject of where in the pecking order Lieberman lands is only a small part of this discussion.
The last many years have seen an erroding of American values of community working for the greater good of all citizens; weither in the financial economy, workplace, respect for 'others' or our laws and Constitution and treaties (history), and sacrifices from those that have gone before us being ignored.
Since Nixon, the undermining has taken the shape of the Robber Baron's methodical propaganda invasion thru lies and deceit about how governance should protect "We the People" meaning big business, to the detrement of actual citizens.
This country was founded on the bulwark of seperation from Imperial overlordship and international monopolistic unfair trade and debilitating taxation of citizens. Indeed our 1st revenues were totally from tarriffs on imported goods, and taxation of businesses, no personal taxation at all. That is the very reasons the Declaration of Independence was even written.
We have been fed a steady diet of how irreversable the wrongs of Globalization and Presidential free(and overbearingly unfair) trade are.
The clear mandate that I witnessed in this past election had far more to do with undoing the Bush administrations illegal and offensive acts against the American people, and a call to renew good governance in a way that prohibits the ability of future Robber Barons from gaining so much access to our governance.
Let me be clear, no collaberation with the thieves will be tolerated, and framing it into a nice soundbite makes it no less offensive. Working with people that are willing to adjust to working within American values is necessary, playing patsy with thieves is not.
The mandate was far more to get this country back on track, as far as making our governance far more about "We the People" as citizens and curtailing the power and influence of Wall Street and K Street and international mega corporations.
There used to be laws on the books that limited monopolies, that needs a big relook from the folks that we put into the halls of governance.