Hey, the progressive blogosphere is famous! The NYT reports:
A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.
Soliciting donations from their readers, the bloggers said they are planning to recruit liberal candidates for challenges against more centrist Democrats currently in Congress.
The formation of the group marks another step in the evolution of the blogosphere, which has proven effective at motivating party activists to give money and time to political campaigns, especially in local races.
How exciting. Of course, the $500,000 they raised in September, according to the article, won’t get one very far in today’s political world. And they might not raise that much again for a while. And then there is this:
The new organization is in many ways the liberal equivalent of the Club for Growth, a conservative group that has financed primary challenges against Republicans it deems insufficiently dedicated to tax cuts and small government.
Yikes. We don’t need another Club for Growth of any kind: that kind of fanatical approach divides the country, hates on its opponents, and puts ideology ahead of experience. But, is that really what Accountability Now is? There is no word about seeking to emulate the Club for Growth on their website. Why would the NYT write such a thing. Pundits, theorists, citizen analysts, to your keyboards: what is going on here?
kirth says
is the NYT feeding its obsession with false equivalence. Every bizarre right-wing position or organization must have an exact equivalent on the left. If there isn’t one, just pretend some rational progressive stand or group perfectly balances a crazy conservative one. It saves having to do a lot of that tiresome explaining.
sabutai says
Blogs are new, fine. But for the most part, bloggers are activists who happen to have blogs. In the 1700s, many of us would have been writing pamphlets. This century, we blog. While the medium is new, I still can’t understand why the media insists that the impulses and profile of the people using it are so radically different.
kbusch says
Why isn’t Club for Growth goofy because it espouses goofy things? Funding primary opponents could be a great thing.
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p>In Massachusetts, it’ll soon be the only thing.
lasthorseman says
of the left whining about the atrocities of Bush we now have a brand new left endorsing the very same torture and rendition policies. Does not encourage trust in government does it. I am not bringing up the insane Orewellian wastefulness of the now passed stimulus bill.
See ya at the refugee camps.
kirth says
There is no “brand new left endorsing the very same torture and rendition policies.” There is a new DoJ that has endorsed a couple of Bush’s policies on State Secrets. There is the same old mass of progressives, who are not at all pleased with those endorsements.
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p>Either produce some “new left endorsements” of torture and rendition, or ride off into the sunset.