Matt Yglesias says progressives have failed:
I got a great email today from a self-described “well-educated, politically literate, 30-something person with a job and a kid” who spends “let’s say 45 minutes a day that I spend thinking about politics” [she reads the Klein Group of self proclaimed "wonk" bloggers] and who had a great question:
I’m starting to realize that I am part of the problem as well. I don’t actually DO anything besides read and fulminate in the quiet of my own home.
Yglesias agrees that it is her fault:
She wants to know what she should actually be doing to try to create change, since “[w]atching Jon Stewart tell me things I already know in funny voices is starting to seem hollow.”
This has become one of my refrains when talking to people in person. If you’re a progressive and you feel that the political system isn’t doing what you want, it’s misguided to look at this as a personal failure of elected officials. It’s, if anything, a personal failure of you and people like you. Justice and equality doesn’t just happen because it’s nice, people need to make it happen. If it’s not happening, then its advocates are failing.
I think this is a rather healthy way of looking at the problem. It does, however, utterly contradict the Klein Group view that "the Left" is wrong to criticize Obama it seems to me. Yglesias appears to urge progressives to criticize Obama - especially to friends and acquaintances, if I understand Yglesias' point correctly.
I consider Yglesias the latest convert to my "pols are pols and do what they do" philosophy:
As citizens and activists, our allegiances have to be to the issues we believe in. I am a partisan Democrat it is true. But the reason I am is because I know who we can pressure to do the right thing some of the times. Republicans aren't them. But that does not mean we accept the failings of our Democrats. There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues.
And this is true in every context I think. Be it pressing the Speaker or the Senate majority leader, or the new hope running for President. There is nothing more important we can do. Nothing. It's more important BY FAR than "fighting" for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you.
In the middle of primary fights, citizens, activists and bloggers like to think their guy or woman is different. They are going to change the way politics works. They are going to not disappoint. In short, they are not going to be pols. That is, in a word, idiotic.
Yes, they are all pols. And they do what they do. Do not fight for pols. Fight for the issues you care about. That often means fighting for a pol of course. But remember, you are fighting for the issues. Not the pols.