Yesterday, I participated in a prolonged multi-diary furball, in which questions of who Democrats are and what we stand for were central to the discourse.
I suppose I could have gone the tactful, diplomatic route...eased into discourse with questions here, some points there, some links over there, then built up a case. And there were compelling merits to that approach, given the obvious tension in the morning air, when I first perused the diary list and the posts therein.
So, naturally, I just had to go the other way. :)
Thus, I wrote Get The Whiners Out of The Way of the Winners, and received, as intended, a highly polarized response. People either loved it or hated it.
My thinking was: Let's have this internal war now, right now, rather than die the death of a thousand second-guesses between now and November.
More importantly: Let's make the peace among us now, rather than die the death of ten thousand recriminations between now and November.
How to do this: I propose a mid-term convention. I have no idea how to fund it, how to organize it, where to place it, what to do at it. I kind of asking for help, here.
But I do know this: We really need to talk. Not just Kossacks at a supersized version of YearlyKos, not just the netroots, not just the party activists. Everyone we can think of. A real, bona fide grassroots convention, along the lines of the granges of the late 1800s (if memory serves). Raucous, noisome, feisty affairs, a true crucible of democracy, out of which comes an alloy, stronger than the sum of the parts.
If we're courageous enough to scrap with one another in plain sight of our enemies, surely we are brave enough to become something we demonstrably are not: one voice, one message, from many voices and many messages.
Or...we can carry our various and broken pet hobby-horses around in pieces on our backs, and pride ourselves on our commitment to personal and parochial causes. Your call.