A warning - this is a post about bloggers and blogging, and may only be of interest and use to members of that community.
So, though I suppose it will matter to noone, I'm leaving the fight to Lowell and Gray Haven and others. I quit because I don't believe there is enough Palmolive to wash away the slime of this cowardly compromise from my hands. Let the Republicans twist the moral bootlickers any way they will; I have enough money that financial gain will be mine under the party I have despised for years, a party I voted against always because I believe in social justice. Now that the belief has been betrayed, I'll just clip my bond coupons and wait for the next surrender.Bye bye. - Soccerdem on RaisingKaine
At each step of the amazing journey that has been his life, and at each turn of the court to the right, Justice Stevens has seen his own views denied, his own positions lose, and his role more and more frequently limited to that of dissent, in one manner or another. He has had a thousand chances in his life to say "Enough, I give up. This system, this nation, has failed me. A pox on all their houses!" And in doing so no one would have questioned that choice.
But he never did.
Stevens, however, is an improbable liberal icon. "I don't think of myself as a liberal at all," he told me during a recent interview in his chambers, laughing and shaking his head. "I think as part of my general politics, I'm pretty darn conservative." - The New York Times Magazine
We are six weeks from an election which will define the playing field for the next decade. We are six weeks from an election on which Tim Kaine is betting his political career so that his children (and ours) will have a commonwealth that looks out for the common wealth. We are six week sfrom a day on which our neighbors go the the polls and decide whether to vote down hate and fear and radical agendas.
We are six weeks away, and people give up now?
And the problem is not limited to giving up. Every day, we progressives attack each other for not being pure enough on our pet issues. From recycling water bottles to funding the Iraq war, there are a thousand - a million - perfectly good reasons to snipe and snark and declare one another impure. And the reasons for not doing so are so ephemeral, so intangible, as to be easily ignored: unity, progress, hope.
Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it.It's up to you now. - Cindy Sheehan, DailyKos, "Good Riddance Attention Whore"
We are googlebombing ourselves.
And amidst all the noise, we are, ourselves, doing the very thing we so frequently accuse the media of doing, we are ignoring the story, burying the lead, and reporting on the process, not the principle.
Have we all forgotten that the Iraq war could end tomorrow if only President Bush ordered the troops home? The problems we are calling on our Representatives to solve are problems created by President Bush. Yes, many Democrats voted for the war, but President Bush is the one who asked for it. Yes, some Democrats voted against MoveOn.org, but the Republicans sponsored it. Yes, some Democrats voted with Bush on the FISA bill, but The Executive proposed it.
Our fight is with the Republicans, folks. Regardless of how uncomfortable we may be here in the Democratic Party some times, we began the fight to remake the Party, we Crashed The Gate, we have only ourselves to blame if we squander this opportunity. Lest the revolution devours its own children.
Perhaps it is just easier to give up once a single victory is achieved. Perhaps it is to hard to be part of the governing solution, governing which is messy, filled with compromise and half-measures and years of arm-twisting and dealmaking and actual setbacks before change occurs, and the triumph can only be seen in retrospect, years later. If you doubt that, I would share with you a personal story.
Earlier this week, I watched Eddie Murphy: Delirious with my family. I remember it being hilarious when I was younger. Rewatching it today, there were many moments that just made me cringe. The ideas expressed had changed from being funny to just being offensive. (And I was a proud member of the Virginia Pep Band, so I know from offensive versus funny.)
Progress often happens when we are not looking. It is the Republicans who expect staged milestones of freedom's victory. We Democrats know (or we should) that success is measured in 5% higher graduation rates among city high schools, in 10 million fewer Americans without health insurance, in 100,000 Virginia kids with access to better pre-school. Success takes time, and patience, and sometimes, success takes failure (Mark Warner 1996, Mark Warner 2001).
Of course we should tell our Representatives how we feel, of course we should hold them to account, but we should also realize that they are representative. And guess what that means, folks? It means that they are set up to disappoint us, perhaps even more than half the time.
Disappointment is as much a part of democracy as triumph. Get used to it.
I, for one, refuse to be a bandwagon Democrat. I refuse to believe that the fact that Jim Webb won in November 2006, means that all my candidates, policies and positions are equally valid and viable, for the rest of my life. I refuse to take my ball and go home, just because my team let me down.
