In other words, can there be a third place? There will always be a fight and always stuff worth fighting for and against. There will always be cliques like Blue Mass Group and Red Mass Group, Kos and Red State, Olbermann and O’Reilly.
I know there are centrist blogs out there, and that is not what I am proposing. I imagine a place where we all can put our cards on the table, but we filter in only those issues that have broad common ground from diverse corners of the political spectrum. Not a centrist place, but a place where an unabashed liberal and a proud conservative (or anyone from any political stripe) can say Hey, we agree this current marijuana law isn’t serving us well. Let’s do something about it. A place where disgruntled Ron Paul Republicans can caucus with Democrats on issues with which there is compromise to be found. A place where pro-life Dems can reach out to pro-life Republicans, and pro-choice Republicans can work with pro-choice Dems. Even if no solution arises, common-ground issues at least get identified and the groundwork for consensus can be laid.
In other words, if the tblades and a JoeTSes can figure out things we both agree on, we can influence candidates and elected officials on both sides, thus increasing the likelihood of getting a responsive and competent government. Ideally, it would shift the definition of what is “bipartisan” from what Washington, Obama, McCain, etc tells us is bipartisan and ultimately allows the people to arbitrate what is truly bipartisan and what is political catch-phrase.
But how does that happen in netroots form? Can it happen? Could there ever be a bipartisan Kos or BMG, and could it produce influence similar to the influence produced by partisan blogs? Is this structurally and functionally possible? Or am I living in a fantasy world?
Can you democratize “bipartisanship”, or are we forever at the mercy of allowing the party leaders dictating what is and is not bipartisan compromise based on what is best for their poll numbers?
That this is very possible. Take the issue of the environment.
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p>I don’t believe in global warming. I don’t. Don’t skewer me with “facts” and this and that, you won’t sway me at this point. However, I’m adamant in my thinking that God made humanity the stewards of the Earth, and we’re perpetrating a sin of epic proportions when we rape and despoil His creation with reckless abandon. Thus I would consider myself an environmentalist. I know I’m not the only one who thinks like I do.
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p>So here we arrive at a place where a liberal and a conservative would agree – but the path taken to get here is different. So what happens? The liberal says its going to cause global warming, the conservative says its not, the liberal calls the conservative a Neanderthal, the conservative says Neanderthals didn’t exist because evolution is a lie and stomps off and nothing gets done.
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p>But as to your quandary as to whether you’re in a dream world…I don’t think you are, but i’m not sure how to achieve your goal.
I think we could sit in a room and say “we need to do, and we can do, x, y, and z for the environment”. We may have different motivations and may differ on the importance of certain aspects of the results, but we still have common ground. The way it works now is that both sides start on at the strong, opposing positions and hope that through negotiations, they don’t give up more than the other guy. If they don’t, they “win”. Instead of starting on the outside and working in, how can we start on the inside and work out? Or perhaps in parallel?
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p>I have no idea how to do it either, Joe. I think it’s useful for us all to start questioning why there blogosphere and political media is divided the way it is. Can innovative ways for people like you and me to communicate in the middle be created, where the way we often go back and forth here is left here and on other partisan blogs? Maybe it does come down to the individuals, but maybe an imaginative format and atmosphere could enhance common ground dialogue and highlight the similarities we have?
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p>I don’t want to change BMG – I love that it’s overtly left! But I wonder if another layer can be added to the existing political social network infrastructure to meet minds from any and all sides to build compromise and consensus? It would be a useful tool because no matter how November 4 turns out, it’s going to be significantly different then the last 8 years.
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p>Why not introduce a radical new supplement to the netroots and participate in democratic (small d) dialogue?
One position is the result of security based, hierarchical thinking, the other the result of flexible “critical thinking” but the resulting position is the same. See my post on this subject from this evening. You two just exemplified this difference in style, and how the end result can be compatible.
I volunteered alongside people at MassEquality that I otherwise would have had nothing to do with, because most of our worldviews were so different. But on the issue of marriage equality we agreed completely (not always for the same reasons), and could set aside other differences for a common goal. I know the same thing happened on the other side, where the white coordinators held their noses and worked cheek by jowel with blacks, asians and latinos, and the minority contributors put up with the white assholes who put themselves in charge.
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p>the problem with this sort of coming together is that it rarely lasts beyond the time the gluing issue is settled. once you move on to another issue, subsections of each group will come or go based on personal thoughts on that new issue.
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p>so i guess unless you pick an issue that will take years to resolve, it is hard to expect any meaningful “across the isles” coalition forming. but what does form are personal relationships across the isle that really can improve the chances of fruitful collaboration on future issues.
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p>i think you could definitely form a non-partisan blog group around a certain issue or very small set of issues. the trick would be to identify something hot on the horizon, and make your blog the recognized “go to” place for info and discussion. not sure how to do that, other than just digging on and then blogwhorring like crazy.
And I wonder if there would be a way to aggregate the single and essentially non-partisan issue portals on the web into one clearinghouse network/blog tool. Perhaps users can kind of subscribe in an a la carte, customizable fashion to the particular single issue groups with which they identify. Or maybe that wouldn’t work.
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p>You definitely bring up some smart observations.
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p>Another question is, do people even want to democratize bipartisanship? Or are we generally happy with the way issues are currently negotiated? Or is it that people will never be satisfied and we’ve arrived at the most realistic way to solve are differences.
is to create a visual web of individual’s interests in terms of what issues they’re actively working on. for example, i’d show up as LGBT/choice/environmental/immigration, with links to the main orgs i work with/through. if you click on one of my orgs, Equal RIghts Washington, say, you get a list of other blog subscribers working with that org, as well as the other orgs–>issues they’re interested in.
