Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory
Progressives sometimes are their own worst enemies. They express frustration when their heroes prove to be mere mortals and not faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap the tallest Republican political obstacle with a single bound.
One such example happened just the other day, when a Military Mom tried to apply pressure [use this link if that one doesn’t work] to Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin to get him to accomplish more than just the backstage manouvers toward an eventual goal that constitute modern American politics.
Not to polish my own apple, but I did include my condemnation of this act of street sabotage in a recent post.
But a much better critique of the foolishness of badgering a political ally came from David Sirota, who had this to say:
Antiwar activists are high-fiving each other, almost as if catching Obey’s outburst about “idiot liberals” is as big a YouTube feat as catching George Allen saying “macaca.” This is deeply troubling on a number of levels…
[B]erating one of the antiwar movement’s longtime leaders, and then trying to mount his head on the virtual YouTube wall over a debate about the best WAY to end the war, suggests that the antiwar movement fundamentally does not understand the very power structure it is trying to influence.
I’m in no way excusing Obey’s behavior that was caught on film. He didn’t take time to communicate properly, he got way too angry way too fast and his frustration translated into him mistreating the people who were asking him questions. That is unacceptable, and I’m happy he apologized. He needed to.
However, the troubling thing out of the spat is not Obey’s behavior: it is the reaction to it by the progressive movement… [that] is so fundamentally absurd it suggests that at least some who liken themselves as progressive movement leaders really are “idiot liberals” because they have positively no idea how the hell basic movement building or power works…
The real news out of Obey’s outburst is that, as the Associated Press confirms, he really doesn’t have the votes in the Democratic caucus to cut off funding for the war, and that he courageously broke traditional etiquette by implicitly calling out the faction of pro-war Democrats who are standing in the way of stronger action on the war.
These are the obstacles that the progressive movement
should be focusing on pressuring.If those working in professional movement politics really want to end the war - and not just be in a perpetual state of unproductive contrarian outrage - they can start by remembering the need to target pressure and the need to apply both the carrot and the stick.
Shoving a stick up the rear end of an ally is the behavior of “idiots”
*- whether liberal or otherwise -*
because it only puts our goal farther out of reach.
If we progressives don’t get to understanding who our enemies really are, then we deserve what we get when the Republicans return to power and finish the destruction of this nation, a scenario long ago foretold by conservative economists.
Are you willing to risk that?