I read with interest Chris Bowers'
meta-MyDD post linked in today's open thread, because I'm always interested in community issues. But something emerged in his post and subsequent comments that gets back to a distinction that has become, for me, an important recurring thread not just of meta conversations here and now there but of political discussions here.
Bowers writes
As far as I can tell, the reason there is no such thing as Meta-MyDD is because there is no MyDD community, as such. Sure, we have frequent commenters and diarists, but what really separates MyDD from sites like Dailykos, BooMan Tribune, Fire Dog Lake and My Left Wing is that while they build a family-like community, we instead act as though we are political professionals.
--snip--
Rather than a community blog, MyDD tends to be a professional blog. This drives down our traffic down and means that fewer people will come visit us in the hospital when we are sick, but it does allow us influence well beyond what we should normally expect for our traffic level
I think that in many discussions here, some of them pretty heated, we're confusing ideology and strategy. If you're way more interested in my thoughts here than I anticipate anyone being, you can trace their development from my reading of
this piece on "Organizing" by Sara at The Next Hurrah, to the
diary I wrote taking off from it, to
a conversation in comments on a post on the 50-state strategy and Begala, to
another conversation with the same two people on a Lieberman post.
But the basic issue is a confusion of ideology and strategy, which I think is one of the central points Bowers makes in his meta-MyDD post, saying
Does this mean we are more "establishment" than other blogs? Maybe. I'm pretty darn far out on the left, but I freely admit that the political professionals who I take a liking to are by no means exclusively left-wing. What I like are people who recognize the full scope of the problem we face when matched up against the conservative movement, and who recognize our desparate need for innovation in response to that movement. At the same time that Russ Feingold is the sort of candidate I would work for, and while Chuck Pennacchio is the sort of candidate I will vote for in primaries, I also think Simon Rosenberg and David Brock are frigging brilliant, and I'd help them with almost whatever they needed help with. What I really can't stand are people on both the right and the left-wing of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement who see our solutions as simplistic, such as "moving to the center" or "fixing the voting machines."
Many of the comments there also counterpose the professional approach of MyDD FPers, diarists, and commenters against the more emotional approach at Daily Kos. This isn't done in a hostile way, but it's clear that that's a very important distinction, and I think it's one we here should think seriously about, not necessarily in a meta way, wondering if we should be more serious and pointyheaded, but in thinking how these modes operate in the political discussions we have here.
I hope the distinction to be made isn't a clean one between political professionals and the rest of us. And I don't want to see it be understood as unrealistic moonbats vs. party hacks resisting innovation because it threatens their corrupt livelihoods.
Rather, I'd like to see us understand strategic preferences as another axis along which to evaluate our differences of political opinion. So that, for instance, in a discussion of vote suppression/election reform/election fraud/whatever you want to call it, we could appreciate that everyone who's a legitimate participant here wants to see fair and transparent elections, but that some think the best strategy progressives should be pursuing is exposing the fraud they believe happened in 2004 while others think the best strategy is pursuing reform of state laws and local processes. Or in a discussion of the 50-state strategy, we could appreciate that everyone here wants to see Democrats in power and able to pursue a truly progressive agenda rather than just defending ground, whether they think the best way to achieve that is the DNC putting the bulk of its money into a long-term building project to catch up with the past 30 years of Republican organizing or the DNC shifting most of its resources into winning a house of Congress this November.
In each of these examples, the participants may or may not share specific ideologies. One may be more to the left than the other - but the thing is, you can't actually tell from those strategic preferences who is more to the left. Yet almost every time I see such a discussion turn into an argument, one person or the other draws inferences about the ideology of their opponent. That's not helpful. It muddies the waters of the argument, and it doesn't move Democrats or other progressives forward.
To use a historical example, through the mid-20th century, racial equality was advanced both in the courts and in mass mobilization. Both strategies achieved enormous, historic advances. This country would be immeasurably worse off had adherents of one strategy taken adherents of the other as their enemies and prevented them from carrying out their work.
This isn't to say we can't fight passionately over what's the best strategy. It's to say that when you start to get into a fight with someone, step back and think about whether the fight is ideological or strategic. If they're arguing that abortion is murder and you're arguing that abortion should be legal and easily available, that there is an ideological disagreement. If they're arguing that the best way for Democrats to win is to go door to door and you're arguing that the best way for Democrats to win is to hire a lot of consultants, that there is a strategic disagreement. By all means, go at it, but understand what it is you're going at.