Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

The Brown victory and progressive culpability

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From another post:

She had no organic grassroots organization to speak of outside of the tired machinery of old school ward bosses and unions. She did not utilize new media…

Actually the “tired old machinery of old school ward bosses and unions” was excluded from the Coakley campaign, except as window dressing.

“Old School” is an interesting term for those folks, given that they’re closer to the ground (of necessity) than “new media”, which (intent notwithstanding) traditionally operate as Republican outreach mechanisms (e.g. MoveOn, DailyKos, etc).  

We’ll forget the class bigotry implicit in the above quoted term.

Every precinct-level operative I know saw this coming, but got the back of the hand from the Coakley campaign.

New Media progressives were largely in denial, blaming the pollsters (and the media) rather than facing reality.

Interestingly the best critique of this dynamic was posted by Barack Obama on DailyKos back in 2005.

The BMG “kiss of death” (as displayed by endorsements in intra-Democratic parts of the cycle) is evidence of how this plays in real-world elections.

The Yoon and Khazei candidacies, for example were classic cases of how self-empowered elitists repel electorates.

Ditto Coakley, whose own polling indicated the extreme hostility her campaign generated from working class women and black voters of both genders. Much to the amazement of Brown’s pollsters, Coakley even managed to deliver unenrolled women to Brown .

In a few days, as time permits, I’ll write a more detailed post-mortem (with links), but consider the implications of yet again conceding populist dynamics to the Leninist Right.

…a two-generation tradition in Massachusetts.

This is no more than  1976 (Dem Primary: Scoop Jackson takes Massachusetts; George Wallace takes Boston), 1978 (Ed King), 1980 (Reagan, Prop 2 1/2),1984 (Reagan II), 1990 (Weld, Silber), 1994 (Weld II), 1998 (Cellucci), 2002 (Romney), redux.

It might, just once, be worth it to put some sweat equity where our egos have been and break this cycle.  At a time when the Tea Party Movement is more popular among Americans than Democrats or Republicans there’s not a hell of a lot of time.

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Comments

  3. Actually as a populist liberal – in the Tip, not Teddy tradition – I say start by asking people what their take on the issues actually is, not presuming a priori that I know, and work from there.

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    p>In that sense the “Goddam Liberals” aren’t; and tend in fact to Bourbon self-entitlement, at the expense of those affected by the real-world consequences of progressive policies.

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    p>To address Charlie’s question:

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    p>We take a leaf from your partner’s profession. We do discovery on our opponents and due diligence on ourselves. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that both the liberal and progressive sides of what used to be Democratic Party Liberalism have structural flaws, particularly involving race and class.

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    p>There is a tendency on the part if many folk, myself included, to project assumptions, at the expense of analysing the situation at hand.

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    p>There is more than enough expertise among the BMG membership to do basic and dispassionate research: political, structural, and policy-based.

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    p>The issue is then to apply those lessons at the local – and by local, I mean precinct (or town) level.  Rather than morality plays, I would suggest looking at conflicts of tangible interests as they affect the grassroots, and I definately would not underestimate our adversaries.

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    p>Re: that last point.  I’ve found it useful to engage Republicans, using the premise that they are, in fact anti-conservative.

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    p>Finally (for the purposes of a brief response), would consider the internet useful for organizing, research, and communication, but limited.

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    p>These wars are won on the ground.

  5. By golly I think we’ve finally driven you completely bonkers.

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    p>Or maybe you are just projecting?

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    p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…

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    p>

    Composed for revolutionary praxis, Leninism is neither rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political theory; it required the Hungarian intellectual György Lukács (1885-1971) to logically develop Lenin’s ideas, notably in the anthology History and Class Consciousness (1923) which established a more philosophically rigorous basis for Leninism, than did Lenin, himself – thus illustrating Lenin’s prescient 1915 revolutionary dictum: “One cannot be a revolutionary Social-Democrat without participating, according to one’s powers, in developing this theory [Marxism], and adapting it to changed conditions.”

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    p>Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can even stand reading marxist gobbledygook.  Much less aspiring to it.

    • ..and New Right activists (their term) had no problem using “Leninist” self-referentially.  From an earlier comment:

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      p>

      Now as to the Leninism: In the late eighties, the Boston Republican City Committee Chair, Tom Kershaw, used to hold open-to-the-public symposia upstairs at the Hampshire House (“Cheers” to all you transplants) with various Republican/Right movers and shakers.  The aforementioned players had no problem talking about their techniques as Leninist and derived from reverse-engineering Communist approaches.

      Grover Norquist went so far as to have a framed picture of Lenin over his desk.

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      p>Leninism is no more than a mass movement controlled by an elite who determines what’s best for the group (“Democratic Centralism”). As such, it has both Left and Right versions.

      • You are the first person I’ve ever encounters that believes the right self-identifies as “Leninist”.  All of us R’s and libertarians that I have ever met pretty much despise everything Lenin (and Marx) ever did or stood for.  Nor does anyone I have ever met think that Leninism means “a mass movement controlled by the elite”, as far as I know.

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        p>So you’ve got an unsupported quote from some obscure Bostonian from 20 years ago and a slightly incorrect quote about Norquist from a book by the leftist who founded Media Matters.

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        p>But does any of it make sense?

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        p>No.

        • I  said that Right activists leadership had no problem identifying with Leninist tactics and employing them openly.

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          p>The self-identification was fairly common and public at a time when no one took conservatives seriously.  Such groups as Young Americans for Freedom and College Republicans were quite public about the matter, the same way they still read and employ Saul Alinsky today.

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          p>I never read the book to which you refer, but I did attend the Hampshire House symposia.  The context was (and I enjoyed the irony at the time) that a disciplined cadre could circumvent a disengaged Left by filling the grassroots vacuum.

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          p>Finally, I repeat: Leninism is not, per se, a left-wing tactic.  It is a means of seizing and maintaining power. Tactics borrowed from the Leninist Left include:

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          p>Redefining terms to fit tactical needs over accuracy.

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          p>Rewriting history, and knowingly corrupting empirical observation.

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          p>Actively working to destroy internal dissent and demonizing opponents.

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          p>Framing conflicts of legitimate interest in absolute terms more appropriate for holy wars; and use of ad hominem attacks in place of principled arguments.  

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          p>Corrupting legitimate concerns and beliefs (internal and external) in the pursuit of power.

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          p>As such, it is neither Left nor Right, just opportunistic, and has come under attack more often than not from principled conservatives.

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