I have been reading in utter fascination the conflicts stirred up by Markos, Kid Oakland, Hunter, et al.
Obviously, we have a problem in trying to mediate conflicting interest groups within our coalition. I think we need to focus with diamond clarity on 1 goal:
Attack Republicans!
Well, you say, that begs the question: how can you attack Republicans without mediating these special interest conflicts?
The answer, I think, is to focus on the attack whenever we are tempted or seduced into veering off into theories of nation building.
Two sources keep tempting progressives into fighting amongst themselves:
- GOP attacks: the most fundamental gambit in Rove's arsenal is to attack "us" in some way to get the discussion OFF of the GOP's disasters. I want to stress here that even more important than divide and conquer is the trope of deflection--if the discussion is about Dem "issues" and Dems have to defend positions one way or another, then no one is talking about GOP issues.
- Dem internal conflicts: the groups quarrelling amongst each other, as witnessed in these recent conflicts on KOS.
Now, please don't think I am pleading with us all to play nice. The conflicts I see played out in these threads are real and they are significant. And the mediations will take time to work out. In some sense they will never be worked out. Democracy is the place where, as Madison had it, the factions can play out there conflicts forever.
And I see legitimacy on both sides. I hear the serious concerns of the minority interest groups--in Madison's terms, factions--who insist on standing up for themselves knowing that many other in the coalition won't. And I hear the call for discipline and the insistence on Real Politik that knows that interest group concerns tend to hold us back in our fight.
But I would say this: mediating that conflict will not happen any time soon. And in the meantime, there is something on which we can all instantly agree:
We loathe the GOP. And we want to fight them.
Over at MyDD, Chris Bowers recently made reference to an old post by Jerome that seems appropos (http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/1/64444/83014). Read this 'graph:
"There is also a third part of the Democratic Party, arriving much more recently, and with whom I associate my partisan leanings. It is a movement distinctly non-ideological, for whom the battle is not within the party, but against the Republican Party and stopping their agenda. A united opposition takes partisanship as its calling. That's what a minority party's does; they do not govern, they do not dictate by majority maneuver the terrain on which to battle. Minorities oppose the majority, and out of that opposition, eventually, an alternative arises."
I submit that this, right now, is who we are. We are an OPPOSITION PARTY--or we should be.
As an opposition party, grand thoughts about "what we would do" are unrealistic distractions. Digby is frequently very good about this. In a post yesterday about Iraq (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_08_21_digbysblog_archive.html#112509138675758231), Digby's theme is that any Democratic discussion of the war needs to understand that it has zero chance of being enacted, so its only real value is political. What we say about the war ought to shaped primarily by the motive of framing the failure of GOP policy.
I think that's a hugely important lesson. Whatever vision we have about war, about Iraq, about the Middle East, none of it has any possibility of being real UNTIL WE WOUND THE GOP MACHINE!
But we forget this. The old Dems who remember having power with regard to policies forget that they no longer have any. The left-style "interest groups" have never known power, so their ideas are just that--ideas. In a fundamental sense, we lack the humility we need in order to do the job we need to do. We refuse to understand that we have no power over policy until we break the GOP machine, so we luxuriate in our theories and dreams and relieve the GOP oif having to deal with our attacks.
What do we complain of all the time about the Dem suits in DC? We complain that they do not understand how to act like an opposition party. Well, I think "we" in the netroots are better at this than the suits are, but we, too, forget.
Everything we do right now must be focused on attacking the GOP. And yet, right there one can find the grit in the gearbox.
The standard "real politik" critique of interest groups is the notion that "extreme" interests prevent the D P from winning elections.
The standard interest group critique is that moving to the center betrays the people concerns that energize the party.
Yadda, yadda, ... we all know those riffs.
OK, here's a way to unify those concerns: in all you do, whether you are a centrist liberal hawk or a tree-hugging green or a gay pride activist or a women's rights pro-choicer ... whatever you are ... do one thing:
FOCUS ON HOW THE GOP IS HURTING PEOPLE!
First, that isn't hard to do. Just focus your activities and discourse on GOP sins in your area. I know--the Dems have sins too, and yadda, yadda. But for right now, SERVE YOUR INTEREST with ALL YOUR PASSION--but focus that passion on attacking Republicans.
Second, if you do that, you connect with the thing that unites us: opposition to the GOP.
"But how is that a rich enough, significant enough principle to serve as an ideological base for our party? Won't that turn us into another GOP? What will happen to our diverse interests? Won't we become our enemy in the instant that we preach?"
Well, there are of course dangers. But let me translate this principle into political ideology.
