The authors of two of the most influential blogs on the planet are coming to Boston!
When:
Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 7:00 PM
Where:
Middlesex
315 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
kos (from DailyKos) and Jerome Armstrong (from MyDD) have spent the last six years in the trenches, fighting the Bush Regime tooth and nail since they stole the election in 2000. Now kos and Jerome have written a book, “Crashing the Gate”, about what the liberal movement needs to do to beat these clowns and start restoring some common sense in our government.
Join us for a great conversation with these two amazing bloggers! If you haven’t yet bought the book, you can pick it up online at Powell’s (http://www.powells.com/n/99/biblio/1-1135578370-0) or offline at the Harvard Bookstore (1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge).
For more information, visit the Crashing the Gate website: http://www.crashingthegate.com
Co-sponsored by Boston Drinking Liberally, Democracy for America – Cambridge, Democracy for America – Boston, and Blue Mass Group
That goes on at dkos. I understand that dailykos is a little more liberal than the DLC but why spend all your time ripping on someone who you agree with 80% of the time?
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Now, the take-no-prisoners, fight-for-every-inch election strategy laid out in CTG (haven’t read it yet but I read the blog) is certainly an improvement over the DLC approach. But that doesn’t mean the DLC is some evil force, and they’re not the campaigning branch of the party anyways, that would be the DNC, DSCC and DCCC. So I don’t have that much hate for them, is I guess what I’m saying, they’re part of the team. Big tent, right? We oughtta be able to at least include centrist democrats in that tent.
Who agrees with the DLC 80% of the time? The DLC is a corporate-funded agency that promotes a corporate Republican agenda on economic issues. I would say economic issues occupy far more than 20% “of the time”. I don’t think that agenda should have a home in the Democratic Party.
Who do you work for, anyways?
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You can’t just yell “but, the corporations!” a bunch and be right in an argument.
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As I say below, your problems are most likely style, not substance. It’s helpful to be perceived as business friendly, and non-corrupt, fair and democratic government policy IS business-friendly. If you have issues with the DLC on actual matters of policy, I’m still waiting. And I’d say they’d clock in at less than 20% of the DLCs platform, whatever that may be.
I think the DLC agenda is to turn the Democrats into semi-Republicans, but if you wanna discuss that, how about a user post about it? I don’t see what it has to do with a book signing for Crashing the Gate.
And I don’t have the time to compose a well-written user post. I will say that the DLC are most likely not some kind of mole operation run out of Paul Wolfowitz’s basement, they want to get democrats elected, and yes, their platform most likely agrees with 80% of democrats 80% of the time.
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Your differences with them are most likely issues of style, not substance. However, I guess I really wouldn’t know as you didn’t elucidate any of your problems with them aside from a blanket assertion that they are trying to brainwash you into a “semi-republican”.
First, another “huh???” – where’d you get that “brainwash” bit from? I said they’re trying to make the Democratic party semi-Republican. I’m trying to make the Democratic party more progressive. They’re an interest group within the party whose interests are mostly diametrically opposed to mine, but “brainwashing”?
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I’ll open with my two biggest problems with the DLC:
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1. The Iraq war. They openly and boldly supported it, and they still do. They believed that for any Democrats to oppose the war was bad for the party – and they still do. They haven’t apologized or admitted error. They believe that Democrats need to be hawks, and that includes pro-Iraq-war. They say that foreign policy hawkishness is needed to win elections (they’re wrong), but it also feels like they truly believe in it. A huge disaster for the country, and a somewhat smaller but still huge disaster for the party.
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2. They oppose grassroots & netroots influence in the party. They strongly prefer the old network of consultants and larger donors that still control the national party, but are threatened. The DLC actively attacks those who threaten than. They actively attacked Howard Dean, the blogs, meetup, etc. They poo-poo small donor fundraising, and oppose public financing of elections. They try to undermine our candidates and our ideas at every step, from the “Osama” ads against Dean to the herculean efforts Rahm Emmanuel put into defeating Christine Cegelis (and he almost failed!).
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I could go on but I don’t have all day. I picked these two because they’re big, and because the represent the two sides of my opposition to the DLC: they support bad (and disastrous) policy, and they’re on the wrong side of reform within the party. In the current political struggle, the DLC are my opponents. I think they’re bad for the country, bad for the party, and we’d all be better off if their influence were crushed. I intend to work towards that goal, as I have been. (They believe we’d all be better off if the influence of people like me were crushed, and they sure do work towards that goal!)
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I don’t know where you got your 80% from. It’s not my 80%.
Neither they, you or I are going to make any decisions that matter regarding the war. Lots of well-intentioned people were wrong there.
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I’d probably agree with you on most counts in regards to reform within the party. I think you overestimate the DLC’s power, but I’ve never spent longer than a weekend in DC so I can’t contest that one for now.
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At the end of the day though, what’s more important, winning converts or punishing heretics?
huh??
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You’re doing something very frustrating, and doing it repeatedly: Making assumptions about what I think based on things you’ve probably heard or seen from other people, and doing it so automatically you don’t even act aware of the fact that you’re doing it.
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For example, where exactly did I estimate the DLC’s power in any way? How do you know I don’t underestimate it? On balance, I think my side is beating their side these days. What do you think the DLC’s power level is? What do you think I think it is? Why did you even say that? I thought we were debating whether the DLC is good or bad, not how powerful they are, and you don’t give any explanation for why you shifted to that.
