I've been chuckling lately at my TV screen and my newspaper as I hear and read the way pundits, elected officials and editorialists use the word "netroots" like they use the word "assholes".
I suppose it's part of their arrogant charm. They just seem so clearly dismayed by the idea that a citizen army of participants in our democracy could fully fund the Obama campaign, organize its victory from the ground up, and then **GASP** have the audacity to exercise influence over cabinet choices and policy directions, not to mention the current and future makeup of Congress.
So much the better. Their arrogance will be their undoing.
Take the recent case of Obama's supposed first choice to head the CIA, John Brennan, who had to withdraw his name from consideration after "liberal bloggers" and the members of the Netroots blogosphere loudly voiced their opposition to the pick.
As per the Associated Press, the Obama camp was responding to pressure from, well, us:
A person familiar with the discussions said Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over Web logs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, which critics call torture.
The moaning and groaning over Brennan's name being taken out of contention has already begun on both sides of the aisle, although it completely misses the point. They have complained about there not being another candidate for the position who is both qualified and untainted by Bush adminstration policies on torture and detainment. Read that again. The problem, according to them, is that there isn't another person qualified for the position that is acceptable to us. Seriously, netroots, there's just no one else!
In a recent Newsweek article Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Hosenball? Really?) made just such a suggestion:
The big question is now who else might Obama select for CIA director (or director of National Intelligence) that does not have similar baggage? Consider Brennan's co-leader on the transition team for the intelligence agencies—Jamie Miscik. She too served at the agency as deputy director for intelligence until 2004, during a period the CIA was colossally wrong about Iraqi weapons of destruction; and actively helped the president make his case for war. Another name that has been mentioned is John McLaughlin, a well-respected intelligence professional who nonetheless was the No. 2 in command during both the run-up to the war in Iraq and the approval of harsh interrogation techniques. Yet a third possibility that has been floated is allowing Michael Hayden, the current CIA director, to stay on the job for a while. But that too seems a non-starter: Obama voted against Hayden's confirmation to be CIA director because of his prior role, as director of the National Security Agency, in implementing the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. A spokesman for Hayden said today the director "serves at the pleasure of the president. If he's asked to stay, he'd consider it, given his respect for the people he leads and his obvious interest in the mission of intelligence. But he's not hanging around waiting for word."
Actually, the problem to ME and I expect to YOU is that the CIA has become an instrument of torture and injustice in the hands of an unconstitutional administration. The problem is that our recently elected government has some of its members telling us there's absolutely no one who's hands are not dirty, simply no one available anywhere in government, the public or the private sector with the qualifications to run the CIA who hasn't been utterly compromised on issues as black and white as torture. If true, then I would suggest that it is high time, to completely gut the CIA and start over, or perhaps dismantle it altogether, if we are at all serious about restoring this country to something like an example of democracy and humanity for the world, and that it should be a priority of the Obama adminstration to do so, even if for no other reason than it is a priority to us, the Netroots. Yes, the assholes who got him elected. We do not want a $30 billion government agency committing torture, detainment and rendition in our name, with our money. More importantly, I would have to argue that, in our alleged democracy, asking our government to become more responsible, humane and, well, democratic, is NOT an unreasonable request.
Brad Friedman at The Guardian sums up what may be happening in regards to the new government's unresponsiveness quite well:
And, from where I sit, Obama's votes in the Senate on everything from immunity for telecommunications companies, continual funding for misbegotten wars and even trillion dollar accountability-free bailouts made pretty damned clear that he was talking about change from the current administration, and not necessarily anything more than that.
The newly revitalised Democratic majority in Congress shows few signs of changing its old ways, either. They have already squandered two years of leadership, giving the finger to those who put them in power, and otherwise correctly calculating that even the disappointed base would have nowhere else to turn this November.
It's not uncommon for elected officials to neglect the will of thier constituencies soon after the election, but given the role of the Netroots in Obama's win, and that of many new members of Congress, it's particularly egregious of them to want to ignore us now. And if I have come to know my Netroots in this past year, we won't let them.
It's not like I'm now a critic of Obama or the new Congress that has yet to even take office or anything overly reactionary like that, as I fully understand we're not going to win every progressive battle no matter who we elect. But I'm not going to shrink from criticizing the new government if I begin to feel ignored.
As an internet community of activists, we need our own "change.gov" effort. We need to be as loud, as persistent, and yes, as angry over the next four years as we were during the election cycle. This election convinced America that grassroots organizing and the power of the small donor was for real, and to be taken seriously. Now we have to convince our new government of the same thing, that change has indeed come to Washington, and that the old rules they are used to playing by will no longer always trump the popular will.
Yes it will be inconvenient for them. Yes, it's going to irk some Congressmen and White House aides at times. Yes, the punditry's collective head may explode, and all because there are new levers of power in our political equation, and for the first time in a long time, perhaps the first time ever, they do not control all of them.
Let's do our best to remind them of that, daily.
I'm proud to be a part of the Netroots.