"I Want to Relieve" - that was what the circus poster hanging in my best friend's bedroom in high school blared out, showing an elephant pissing on a very big tent. An updated, political version of this poster would have the same words over a photograph of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) -- and he'd be the big tent.
The elephant would be Dave Sirota.
I've written a bit about Sirota, including a majorly satirical piece that rubbed him the wrong way. In my misspent time studying his screeds -- such as "Barack Obama Is The Almighty -- Bow Down To Him" -- it became obvious that this is a person who wants to do the right thing and has genuinely strong convictions, however misguided. But he also seems to believe that the reason our country has such challenges is because his side of every issue has not trumped everyone else's (I've gone back and forth wondering whether this is a sincere belief or merely a justification for overly cautious behavior, but I'm not a psychoanalyst, so I have no idea). And as the "Bow Down To Him" entry shows, he can get pretty pissy about it.
The problem with this outlook is that he fundamentally misunderstands why we are at this moment in history. Yes, forty-five million Americans are uninsured, and millions more underinsured not because low-income health advocates and the insurance industry haven't sat down together and sung Kumbaya. And yes, it's because, unlike every other industrialized country in the world, we have a government that has been bribed into allowing the insurance industry to profiteer off sick people. It's true that our global warming problem did not happen because environmentalists and the auto industry refused to hug each other. Sirota is correct in observing that it happened because the auto industry has bought off enough politicians to make sure we don't increase fuel efficiency standards.
But there is no magic bullet for the minority far left. Put another way, unless our side can actually win elections, there is no way out of many of our most pressing problems, as Sirota seems to believe. Why? Because our most pressing problems are zero-sum: someone controls power by being duly elected, and someone doesn't, and to change the status quo means Sirota might need to start thinking about that big tent he's so busy pissing on. And if you don't believe me, just take a quick look at history.
We didn't get food safety laws by getting food processing companies to be nice to regular folks - we got it because we had Democratic congresses and Democratic presidents who would make real the change that Upton Sinclair dreamed of. Women didn't get the right to vote because male politicians decided to be nice - they got the right to vote because a majority of voters came to believe they were entitled to it. The civil rights reforms didn't happen because Lyndon Johnson just one day decided to champion the Civil Rights Act - it happened because he cunningly masterminded a majority vote by Democrats, of all people, to change law of the land.
I believe somewhere in his heart, Dave Sirota knows this reality -- that we have to actually win elections, instead of just getting self-righteous about our ideals -- and struggles with it. As Matt Yglesias writes in American Prospect:
[Sirota] pioneered a bracing, take-no-prisoners prose style that combines overstatement with rhetorical flair. I once disagreed with him on the utility of trying to get the left to imitate the lemming-like party discipline of the right only to be met with the retort that I was an "insulated, election-losing" pundit who "likely hasn’t worked on a winning campaign, and from the confines of a cushy job in Washington, likely never has to experience the severe economic challenges ordinary Americans face on a daily basis."
The real world is a place designed to drub that hubris out of Sirota - the part about being an "insulated, election-losing" pundit. In the far left, he is surrounded by old political daydreamers who likely try to tamp down any of his inspiring, coalition-building spirit for fear they might offend left-wing shibboleths. That culture is at odds with Sirota's earlier career in the House, where he applied himself to the productive, responsible exercise of power. This might explain why, for instance, after strongly opposing Obama again and again, he disingenuously proclaims a dramatic change of heart -- that "I Want To Believe." Consider the contradiction in the second paragraph of his entry: Sirota says it's "obvious" that Obama has "genuinely strong convictions," yet says that since Sirota is "no psychoanalyst" he "can't be sure." He sounds like a concern troll right out of the gate.
Ultimately, Sirota will have to make a very important decision - one that none of the Kossacks will ever see, much less understand. He will have to decide whether he wants to offer up pie-in-the-sky platitudes about nebulous far-left "movements" and actually reveal and defend his own choice for President(!), or whether he wants to really change the world -- get out of Iraq, and achieve Universal Health Care, and start solving the problem of global warming -- by actually HELPING ELECT a Democratic President, instead of fragging fellow Democrats who don't agree with him 100%.
And as I neglected to say at the beginning, I want you to believe that I want to believe he will make the right choice -- because I, like him, am a concern troll. I no more want to believe that he will make the right choice than Sirota wants to believe in Barack Obama.
UPDATE: Just for the record, Dave Sirota does not support John Edwards for President.
ANOTHER UPDATE: My mistake. Dave Sirota does support John Edwards for President.