Well it's late at night and I shouldn't be writing since I have a medical appointment and a trip to the recording studio tomorrow morning, but...
I'm frankly a bit distraught tonight, about what I feel has happened over the past few months here, and I gotta do a brain dump. There won't be much self-editing here.
First, all of this is predicated on the assumption that the netroots conversations here actually have an effect on the overall media narrative and what gets done in Washington. And maybe that's a lousy assumption. It's quite possible we're all just yelling up each other's assholes here and getting just pissed off at the smell. What was that I said about self-editing?
But assuming that things here, you know, matter, here's my beef.
We've really fucked up our own Overton Window here, that's what I think. We've basically put our fist through it and now we've got nothing but bloody fists. Let me start with a comparison I've made before. You're going to buy a car. Do you bring your mother-in-law along? The one that harps at you about how you're not getting a better price, the one that isn't reasonable, the one that basically messes up all the leverage you hope to have in your car negotiations?
In my mind, the Republicans are the car salesmen, the Democrats are the car buyers, and we're the freaking mother-in-law here.
First of all - we overestimate our own sophistication. How many people here are making loud arguments, feeling reinforced of their own certainty due to the size of their soapboxes? And how many of these people are actually correct? I mean, there are a lot of soapboxes here, and we can't all be right.
Second, where's the accountability? How are people really going to get called out for being wrong? What's the penalty for being wrong here? There's clearly none, because of the amount of asshole-yelling that's going on.
Here's the situation. The netroots came to be while we were out of power. We got really big for our britches as we started gaining power. But the fact is, all our confidence came about while we were playing defense. When we were playing defense, there wasn't a hell of a lot of reason to become expert on policy, because we were basically shut out of the policy process.
And now, hello, we're on offense. And we seriously don't know a damn thing about policy, but we're sure full of political piss and vinegar. But now... policy matters.
And we climb on our soapboxes, and we become reinforced (due to fans), and certain (due to the reinforcement), and we stop listening (due to our certainty), and we don't take accountability since there's no penalty for being wrong.
Here's where I lose about half of you. Somewhere in this process, we got to the point of believing that this is a pretty lousy health care bill. Because of the blood-soaked Overton Window. Because some say it sucks, and others say it's good, and how that somehow results in the bill being relatively lousy, because there's no accountability in our opinions.
When the truth is, this health care bill - even the Senate version - is STUPENDOUS. It's the best thing to come through Congress in decades. And we can't even see it because we're all political piss and vinegar while even the brightest among us have only a partial and certainty-affected understanding of what it actually does.
The Internet giveth, the Internet taketh away. It gave us the ability to band together and shout down our opposition. And then it gave us the opportunity to shout down our public servants, and then shout down each other.
By the way, screw Coakley, but screw Massachusetts too. In a way, Massachusetts deserves her. She didn't care enough about the election, but in turn, the people of Massachusetts didn't care enough about Health Care Reform (they've already got theirs) to do right by the rest of the nation. Selfish bastids. Excluding, of course, any Mass residents here that worked to get her elected. But the rest, they chose to instead express their feelings and make a political point in a way that sure felt good but was ultimately against their own self-interests. There's been a lot of that going around.
Anyway, that's how this is affecting me. I got a swift kick-in-the-face lesson that when Democrats gain power, their ego so quickly becomes more important than the greater good. That's really what it all comes down to, and so many are guilty of it - Coakley, Massachusetts, Nelson, Lieberman, several visible Kossacks I won't call out by name, and maybe even you reading this. You'll have to look in your heart and decide.
Weirdly, Obama doesn't seem guilty of this. He's guilty of a lot - trying to be post-partisan in age that refuses to play along, not managing the base's expectations (not that we'd listen), and not showing the grit to visibly pick a fight that he'd lose with honor (I hate that it's necessary but it seems to be the only way progressives will respect him)... but he has at least been focusing on the long-term greater good. It's apparently been a little too long-term and a little too good for the lot of us, though.
What would soothe this feeling just a little bit? I don't even know. It's as if people have identified we have to accomplish 100 cubits of work to save the world in the next five years, and the Senate responds to the emergency by passing 2 cubits per year instead of 1. It's just so pointless.