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And another big huh about “punishing heretics”? What the heck are you talking about? Again, we’re having a conflict within the Democratic party about the issues and about reform of the party’s structure and processes. The DLC is a competing group with very different ideas on both of those. I said quite clearly that that’s why I want to defeat their influence: it’s part of reforming the party, and of pushing the policies I support. How do you turn that into “punishing heretics”?
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You’re throwing a lot of hype around in this thread, all of it misdirected, and frankly, it doesn’t make you look like you actually have a point or thought it through. It just makes you sound like empty rhetoric. It really bugs me. Please just address my points directly, and/or say what you mean directly.
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P.S. When it comes to “well-meaning people” supporting the Iraq war, anyone in the American political system who honestly supported it and still does and doesn’t apologize for it, and is truly “well-meaning”, is Republican by my count. They’re certainly wrong for the Democratic party. I think you make my point, there.
You’re right, I’m associating some of your points with the group-think on kos because that group-think really bugs the hell out of me.
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My point is that the quote ‘DLC’ has become a catch-all for anything disliked by the newly-empowered liberal netroots. I don’t even know who the individual people are on the DLC. I gather they started in the late 80s, early 90s and contributed a lot of policy work to Clinton’s third-way push. I liked the third way. Never read a quote attributed to the DLC in the paper, and haven’t ever received a single piece of mail from the DLC. They have democratic in their name, they put effort into getting democrats elected and most likely, you agree with 80% of the points on their official policy platform. Whatever that is, I haven’t seen that either. But regardless of a few high-emotion, low-practical-value issues, you’re ultimately on the SAME SIDE as these people. Whoever they are.
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In regards to your estimation of their power, you of course did not explicitly say “I estimate their power to be 3 metric units” anywhere but you went through a litany of cases (without cites but I won’t press you, you have a good posting record on this board) of them attempting to push the party in a certain direction. I was simply saying that they’re not going to take over our party. If they’re not a big deal, why not focus on republicans?
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The statement about converts and heretics was self-evident, I thought. A movement can either spend its time trying to attract converts to enlarge itself, or trimming out heretics to achieve ideological uniformity. I’m just trying to say let’s be a little more constructive here. The 51% strategy may have gotten Bush elected (sort of) but the demographics don’t work for us on the same strategy. Plus, look at Bush now. Let’s quit trying to convince centrists that they’re really ‘republican-lite’, eh? They might actually believe us and vote that way.
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We should be aiming for something better, less zero-sum and more about what’s better for all of us.
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In regards to my personal democratic bona fides, I’ve stood up for a doomed override to fund public education twice in a row in my town, once while my name was on the ballot for selectman and I seriously jeopardized my candidacy by doing so. So I’m not a fraidy-cat ‘republican-lite’.
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In regards to Iraq, I am your democrat who did and does think it’s a good idea, for a combination of reasons you’ve probably heard before (none of them were WMD). I have lots of problems with how it was done, also stuff you’ve heard before.
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There are no republicans or democrats in the middle east. Those on both sides of the aisle who attempt to export their domestic party preferences are setting themselves up to have some stupid opinions. That said, the jury is certainly still out in Iraq and I may be conceding that I was wrong in another 5 years.
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Check out iraqthemodel.blogspot.com sometime if you don’t already, he has a list of links to other iraqi blogs as well.
You admit you don’t know much about the DLC, or even who they are. But you still insist on claiming I agree with them. Stop it. You’re wrong. I don’t. The DLC has goals. They pursue those goals. I think the goals they pursue are wrong, and harmful, both to the country and to the Democratic party. I oppose them.
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Maybe in the abstract, DLC members have some beliefs I agree with. That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is the purpose of their organization, and the things they do. Which perhaps you need to learn something about before you jump to their defense.
You agree with them much more than you agree with the republicans.
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If you’re going to attempt to exile any democrat who either:
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A) disagrees with you on the war
B) disagrees with you on trade policy
C) is part of the ‘old guard’
D) disagrees with you on transient issue-of-the-week X
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from the party, we’re going to have a long stay in the wilderness.
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Labelling someone ‘republican’ is daring them to vote republican. Let’s come up with reasons that centrists should vote democrat, not reasons why center-leftists aren’t really democrats at all.
See you there!
I mean seriously, people. The poll was kind of a tongue in cheek JOKE, sort of a reference to one of kos and Jerome’s favorite whipping-boys/institutions. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get off this blog and read the book!
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For what it’s worth most of the time liberal bloggers criticize the DLC for two reasons: 1. DLC-ers have a tendency to flip off the netroots with disturbing frequency, by doing things like going on Fox News and bitching about the Democratic Party, using Republican talking points; and 2. DLC-ers tend to promote “Republican-lite” policies, which encourage the Democratic base to stay home at election time, which means the Democrats lose. From what I’ve seen 1) gains a lot more enmity than 2).
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Those are the arguments anyway. If you don’t like them, come to Middlesex in a couple of weeks and sound off there!
“The authors of two of the most influential blogs on the planet are coming to Boston!”
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Glenn Reynolds and Hugh Hewitt are coming to BOSTON????
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Oh.
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Well, I hope you check out ‘Blog’ and ‘An Army of Davids’ too – they are also excellent books about our new medium!