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p>maybe i’m just describing facebook? anyway, it would be a tool for people to use to at least learn about sympathetic people or orgs. however, it would also take a lot or trust to fully work, since many of us (me) insist on being anonymous on the web.
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p>my guess is that the answer to your last question is “depends on the person”. some people will never work in a bipartisan setting, but there will always be people who like the idea. i aslo think that what makes the most sense on how people organize themselves will always change with the times, conditions and issues in play. there will never be a perfect format or mechanism for all times, but there may be really excellent ones for a time.
I’m inclined to think that issue-by-issue is the only place you’ll see this. As we have no explicitly libertarian political party, issues that unite libertarian liberals with libertarian conservatives will tend to look bipartisan on the grassroots level. At one time, Truman/Scoop Jackson Democrats were happy to hold hands with hawkish Republicans, and McCloskey Republicans were pleased to oppose the Vietnam War with their fellow doves. However, the Democrats seem to have collected all the doves, and the Republicans all the hawks — and not inoculated them very well against rabies. So the cross-party stuff seems limited to libertarian causes.
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p>Outside appeals to liberty, the world views of liberals and conservatives differ so much that we only line up randomly with particular conservatives. I don’t know what to say about the metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of JoeTS’s environmental position, but it sounds unfalsifiable and unpredictable to me. And thus, joint environmental work seems sort of random.
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p>Both Deval Patrick and Barack Obama have apparently discovered that the “take the best” message resonates well when running for office. (Perhaps Patrick is doing that as governor but I’m not sure I can point to how.) We liberals love being technocratic and all (think Dukakis). I imagine many of us flatter ourselves with the idea that we’d support successful conservative-inspired policies. Are there such policies? Is there evidence of supporting them? The only examples I can think of concern crime prevention.
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p>Finally, I think that some of the eagerness for bipartisanship comes from a distaste for conflict even when the conflict is over real issues worth fighting for. Today Atrios point to Steve Benen’s interesting comments on David Schoen’s worrying that a Democratic victory on Tuesday might actually be interpreted as a Democratic victory. Tomorrow may bring plenty of Republicans singing the praises of bipartisanship. Maybe even Tom Delay will join in.
After hitting recommend and noticing the number of recommenders, I was surprised to see this had not hit the recommended list. If you do the following:
then you lose all the recommendation mojo you won in step 3.
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p>Essentially, you must live with your typos if you want your post to float up to the recommended list.
if people want change in this country, they should want partisanship. Bipartisanship is why true results and change is toxic to congress. Bipartisanship leads to dead bills, bills that are wishy-washy at best and truly accomplish nothing and, finally, bills that are so pork laden that they aren’t worth whatever ‘good’ stuff comes out of it.
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p>If the government were more partisan, elections would finally be able to be results oriented. If power were abused by those in power, we’d see a change in that power. If partisan results were positive, we’d see the people reaffirm the government. My prediction? If the Democrats use their power to achieve results in a partisan fashion, the popularity of Congress will skyrocket.
how congress operates is not necessarily the same as how an issues group operates. if there wasn’t a reaching out to republican legislators (and dinos) during the amendment debates, we might not have marriage equality in MA now. i think some issues orgs are powerful enough that they don’t have to worry about bipartisanship. but depending on the issue and on the state of the legislature, you wont’ get where you want to go if you dont’ find a way to work with people who disagree with you on a lot of other issues. and you may need to support their issues, which you don’t agree wtih, to get their support for yours. unless you’re willing to be a purist all-or-nothing sort of person, compromise is necessary.
… grass-roots bipartisanship would need to establish is some kind of immunity from the framing that people running for office and enacting policy tend to do in order to cover their political flanks.
Can you give an example of what you’re talking about?
… an elected official has a vested interest in framing things in such ways that do not engender bipartisanship, any effort at grass-roots bipartisanship (issue focused or not) to advocate in a non-partisan way (that is,… they work in different realms as you say), then it follows that these tendencies would clash as organizations and officials interact.
You might also flip it and say that candidates would need to take care not to frame their won candidacies in too partisan a way if many of their more active constituents were bi- or non-partisan types who cooperate with “the enemy”.
ignore republicans? No. I’m not.
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p>But I am saying that they shouldn’t have control over the agenda, as some Republicans and even Democrats (cough, harold ford, cough) would think.
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p>If they aren’t going to play ball, then there’s absolutely, positively no reason to bring them in. If they’re going to be obstructionists, then they get zero earmarks in the budget and no special projects for their state, period. And if they play obstructionists, Obama needs to inform the country of that on a daily basis.
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p>the people are voting overwhemlingly democratic this election for a reason. They want results and change. In terms of American bipartisanship efforts, results and change are anethema to tradition. I don’t think we should act as though we need 60% of the Senate’s support to get anything done. If the Republicans in the Senate want to be obstructionists, we should treat them as the no good, do-nothingers that they are… up to and including the “nuclear option,” if necessary.
You can be ‘bipartisan’ on some issues, but not others. I worked with MFI, of all organizations, on casinos.. for heaven’s sake. But does that mean that we need 60% support to address health care problems in this country in the Senate? Hell no. If Republicans aren’t going to play ball on health care or energy in the US Senate, then we strip them from the process and pass the bill on our own, whatever it takes. Does that preclude us from working with Republicans on other issues, like immigration or election reform? Absolutely not. I’m only making the simple point that we shouldn’t make it an expressly stated goal to be all kumbaya in the Senate; if reaching out to a few republicans on a few issues helps us pass a few bills, more power to us, but if there’s no help to be had, we shouldn’t water down or pork-up bills to get Republican co-sponsors for the sake of getting Republican co-sponsors.