(I use the term Netroots to apply to the Progressive bloggers who back a confrontational strategy and consistently John Edwards despite the continuing strong evidence that John Edwards is not going to win the nomination. I realize that there are many other Progressive bloggers who support Obama. I use much stronger wording here than is my usual inclination because the arrogance of the Netroots invites and almost requires a strongly worded response.)
Again I find myself puzzled by the continued foolishness of the young and smart Netroots bloggers. How can they keep missing what is so damned obvious to so many others? I've only been following them for about 10 months or so but clear patterns keep emerging that make no sense to me. They are smart enough that they should be learning from their mistakes. Yet they are not.
I'm 43 now, but I too was once young and wildly successful. About the same time Barack Obama was eschewing the money of Wall Street for the fame and glory of the life of a Chicago South Side community organizer, I came to make my way as a trader in Chicago's commodities market. I was very good at it. So good, in fact, that I and my small group of peers became famous. Famous enough that almost 25 years later I could write a book about the experience and that book would be a bestseller. At the time – before the heyday of internet daytrading made boy millionaires as common as the empty seats at a Hillary Clinton rally – I was one of the rare traders who was a millionare at age 21. I was also the very best of that group. So I know what it is like to be young and successful.
Trading and making money – perhaps because it had been too easy – lost its interest so I turned my attention to software development and high-tech startups at age 24. I was pretty good at this, but even though I was as smart as anyone out there I was often wrong in ways that hurt my business. Invariably this was because I was seeing only parts of the puzzle, I was missing critical information that I didn't even know was critical because of my lack of experience. I certainly made every attempt to learn about what I knew was important but I made assumptions at times that cost me dearly. One time, my mistakes cost me control of a company that I had worked to build for eight years from scratch and took public. Ultimately as the new post-coup managers ran the company into bankruptcy it cost me most of my net worth. So I know young and stupid and the pitfalls of assuming you know more than you really do. I also know that it is important to learn from your mistakes quickly if you don't want to repeat them.
It strikes me that the Netroots is making some of the same class of errors that I made as a very successful 20 something and younger 30 something. I suggest the following remedial actions:
- Play the Real Game – kos, Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, etc. all pretend to be experts on politics and what Progressive Democrats should do yet they have never backed a winning candidate for President. In trading they call people like this losers. They may be expert bloggers, expert pundits but they don't seem to know anything at all about social change, movements, or actually getting things done in government. If you look at their actions, it appears they don't seem to realize that the sine qua non of political change is GETTING ELECTED. This should be so damned obvious it does not need to be mentioned. So how can they keep missing this one.
It matters not that Dennis Kucinich has the best plans or that John Edwards policy papers are more "progressive" if these candidates get beaten in the primaries or in the general election. Who was your guy in 2004? Howard Dean. Did he win? Who was your guy in Iowa? John Edwards. Did he win?
Notice any pattern here? Why are you still backing a guy who lost to John Kerry in 2004 and who was not able to win with Kerry in the general election? Don't get me wrong. I like John Edwards. He was my pick in 2004, not Dean. If you had backed him THEN he probably would have won. Instead you rallied for someone who was just pissed off like you seem to be. Didn't work then, won't work now, and your refusal to see the obvious is going to make you net irrelevant in Netroots 2.0 if you don't start getting it soon.
It seems to me that you care more about being right in your original perspective than about winning. That's strikes me as a position not worthy of your obvious talents. You should have learned from your mistakes in 2004 but you didn't. Grow up!
- Reality is Your Friend – Far from the land of wishful thinking and college buddies sitting around talking about what they would do different if they were running from president is a place called the real world. In it, people do things before they become experts. Reality is telling you, yet again, that your choice is losing, yet again.
Even with Edwards down 15 to 20 percentage points in the latest polls against Obama you insist on backing the weaker candidate when a switch to Obama right now offers the chance for the Netroots to bring decisive advantage against Hillary Clinton who you all acknowledge will not be a Progressive change agent. You can make a difference now. Tomorrow your support will be unnecessary and your lack of support will make you irrelevant outsiders.
Pay attention to reality. It has a nasty habit of sticking around despite your most fervent wishful thinking.