The GOP today is the enemy because its project is fundamentally anti-democratic. It wants to eliminate the obstacles that prevent one faction from gaining complete power.
In Federalist 10, Madison explained his theory that human society ALWAYS produces factions. The factions conflict and, over time, one faction begins to gain the upper hand. It then oppresses the other factions. The trick is to mantain as large a group of factions as possible so as to decrease the odds of one faction gaining undue control.
This principle is the principle today's GOP is attacking.
And the results of its attack are universal across the spectrum of American interest groups, many of which are represented in our coalition. In every case, it is the human being in a disempowered faction being oppressed and exploited by a corrupt GOP. Gays. Women. Working poor. Family farmers. SOldiers. Iraqis. Independent small businesses. The earth itself. All are being ground up by a faction reaching for hegemony.
That play for hegemony must be stopped. That is our task, our mission.
Now let's be clear. If and when we "win," we will NOT all become reconciled allies. We represent many factions who have conflicts with each other. If and when we win, we will face the task of mediating those conflicts sufficiently to govern. There will be winners and losers. There will be a perpetual churn of agitation among the factions. This is what Madison envisioned, the only hope he saw for effectively mediating the tendency of factions to war against each other.
And this has in fact happened in American history. Look at the post-war era, the one that the right turns to so nostalgically. That epoch was the lowest time for thew people driving the GOP ship today. It was a time when a variety of factions jockeyed within an overall consensus: the union bloc, the civil rights bloc, the farm bloc, the small business bloc, the corporate bloc. Obviously, the mix did not always result in equality or justice. African and Native Americans didn't do so well, women were only being born as a political force, and gays did horribly.
But the fact was that a healthy churn of factional interests did produce healthy policy through political and economic mediation. No one group, not even the corporations, had hegemony. It was possible for groups to have factional successes. ANd, in a broad sense, American society was healthy insofar as those factions could achieve prosperity for themselves. What a great economy you have, for example, when people throught the economy have surplus income to spend.
That inter-factional churn produced (with the help of broadcast--that is multi-interest--media) consensus that made America feel comfortable and unified.
But today, that churn is suppressed beneath the GOP's near-hegemony. ALL factions are hurting except for the corporations. (Even the religious poor are hurting--they just won;t let themselves see hoe the GOP is doing it to them.) The whole principle of multi-factional churn is under severe assault.
So, in the context of all of that, what do "we" need to do? We Kossaks. We progressives. We net-rooters. We Democrats. We environmentalists, gays, pro-choice advocates, peaceniks, moderate hawks, fiscal responsibility hawks, union advocates ... make the list as long as you will. Where do we stand and what must we do?
I think we need to honestly face and ACCEPT the fact that we have conflicts, real, serious conflicts. We even have to accept a certain amount of passionate "discussion" of those conflicts. I hold no blame for Kos or the Kid or Hunter or anyone speaking up.
We even need to accept the fact that those conflicts will remain with us. If we ever achieve power, the passionate and conflicted mediation of those conflicts will be the living matter of our acts of governing.
But we need to get crystal clear on the fact that ALL OF OUR INTERESTS ARE ENDANGERED BY TODAY'S GOP and that what we are fighting for is the principle of multiple factionalism.
We therefore need to at some point stop quarrelling among ourselves over the division of the loot when we haven't even gotten inside the bank yet. We need to focus on the enemy.
Every single one of our interest groups under fire from the GOP. Let us become a dedicated, focussed opposition party. FUnnel all your anger and all your passion into the serious harm that the GOP is doing to you right now. Talk about that, among yourselves, among your family and friends, to the media, wherever you are.
Remember, the GOP built an entire political juggernaut on the basis of a backnlash narrative that said, primarily with little evidence, "The Dems are killing you." They started with that message and they are still on that message.
The fact that they never got beyond that message explains why they are utterly incapable of governing. I hope one day we can get beyond the anti-GOP message and do far better.
But when we theorize about governing, when we argue about shares of the kingdom to be, when we look past the war that we must fight and win, we weaken ourselves. We cheat reality with fantasies of a better world and lose focus on the task before us today.
KOS, quit bellyaching about interest groups in the coalition. You need them. Focus on the GOP that has to be defeated.
(Gennerally, of course, you do that.)
Everybody else, do the same. As Hunter says, KOS ain't the only one doing it.
But don't feel you have to give up or suppress your passions for peace or gay rights or abortion rights or whatever.
Just channel your anger against the real enemy: the GOP. The GOP is trying to terminate the claims to representation and justice of all but one faction.
Let's fight them in everything we do.
Oppose, progressives, oppose. Help teach the Dem Party to be a party of opposition. Those are the orders of the day.