One of the reactions to my user name I find most humorous is the gawd knows how many times I am accused of being intolerant (you know pup tent, et al.) because I criticize or disagree with certain positions held by politicians, pundits, bloggers and kossacks. And from all sides - from impeachment proponents, to Webb fans, to Lieberman defenders (they used to hang out her, believe it or not.)
It boggles my mind that to some folks a big tent party means singing kumbaya as long as we see a D. That's not it at all. A Big Tent Party means supporting the Ds in elections, all types of Ds, but it does not mean we do not criticize. That we do not hold folks accountable. It means we fight for what we believe IN THE TENT, knowing any D is better than an R. And we hold our Ds to account.
If you have read me on the subject of the Big Tent, you know that I am a huge proponent of primaries for EVERYBODY. From Reid to Kennedy to Feingold to Durbin to Pelosi to Lieberman to Harman and to Taucher. Primaries are where we can fight for ideals to hold sway in the Party and to hold our representatives to account. To me, electoral accountability is not just on the day of the general election, accountability to the Party, to us the Dem base, comes on primary day. Most incumbents are not vulnerable of course but that is not important to the principle of accountability. Ted Kennedy is not vulnerable for a reason. Ellen Taucher will be for a reason. But no one should get a free pass.
But once the primary is over, we are all Ds. And we support all Ds. At least that is how I look at it. Does this mean SYFP during the general election? Nah. First of all, it ain't going to work anyway. Folks are not going to. But it does mean being cognizant that our election system is binary. None of the above does not win elections. And it means being realistic about Political Space Time Curvature:
What [Crashing The Gate is] talking about is a Democratic Party that is committed to its core values and also is a Big Tent -- the type of party required to be a majority party in the United States. They are arguing for a party that has defined its values while at the same time NOT requiring lockstep agreement on all the issues across the country. It will be a party where Ben Nelson will stress his fight for working Americans and contrast that with the Republican Party's neglect of the common man, but also a party where a Ned Lamont will battle with Joe Lieberman over the Iraq War and where Ted Kennedy will fight for civil rights. Much may divide Ben Nelson, Ned Lamont and Ted Kennedy, but their core values, values of the Democratic Party, pull them together. And each should stress those values in ways that make sense for each of them in their respective political situations. And in this way a national Democratic brand can be created that appeals in all sections of the country.
How did Dems win in 2006?
This was the intellectual battle the Netroots, led by one Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, has fought with the DC Establishment for 4 years:
While Brownstein is right about the belief from most of us that the right politics demands confrontation with Bush and contrast with the Republicans, I think he is wrong to believe that this approach alienates independent swing voters. If anything, the alignment that Indys are having with Dems in most polling shows that it is exactly the opposite. That this approach is ATTRACTING swing voters. This is where the fundamental divide between the DLC Centrists and us lies. Where we think the swing voter will land. Take my friend Ed Kilgore of the DLC for instance. Ed is a sharp thinker and writer, but Ed lacks confidence in our Democratic ideals:
[S]everal other centrist party strategists worry that the hyperpartisan turn-out-the-base strategy that many online activists demand won't work for Democrats, because polls consistently show that more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal.
"We are more of a coalition party than they are," says Ed Kilgore, the policy director for the DLC. "If we put a gun to everybody's head in the country and make them pick sides, we're not likely to win."
Ed, this is simply not true. And once you realize that, you will see why we are right and you are wrong. When we make folks pick sides agains the GOP Extremism of Dobson and the committed support to a policy of making sure the government leaves you alone in your private decisions advocated by Liberals, they will pick our side, in droves. Don't fear that fight.
And that is the real lesson, at least for me, of Markos and dailykos.
Are we forgetting these lessons? I fear we are. The Netroots must not forget this fight, how we won it and how we must continue to win it in our Democratic Party.
How was this internal struggle carried out in our Big Tent? By Crashing The Gates:
[Michael Crowley] explains that "Democrats say there's a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders....Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates."
Update by kos: Good. Let people think that. People have always been naysayers. Instead of getting riled up about, we'll keep doing what we're doing. And at the end of 2006 we'll be able to take stock of the situation and declare, definitively, that the conservative blogosphere is merely a redundant extension of their noise machine.
We fight for what we believe in in our Big Tent. And then we come together as Democrats. And we do this every day, every week, and every year. That is the importance of the Netroots. It is why, together, we accomplished what we did these past years.
STFU? Never. Ever.