A few months ago, a portland City Commissioner, Randy Leonard, thanked the people who run the blog
BlueOregon for giving him a platform to speak from without going to the local paper, which had been beating him up during the previous week.
I had that post in mind, when I read Cin Dan's recent diary ENOUGH!!! in which he took issue with the fact that professional politicians are coming to dKos and engaging in "posturing without action" which he called duplicitous, and said was done for "feel good responses"
Frankly, CinDan has it dead wrong. Read why below the flip
I don't have time to take aim at every criticism CinDan makes, but among CinDan's litany of crimes committed by Democratic Senators, he asserts the following:
Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not going on every and any talk show, radio and television, and engaging conservatives Republicans, the defenders of greed and corruption, and neither are they flooding newspapers and magazines with press releases and editorials doing the same.
Let's dispense with the notion that these Democrats aren't making their case every day. I get between 15 and 25 press releases from 17 Senators, Congressmen, and Governors every day. I don't get every release they send, but most Senators send between 3-5 press releases per day.
You can verify that by visiting my newswire
Democratic Congressmen and Senators are not doing the People's business, instead being careful of EVERYTHING THEY SAY AND DO, out of SELFISH FEAR that the Republican noise machine will jeopardize their re-election campaigns.
Bondad picked up on that theme in CinDan's comment section, and asserted the following:
Senator Kerry, where the hell are you now? You have graced us with your presence during your ill-conceived filibuster and then not a word. GO AWAY. PLEASE STAY AWAY.
by bonddad on Sat Feb 18, 2006 at 04:59:48 PM PDT
As I pointed out in my response to Bondad, during the last week Senator Kerry did the following:
On Monday, he e pressured Rice to respond to questions regarding a claim that the U.S. cannot achieve oil independence.
On Tuesday, he introduced a resolution to end $7 billion in government subsidies for big oil.
On Wednesday, he completely discredited Bush's health care plan and explained in detail why it won't work.
On Thursday, he introduced legislation to give troops a combat pay raise and took aim at White House efforts to silence scientists at NASA.
On Friday, he introduced legislation that he co-authored with barbara boxer to open up new spectrums in wireless broadband.
What more, exactly, do you want the man to do?
And bear in mind, those were only the issues that he sent me press releases on.
As I mentioned in another comment:
There are plenty of Democrats hosting press conferences and fighting the good fight each and every day.
These people are coming to DailyKos, because by-in-large they are being ignored by the mainstream media.
One of the reasons why I started SenateDemocrats.net was so that I could keep tabs on all of the issues that people like: Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, Brian Schweitzer, Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, Barney Frank, Jesse Jackson Jr. and several others are up to in D.C.
These are people who are fighting the good fight. Just last week, Russ Feingold called for a filibuster of the Patriot Act. I posted a Diary on it with some recommended actions, but pretty much the entire community sat on their hands.
In an earlier Diary calling for action from the blogosphere, one that hit the rec list, probably 100 people responded from dKos. That effort wouldn't have gone anywhere if several DFA meetups hadn't gotten involved. As it was, we had about 300+ responses from people who reported back between the DFA meetup, and some of the other blogs that responded to the call for action, but dKos, despite having more daily readers than all of the other blogs, plus the email lists that I distributed to accounted for only a third of the action.
If you didn't make a phone call to your Senator on one of those issues, and odds are that you didn't, then you have no business criticizing what these Democrats are doing in in Washington.
One of the main problems is that even here at DK, there are a ton of people who would rather engage in the circular firing squad, or in bitching about their elected representatives than in actually doing something useful and relevent.
In any case, I'll try to tone down my own rhetoric on this. But let's support the people who think enough about this community to take the time to make their case here. By-in-large, these are dedicated public servants who are fighting the good fight.
The mainstream media has already marginalized many of them. Let's not do the same here.