In trading, reality in the form of the markets forces anyone who doesn't pay attention out of the game. It takes their money and they quit. Here in the blogosphere you are a bit more fortunate. If your only concern is to be leaders among that small group that already happens to share your misguided perspective you can still claim success with a popular web site and plenty of sycophants. That is fine if your goal is only to have a popular site and fans, and not to actually have a voice in shaping the future.
If you want to actually have some impact in the real world, I strongly suggest you pay attention to this election in New Hampshire. It will make it quite clear that you have been incredibly wrong. Learn from your mistakes here and use your strong voices to unite the Netroots behind Obama and change, show yourselves to be contrite and indicate a bit of humility and you have a chance to become a strong voice in the new America.
- Understand and Respect the Enemy – Despite your claims to strategic insight you betray a clear and persistent weakness that is common among generals that repeatedly LOSE major battles. You do not understand or respect your enemy. You deride them, consider them idiots and immoral greedy bastards, and you fail to understand the true roots of their passionate support. This is your undoing.
In my previous post on this subject, I accused you of being woefully ignorant of Grand Strategy. I was wrong in this assessment. You don't understand basic strategy either. Basic strategy is rooted in an accurate assessment of your strengths and weaknesses AND those of your enemy. You do not understand your enemy because you do not respect your enemy's point of view.
In case you haven't been paying attention. Republicans WON the last two Presidential elections. In 2004, they did this despite your best attempts backing Dean and then Kerry/Edwards. You lost and the Republicans won. Yet you think that the answer is to fight the same way only with more effort this time. This is the strategy of foolish young men who have not yet learned to learn from their defeat.
Bush won in 2004 because most people voted for them. If you want to be on the right side of this election you need to get your heads out of your collective behinds and start trying to understand the people who voted for Bush. You surround yourself with people who think the same way and say the same things but you don't make any attempt to understand the reasons that so many people disagree with you. You just write them off as ignorant fools. They, in turn and in deference to your respect for them, vote your candidates out of the election process. The ways you do this will take of three or four posts so I won't go into too much detail here. Instead, I'll offer a different analogy that compares Obama's strategy to yours. For these purposes, we will examine Alexander the Great's superior battle strategy, like in my previous post.
Consider the Battle of Gaugamela. Two years prior Alexander the Great had beaten Darius III at the battle of Issus closer to the Mediterranean sea. Alexander consolidated his forces and eventually moved towards Persia where he was met by Darius. Here Alexander faced a force that was far larger than his. Having lost the battle of Issus, Darius did not want to make the same mistakes. He had lost at Issus because Alexander boldly used his stronger cavalry penetrate the Persian line of infantry to attack from the flanks and rear. The cavalry had proved decisive.
For Gaugamela, Darius organized an army which would not be susceptible to the same problems. His army was much larger and included many more cavalry and 200 scythed chariots and 15 battle elephants. Darius had even had his army clear the ground so his chariots would be more effective. Most modern estimates place the size of Darius's army at about 90,000 Persians (including 40,000 cavalry) against 47,000 Macedonians (with only 7,000 cavalry). Against a force of this size with almost six times as many cavalry, Alexander faced a serious challenge.
He was smart enough to see the truth of the situation. There was no way he could outflank the Persians this time, and no way he could avoid being outflanked by the much larger contingent of Persian cavalry. He knew Darius would use his cavalry to outflank him and that he would send his elephants and scythed chariots to open up his center. He also knew that he would not be able to stop this.
Alexander respected reality and developed a plan that worked with the reality that existed. He pulled a Jujutsu move and set a trap for Darius. He arranged his flanks so they were set back 45 degrees so that Darius would have to thin his own line in order to flank him. He was counting on the cavalry being too aggressive in the pursuit which would leave the Persian center vulnerable to a direct attack. Alexander waited for the Persians to attack and their line to thin and then attacked from his right in a wedge formation against the Persian center. His attack worked and Darius fled as Alexander's cavalry neared. Upon seeing their king flee the Persian army fled in disarray.
Now how does this relate to Obama?
