Consider this: Up With Pragmatism!
No, that's not a parting insult, that's just the nerdiest rallying cry I could come up with.
But lend me your, uh, eyes for a moment, and I'll give you something that might just either make you consider staying for a while, or send you off better armed to do your thing elsewhere.
Of course, I prefer that you stay, because everybody hates training their replacement. But it looks like that's what we're gonna be forced to do either way.
In another one of my annoying "process diaries" yesterday, I got some encouraging comments from some folks who are beginning to actually derive some benefit from these exercises I go through. One such comment inspired a response I'd like to adapt here, as parting advice to those who are on their way out the door.
Now, my pragmatism fairly regularly puts me at odds with some of this site's more outspoken progressives and activists, but pragmatism is not the antithesis of progressivism or activism. The way I look at it, it should be the very soul of activism.
It will take some time, but I think there's much good that can come from making a point of sharing knowledge about the way things work, by which I mean the things that many here dismiss as pointless formalism. There's a great disdain for process among many people here, because they see it as a mechanism for keeping activists out of the club rooms, so business as usual can be done. That is, in fact, one of the many uses of procedure. But there are others. It's a tool, and its powers have many applications. But it's just a tool. One might say, procedure doesn't kill people. People kill people.
I prefer to see a knowledge of process not as the lock on the club room door, but as the key to the club room lock, and a method by which activists can become achievers.
Little by little, interest in these process stories has been growing. And one at a time, the activist-oriented progressives here may hopefully learn something that helps them put a finer point on their activism, and get more of what they want.
When we wanted a public vote on the "DeLay Rule," one activist suggestion was to flood Speaker Hastert with petitions demanding such a vote. Now, it turns out that there's simply no mechanism by which even the Speaker of the House can call a vote in the House on a rule of the Republican Conference, a body over which the House exercises no direct jurisdiction. My suggestion was instead to bring our own legislation to the floor that would address the issue as a matter of the Rules of the House, over which the House does have jurisdiction.
The petitions have their place, of course. It was an excellent list-building tool, helped keep the issue in the public eye, and really, why not annoy Hastert? And let's face it, a lot more things actually happened in the real world as a result of the petitions than as a result of the legislation I proposed. My point is only that the potential upside of my proposal is much greater, because it is itself a vehicle that is capable of achieving the desired end, and need only have its key turned by the right hand.
That's where pragmatism meets activism. And it's the lesson I'd hoped to impart with my boring process stories.
But now, you're all leaving.
My hope was that if one of the activists who's usually inclined to oppose my pragmatic approach took a time out to absorb what I flatter myself to think is the greater message of my stupid diaries, it might just light a new bulb over his or her head, and he or she might pass on that message to another. And another. And another.
When that has happened over and over and over again, and there's finally a critical mass of activist, grassroots Democrats who know how to think about, analyze, and design a pragmatic plan of action to get what they want, we'll begin to see fewer and fewer "I give up on the Democratic Party forever" diaries, because fewer and fewer people will constantly be bumping up against "the man," who's keeping them down with "bullshit procedure". Instead, they'll begin to win some fights -- not all, but some -- because they'll have learned the same procedure as "the man," and be able to use it just as effectively, if not moreso.
Then, we'll all live happily ever after. Until the next group comes along, looking to put this group's heads on pikes for the crime of insiderism.
So, remember, whether here or in some other party, stay in school.