We Are Bloggers Hear Us Roar

From Chris Bowers:

We can’t win if we continue to operate like this. The netroots and grassroots can’t win by themselves, and the Democratic electoral establishment is hardly any better. At some point, there is going to have to be a way for us to work together, or we are just going to keep losing and losing and losing. We can't go on like this. We can't win without them, and they can't win without us.

Of course they are better and they most certainly can win without us.  Where did Chris or anyone for that matter ever get the idea that the reverse was true?

But the point of his post is a call for a truce in what he calls the activist class war in the Democratic Party and that's a great idea - from our perspective.  Who wouldn't like a seat at the grown-up's table?   (Me for one, but I don't like to be where I'm not welcome.)   It's just not going to happen because giving up power willingly isn't the long suit of the Party leadership - or of most human beings.  The most blogs can hope to be is either co-opted by the party, like dKos, or hair shirts.

Anyway, before we take on the toppling of the Democratic party power structure, I'm much more interested in the activist class war going on in blogtopia.   Why, for instance do Ciro Rodriguez and Ned Lamont rate massive monolithic echo-chamber attention while Chuck Pennacchio - and Alan Sandals for that matter - are shut out?   Pennacchio and Sandals are running against someone who exemplifies every single thing that's wrong with the Democratic Party.   Until I get an explanation for that, which doesn't rely on viability (assessing which is not the long suit of the big bloggers)  I'm honestly not interested in hearing about plans to figure out how to get some love from a national party that doesn't need us, doesn't want us and moves further away from Progressive values every chance it gets.   The Democratic Party is not our friend.

Chuck Pennacchio must be elected.

Comments

[kelly]

One of the most infuriating things about the "Dems are losers because" brand of punditry like Bowers' is the fact that in the last four presidential elections they really weren't! Forgive me for preaching to the choir but I have to get this off my chest:
The 2000 election ended in a coup d'etat. Al Gore was robbed, we were all robbed, by the GOP goons who coordinated the voter purges, the voting fraud, the phony television declaration of a Bush victory, the interference with the recount and the Supreme injustice of Bush v. Gore. It was the will of the majority in 2000 that Al Gore be the next President. He didn't lose!
The goons got a little more sophisticated in 2004 but the evidence is clear that something went very wrong with the voting that year, too--voter registration forms discarded, screwed up absentee ballots and provisional ballots, a whole bag of dirty tricks in minority neighborhoods like moving the polls, spreading misinformation about voting, intimidating voters, the Soviet-bread-line waits, the vote tallies that didn't tally, the touch screens that wouldn't register votes of Kerry. Kerry shouldn't have lost! Say what you will about his manner of speech, his wordiness, his demeanor, etc. I firmly believe that it was the will of the majority in 2004 that there be a Democratic president (and actually it should have been Gore's re-election!).
The problem is less about the Dems and more about the voting integrity (lack thereof) and the complicity of the corporate media.
Thanks, I needed that!

[eRobin]

And the issue of voting integrity was almost completely ignored by the bigger Progressive blogs. They listened to the national party. They didn't want to be associated with "sore loser" and "conspiracy nuts" and now that bill is coming due as we will nearly all be voting on unverifiable voting systems in 2006 - definitely by 2008. Try to win an election then.

They shut out that issue. They're shutting out opposition to Casey. I really couldn't care less about bloggers' problems getting access to the Dems' secret treehouse when they don't seem to care that that same sort of dichotomy is being built in blogtopia.

"The best way to get power is to give it away." People just don't ever seem to get that.