[Pen-l] OpenLeft: Should We Be Surprised?

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Among the left leaning blogs, one site that I find more honest and  
intelligent is the somewhat recent "OpenLeft" -- for one thing,  
adopting "Left" in their name demonstrates a stronger spine than less  
confrontational terms like "progressives" that have become all the  
rage. Below is a link to a post from Michael Perelman's FFF (Facebook  
friend forever ;-)), David Sirota, about Joe Lieberman's success in  
retaining his Senate committee chairmanship, that echoes both our  
suspicion of Obama as well as Julio's points:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/457562669/ 
showDiary.do

> As gross as the Senate statement celebrating the demise of "the  
> Left" is, there's a truth in the part where the aide says  
> progressives "can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear  
> into folks to actually change their votes." That truth is that the  
> progressive movement - as independent from the Democratic Party - is  
> still incredibly weak.
>
> Because so much organizing under the banner of the "progressive  
> movement" is - in reality - electoral organizing on behalf of the  
> Democratic Party, there's very little independent leverage over that  
> Democratic Party, especially in non-election periods. As just one  
> example, when, for instance, Moveon.org gets swallowed whole by the  
> Obama campaign and turned into just another Internet appendage of  
> that campaign, a group like Moveon.org subsequently has no real  
> independent leverage over the Democratic Party because Moveon has  
> trained its own members to believe participation in Moveon - and in  
> the "progressive movement" - is always synonymous with reflexively  
> supporting Democratic leaders (by the way, I cite this not to pick  
> on Moveon - this is the basic construct of many progressive  
> organizations, but I use Moveon just to give an example we can all  
> relate to).
>
> So, in many ways, the public attacks on "the Left" from  
> congressional Democrats - while motivated from their Reagan-era  
> cultural hatred of Dirty Fucking Hippies - is to be completely  
> expected from a party that has failed to deliver on every major  
> progressive promise it has made, and has nonetheless faced no real  
> retribution. It is par for the course from leaders who quite  
> understandably feel little fear from a still-weak progressive  
> movement.
>
> They believe - with justifiable reason - that come election time  
> we'll all forget their failings, whether failing to end the war or  
> failing to disempower Lieberman. They believe that most "progressive  
> movement" activists will actually do what they did during the last  
> election - berate anyone who floats the idea that movement  
> organizing and carrot-and-stick treatment of the Democratic Party  
> during election time is actually a good thing. They believe, in  
> short, that come 2010, we'll all fall in line and be an ATM machine  
> of partisan campaign contributions and candidate volunteer time  
> because we are still very much organized as a party, not a movement.
>
> And here's the thing: Except for a few fleeting primaries, most of  
> recent history suggests their calculation is right.
>
> If we want to avoid this kind of thing in the future, we better  
> understand why this happened. Because if we don't, and somehow still  
> expect "change we can believe in," we're epitomizing Albert  
> Einstein's "definition of insanity" - we're "doing the same thing  
> over and over again and expecting different results."

	--ravi

--
Support something better than yourself ;-)
PeTA       => http://peta.org/
Greenpeace => http://greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to read: http://platosbeard.org/

_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l