I've given Gibbs a lot of thought. Truth is, he made a mistake flat out.
There is no end game scenario that benefits the American people behind his words.
None. Nada.
Edit: Ever wonder why in every election there are enough people sitting on the side lines to decide it for the better?
This kind of shit from Gibbs is why.
Gibbs invoked a new label. It's shiny, and perhaps glittery. He seems like the glitter type way down deep inside. Well, I think so, and submit right now he's in major league glitter denial, and is suffering from his own self-glitter repression.
Doesn't everybody know that's not a life of choice? Everybody is either attracted to glitter, or shiny things in general, or not. Questions? Fears? Talk to the man upstairs, or that "other" therapist, not me. Just calling them like I'm seeing them.
So, why all the glitter talk? Hell, I don't know. Really, I don't. Perhaps it's seeing my younger daughter come by today. She's out in the work force now, one of the lucky 60 percent of young people to have a job, and I'm proud of her. --and her glitter.
Then we come to Gibbs.
The art of triangulation always comes with collateral damage. How can it not? Essentially, groups of people are manipulated such that troublesome ones are marginalized, and potentially powerful ones are too, leaving just enough wiggle room for the whole lot to consider plausible deniability, and just vote again for another day.
Maybe that's not exactly how it goes, but that's what I saw, and it sucks ass.
Progressives basically worked their ass off to put Obama in office. For that matter, so did labor. Good on all of us for that.
Have we seen any real love from that? No. Now before you tee-up on me, know that I'm not talking about that long list of good stuff that happened. Happy to have it. No question.
But, there are some very specific things that the American people need, and those things happen to get in the way of the business model of those large corporations, backed by Citizens United, and we just didn't see those.
It's hard to miss. Public Option / Medicare buy in? Wonder what Teddy really would have said? Wonder if he had made it this far, whether or not the Coin Operated Democrats in charge would have had the balls to screw us on those things.
Where is the pro-Union Employee Free Choice Act? After the work we did getting people in office, shouldn't that be just a bit more of a priority, given how painful things could be after facing the GOP obstructionism we have so far?
(Yes.)
What Gibbs did was enrage a lot of people, and he marginalized progressives, and that hurts us. Not personally, because anybody with enough self-respect and empathy for others to actually be a Progressive, could give two shits about the material things he tried to say. It's not that.
The real hurt is the validation of Coin Operated Democrats over Progressives that hurts. It hurts me, you, the party, and the American people, because drawing those lines, saying those things means we must once again stand alone, spending an ass-load of time defending who and what we are, instead of building momentum, building the movement and taking things to the next level.
That chaps my ass big.
Gibbs also forced a choice. Go big, or stay home?
He's actually hoping for some moderate, hold your nose and vote anyway, because the other guys suck more kind of thing, and maybe he will get that for the most part too.
But, what he won't get, and what the American people won't get is the benefit of all the work to set this thing up and move forward. We are going to go sideways, right through all the little cracks found between the big corporations and the things their lobby forgets after trying to sleep at night with how badly they are screwing us.
(that's where the big dollars are people --if you can live with that, you've a grand future in the current body politic)
Instead of healing that growing divide between Progressives and Coin Operated Democrats, he made it worse, tossing salt into it, hoping it will fester enough to stop the growth of the only movement capable of challenging corporate politics.
That's us!!
What are we expected to do? Stay home? Not bloody likely. Vote and just cheer them on?
Fuck no!
No, we are now forced to seriously contemplate taking the Progressive movement to the next level. That means taking the fight off-line, and right to where people live.
Knocking on doors! Messaging to small business! Organizing small target groups in strategic areas, like some progressive oriented groups are already doing, and in general, taking it to the streets, beneath the media, and right on to the door step.
That's what needs to happen, or we might as well pack it up and accept that we are second class party members, good for our vote, but bad for policy. Not acceptable to me. Not at all.
Remember the trite, "united we stand, divided we fall?"
I do. What it means is the corporations are united, and the people are not, and that is good for them, fucked for us.
What it also means is instead of our party taking advantage of all the hard work, they will be impotent, "bi-partisan legislation is our top priority", forced to hide behind mean old Republicans, hoping to keep their seats, praying the big corporations don't ask them to screw us that badly this time.
What a way to end up! Jesus, it's ugly. With a few words, Gibbs manages to do serious damage to what is the only thing seriously checking a full on corporate owned nation, while at the same time empowering the opposing party, in the hopes that most people will vote "because they suck more than we do". I find it very difficult to feel good about that.
I can say Progressive no problem. That's who I am. I can't really shout "Democrat" out and it's sad. We either roll on this, stay home, or start fighting our own to get our fair share, and that's the object lesson of Gibbs.
Remember that. I will.
Edit: From the comments, I feel I need to say this too. I'm voting Dem. No question. What I'm not going to do is continue to just pardon divisive politics like this. Any group, any effort to put some daylight on that, and or grow this movement to the point where it has some material power is what I'm advocating for here.
Why?
Because, if we don't do that, then this is how things go period. That means no real Progressive legislation, and that's not ok.