It's my team damnit, and I'll fight for it. Thankyouverymuch.
Because my team lives my principles, as best they can, most of the time. And that's what I expect, "because in a democracy, the whores are us. - P.J. O'Rourke"
(Crossposted from Leesburg Tomorrow.)
It also has relevance to the Tim Hugo discussions.
I just feel that the struggle is the thing, and keeping faith with it is its own value.
Absolutely boggles!
Motherhood, apple pie, etc. etc. ;-)
P.S. correction applied to this subject
The other thing is that you expect disappointment from your ideological opponents, which is why the Justice Stevens analogy doesn't really work. Afterall, if Justice Stevens expected success on a conservative court, that would be called stupidity. Whereas if the Supreme Court was made of liberal justices and he was still writing dissents, then we would have a good analogy. You do not expect a string of disappointments from your ideological affiliates. So, why devote your life to a party that disappoints you? And what level of disappointment is acceptable? Is there no breaking point?
I understand your arguments for why you should stick by your "team" or whatever; I used to feel the same way. But when the Democrats were given their chance with a truly stunning mandate, what did they do? They legalized illegal wiretapping, and we now have more troops in Iraq than before. Who saw that one coming? In fact I can't remember a single legislative success won in the face of Republican opposition.
And who's the great Democratic hope to save the nation in 2008? Hillary Clinton. That paragon of progressivism.
I'm sure few of you even care, I've never been a major presence here, but I'm not saying I'm giving up like soccerdem. I do still feel strongly in the importance of working locally. But since Webb's absolutely disgraceful capitulation (coupled with the Democrats' many others) I've lost all interest in blogging and politics in general. We supposedly won in 2006, but I've yet to see what we won. Unless you call "winning" an escalated war and a stronger executive.
Props to Evan for a magnificantly written diary. You said it better than I ever could have.
Please scroll down to the penultimate (#108) comment on my original Diary and see what I wrote there. It explains my anger at the damage those 22 did on a vote that had NO consequences had they voted NAY, what they gave to the Right when they did vote YEA, and the actual reason I'm ticked.
Note also that IN MY DIARY I stated at the outset that I understand all about compromises that politicians MUST make; I personally hold no emnity when they take such actions, knowing that politics is the art of compromise. I DO NOT expect my pol to vote 100% as I feel, knowing that this is a representative democracy and the pol could know a lot that I do not and must make those compromises and must occasionally vote "politically." THIS WAS NOT ONE OF THOSE TIMES.
Too bad the Republicans don't compromise as much as we do, though. They vote in a block, usually, and a single Dem crossover vote becomes a "bi-partisan" victory for them.
Justice Souter is a judge's judge, a New England academic with an unfoundering faith in the rule of law and objectivity of the judiciary. All of the other Justices on the Rehnquist court had some experience with politics, and spent enough time in Washington to have a healthy cynicism about nearly everything. Justice Souter, however, was a purist who hated (and hates) Washington. So after Bush v. Gore, although none of the "liberals" on the court were happy, only Justice Souter considered quitting. He was crushed. He wept on that day, and apparently still does occasionally. But his friends convinced him to stay on the Court.
And since Bush v. Gore, the Court has decided Lawrence v. Texas - the Brown v. Board of gay rights and probably the most rights-protective case in over 20 years, as well as limiting the death penalty, limiting and rebuking Bush's sweeping claims of executive power, handing down some pretty good environmental decisions, and so on.
So while Stevens had to get used to losing - he didn't have any illusions about Washington or the Supreme Court. Souter is the purist who was robbed of his ideals by his Machiavellian colleagues. But he didn't jump ship because he knew he could still make a big difference. And he has.
Evan, I'd ask that you refrain from using an obviously competent, passionate, and well-informed Democratic diarist, soccerdem, as your target of disdain. He was respectful. Won't you be?
Soccerdem's GBCW diary was merely the catalytic inspiration for some feelings and thoughts I've been having about the liberal blogosphere for a while now (pretty much ever since Cindy Sheehan went off the reservation).
We're all in this together, I never want to push anyone away. I merely feel that walking away isn't the answer, and thought I'd put some words together to that effect.
If we are all in this together, then don't take one person's passion, make him look bad and then say your diary was about "we're all in this together". It doesn't add up.
My message is still the same. Thanks and my apologies, Evan.
DIANNE