The left has certainly been whipping itself into a fury over the past week, with much gnashing of teeth over whether Sen. Lieberman "deserved" his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. The countless diaries on the issue are too many to mention, and while I think the important part was that Lieberman did a horrible job as chair of that committee, that battle isn't the point of this posting. What struck me was how much President-elect Obama was working behind the scenes to make sure that the support was there at that closed-door, secret-ballot meeting amongst the Democratic caucus for Lieberman to retain the chair's position.
My problem is that despite the public reporting of this back-room effort by the Obama side to help Lieberman, there's been little associated effort by the Obama side to the 'roots. Where's the even passing attempt at some sort of explanation? In short, where's our FDR statement?
It's a pretty simple premise: where's been the public appeal to the left, especially the leftish blogosphere?
As a bit of background, one of the most common FDR quotes around these parts has been this one:
"I agree with you, I want to do it. Now make me do it."
Other than the recent conference call between Gov. Dean and some selected bloggers (which actually wasn't about Lieberman per se; see the FireDogLake entry here), I have a serious problem with the lack of outreach by the Obama people to us, the left-of-center folks who worked the trenches, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and -- not most importantly, but importantly enough -- donated heavily to his Presidential campaign.
We're smart people, I'd argue at least on average. Heck, some of us might not be even all that liberal in our political leanings, but rather agree with Stephen Colbert that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Above all else, we as a community value discussion, confrontational but amicable opinions, and an understanding that our intelligence should be the prime actor in making decisions. I even had a piece of flair on my Facebook site which proudly stated, "This time I want a smart President."
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks recently commented on his show that President-elect Obama had crossed a new threshold for him personally, namely that Obama was possibly smarter than Cenk, and as such, should be given the benefit of the doubt on some of his new decisions. With all due appreciation for Cenk's work, I disagree in part. This past election season, we collectively spent millions of man-hours and donated millions of dollars in support of a candidate who we believed would finally "call it as it is" with us. Most of us are more than willing to use those same tools to use again to guard Obama's back, whether that means calling Congress, writing more Letters to the Editors, or some other grassroots assistance. However, doing so will require a certain amount of two-way trust and communication. By relying on the public media to make their arguments to the public during the Lieberman kerfluffle, the Obama camp not only failed to use its inherent support advantage, but also gave a collective dismissive wave to us all; he turned a positive into a negative. To go back to the FDR statement, there needed to be an attempt to not only make us understand, but actually believe in the decision.
Honestly, it wouldn't have taken much for us. Say that Obama got some kind of political chit in return for his support, which would've also cemented the deal publicly with Lieberman. Say that he apologized to you in private, which would've at least been embarrassing for Lieberman. It really doesn't matter what he said, as long as the dialogue was there. Now, I know that there's something to be said for not disclosing things in front of your opponents, but this really wasn't that sort of case. A simple posting by the President-elect here (or somewhere else) saying, in effect, "You all may not agree with my decision on this matter, but here are X (, Y,) and Z reasons for which I made it. Regardless of whether you agree with that decision, I hope that you at least understand it. I hope that you will be with me as we continue to make these decisions that affect our future."
There will be lots of battles in the near future, whether it's health care coverage or some other incipient public policy "third rail" that the President-elect feels that he needs to touch for the sake of the country. Because of who we are, we'll likely be there for him, but -- and it's an important "but" -- we could be there in greater numbers, in greater support, if we believed that there was indeed some two-way communication. For a candidate who seemed to understand this during the campaign, the tone-deafness is, well, deafening, especially when it's so needless.
The Villagers will try to make you think that your left is a given, that you don't need us any longer. To be sure, that's probably correct -- even if we wanted to put one forward, the soonest we could put out a candidate against you from the left is in 2011 for the 2012 election. But that's missing the point entirely. You have a base, an excited group of people across all age, ethnic, and other demographic lines who believe in you and would work on your behalf again.
Don't waste it by ignoring us. Believe me, we'll be watching.