Obama knows that the entrenched interests – which have been blocking Healthcare reform, education reform, energy reform and pretty much any needed substantive change – are too powerful to take on in a frontal attack. He also knows that they will fight hard and confront him directly if they are confronted directly. In the ensuing media battle, it will be hard to counteract the effect of the vastly superior financial resources of the huge corporate interests whose profits are at risk. He is looking at the situation realistically.
So he's laying out a trap for them, the perfect trap: bright sunlight.
Consider healthcare. Obama wants to put the whole dialog on CSPAN. What do you think will happen when insurance company executives attempt to explain to the American people the service they render for the money they receive? We Americans pay 10% to12% of our healthcare costs for Administrative costs compared with more efficient systems. Many single-payer countries pay as little as 1% to 2%. Besides having to fight for the coverage we pay for, what exactly do we get for the additional 10%? A little sunlight won't hurt the progressive position, and this is just one problem with healthcare. Pharmaceutical companies are another big beneficiary of the current complex system and another target for sunlight.
Obama's plan is superior to yours because it respects reality.
Finally, I saw a post from Matt Stoller on Open Left and I just had to comment:
Anyway, I feel a bit like I'm sitting in the middle of the dot com boom right now, with people telling me I don't understand the new economy which operates by different rules. Profits are no longer important, there are boundariless (sic) organizations, and it's going to be a long prosperous boom with no more business cycles. And I'm the curmodgen (sic) saying that the rules of politics, the nasty and hyperpartisan right-wing, have not been repealed.
Great analogy only you've got the parts wrong. You are – just like the traders and entrepreneurs then who displayed an arrogant disrespect for history – one of the young idealists who have seized upon the wrong truths. Obama is the one who is bringing the debate back to where it belongs, reality.
I was there in Silicon Valley working in high-tech during the 1999 and 2000 so I witnessed the insanity first hand. The young twenty somethings who had never witnessed a stock market bubble were the ones convinced they were right despite the evidence. That's your position right now. A frontal attack against a superior foe has never worked in history yet you keep insisting that it will work this time. You are ones who are ignoring history, not Obama's supporters.
Really finally, Chris Bowers of Open Left has just posted a beauty titled: "Democratic Sheeple" which contains:
OK, I admit those reasons are just insulting. Anyway, leaving that detour in the post aside, here are some actual reasons:
- Democratic primary voters who were not paying close attention to the campaign during 2007 tune in for new around the start of the early primaries. Candidates surging to victory are shown smiling while wearing flowing white robes in front and standing in front of huge crowds of cheerful worshippers while, by way of contrast, the media might as well give out wedgies and noogies to the candidates who lose. So, for people just tuning in, the winners of the early states just look better.
- Some Democratic primary voters like a candidate, but don't want to vote for him or her if they think he or she can't win the election. They do, after all, want their votes to matter, and so they won't throw those votes away on longshots.
- Some Democrats don't care about the primary, and just want to support whoever wins against the Republican.
These are the basic reasons for momentum, but really, are they any less indicative of the soul-slurping prsence of sheeple? The first reason is people basically falling hook, line and sinker for distorted media coverage. The second makes some sense in a multi-candidate field, but why would anyone think that way about either Obama or Clinton this time around? Those two candidates have been the national leaders for the past year, and the national media has consistently played up an Obama vs. Clinton two-way campaign narrative. As such, if you preferred Obama to Clinton, even if you thought Obama couldn't not defeat Clinton, I fail to see why wouldn't you vote for Obama anyway, since that is the only choice that matters in a two-way primary.
The third reason is pretty much the definition of acting like a bunch of sheeple, although at least it is a rational form of behavior. I hope that is actually the main cause for momentum among Democratic primary voters, because every other option is not only acting like a bunch of sheeple, but acting like a bunch of irrational sheeple. And yes, before you say anything, I am quite away of how elitist this post is.
Yes Chris, this is insulting and indicative of the narrow-mindedness of your perspective.
So Netroots take notice. You have lost again and will lose this nomination again. You better start paying attention to your mistakes or you will find that even your small group of followers starts paying attention to other voices as they too get tired of losing battles because of your poor strategy advice.
(Cross-posted from www.thestatewerein.com)