Power play

Matt Stoller's important criticism of local newspapers' political endorsement practices -- go read it first -- seems to miss one key fact: the meritless conservatives that tend to receive these endorsements are entrenched incumbents, who usually wield quite a bit of local power. If you run a small-market newspaper, one that gets jerked around both by its apathetic national parent company and its priggish local advertisers, the last thing you want to do is piss off an entrenched political network by endorsing its challenger. You're going to lose revenue and alienate a lot of important people.

Hence why, for example, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle prints crap like this:

[GOP Rep. Randy] Kuhl for most of his time in Congress has been a strong supporter of the unpopular Bush administration. Now as a junior member of the minority, he can't boast of much Washington clout.

That's the backdrop. But it doesn't consider a key fact: Kuhl has grown in office. He has strengthened already strong ties to the district, which covers much of the Southern Tier and includes all or parts of nine towns in Monroe County. He's become a more confident, informed, less defensive lawmaker in sync with his district.

[Challenger Eric] Massa is encyclopedic on the issues but his scope is more national than local. This district can't afford politicians who fight the big battles but fail to connect adequately to the needs and aspirations of their constituents.

Kuhl can do it. He must do it. He is the Democrat and Chronicle's choice in the 29th District.

Basically, this says "Eric Massa's a sharp guy who knows what's right for America, but Randy Kuhl hangs around our advertisers' offices a lot, so he's our guy." Stoller's partially right to say that papers like to claim the centrist high ground -- but we shouldn't forget also that local politics, on the streets and in newsprint, are still driven by power as much as ideology.

UPDATE (10/22): Just while we're talking about him: Randy Kuhl is a huge douche.

Mini-Roundup: I'm Going To Die

No full-length roundup today, because it's the hottest week of the summer down here in North Carolina and my skin is slowly melting off my face. However, read:

--TEACHERS' UNIONS: THREAT, OR MENACE? Kevin Carey and our boy Ezra Klein look at the peculiar tendency of liberal elites to blame teachers' unions for everything, including the weather. In rebuttal, Tim Lee at the newly redesigned American Scene thinks Kevin and Ezra are peculiar.

--NOT ACTUALLY A SQUARE-DANCE CALL: Open Left, Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers' new project (as well as some guy named Mike I've never heard of), kicks off with a bang. Read Chris with a long, possibly definitive study of the condition of the netroots.

--I PREFER THE FRENCH "EUH": Language Log, which is always worth your time, looks at differences in pausing between gender and age groups. Check this out:

Turns out "um" and "uh" are pretty reliable identifiers of gender. ...There is a moment in "Clue" that has bothered me for years, where Wadsworth the butler (played by Tim Curry) is talking very quickly and says "the uh, um, uh, library." I had wondered why that phrase stuck in my brain. Now I know: it was essentially androgynous! (Of course for Tim Curry that's hardly a stretch.)

--SENTENCE OF THE DAY: Roy Edroso channels Dylan:

How long can a man scream epithets in a cemetery before he loses the status of outrage and devolves into a figure of fun?

--AND: You may know that "musician" Avril Lavigne has been accused of plagiarism by 70s bubblegum-rockers The Rubinoos. But you probably do not know that The Rubinoos also recorded the seminal theme to 1984's "Revenge of the Nerds." Yes! In honor of their reappearance, I present the wonderful first ten minutes of that godawful movie:

A tip to our incoming freshmen: that is exactly what's in store for you this fall.

That's all I got. Stay indoors, everyone.

Calm Down, Stoller

Matt Stoller's feeling bad at MyDD this afternoon, complaining about the Iraq capitulation and the continuing omnipresence of sellout DLC Dems. It's the usual stuff, the same cognitive dissonance any progressive Democrat runs into, and I think we all understand his frustration. But Stoller has a bit of a lapse this time and takes his logic in a very destructive direction. Read:

Progressives are in a bit of a bind these days. The Republicans are still sadistic extremists, and with the challenge to Hagel in Nebraska, they will remain that way for at least another few cycles. Despite the victory in 2006, liberal Democrats are still cut out of power and policy-making... [many valid examples...]

Now, this might sound depressing, and it is. But it's also a reality of politics these days, and it's the consequence of 35 years of organizing by the right wing and only around eight years on our side. The people in charge of the political system are the swing votes and the people that those voters want to work with. Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel have positioned themselves to be this swing vote, and they have chosen to basically throw some crumbs our way (minimum wage) while voting with the Republicans on the big issues, like Iraq...

The ultimate point here though is that we are not a partisan movement and should no longer think of ourselves as such. We are an ideological movement. We have ideas, and want to see those ideas driven with power. This means that we need to get down to the hard work of disabusing ourselves of candidate-centric politics, and work to create primary challenges wherever possible, as well as keep building forums for the dissemination of new ideas.

I respect Matt Stoller immensely, but this is horseshit. First: modern progressivism, i.e. the ideology espoused by the blogs and many young/outsider Democrats, would be suicidal to reject partisanship. The only way progressives have ever managed to claw their way into power has been on the backs of people like Howard Dean or the 2006 netroots candidates (Tester, Webb, etc); the only way we have made any difference has been through Democratic-led legislation.

Second: a pragmatic partisanship is at the very core of this progressive belief system. For Stoller to call for a transformation to "ideological movement" is nonsensical and redundant -- our ideology holds that ideas are useless until they're implemented, and as a result we focus on results as the ultimate source of value, hence our interest in political gamesmanship and the destruction of conservative infrastructure. A puritan idealism would be totally in contradiction with our ideals.

(This, after all, is how progressives strive to avoid the marginalization that ruined the 1960s New Left -- we come down hard on the Kucinich-vintage flower children who present ideas without regard for their practicality. One must keep one's eye on the ball.)

Third: we obviously need to protect and promote our ideas, and obviously the results of the Democratic Congress thus far are unsatisfactory, but there is no equivalent need for a departure from "candidate-centric politics". What other type of politics does Stoller have in mind exactly? You can't pry a person's leadership apart from their principles, and you can't keep ideas in a vacuum -- attempts to do that have led to the mute, soulless centrist technocracy that I always thought we opposed.

Ultimately: To reject partisanship is to neuter the progressive movement.

I'm troubled that Stoller, one of the leading lights and sharpest minds of online progressivism, would find himself going down this kind of alley. It speaks to an exhaustion, almost a giving up of hope; a retreat into the easier territory of wonky debate or (at best) interest-group-style scratching at the shins of political leaders. And I can understand why that's tempting given the shock of the Iraq defeat, the crushing vapidity of the presidential race thus far, and all the other things that embitter us daily; I can understand wanting to get away from the Democratic Party and all the problems it entails.

But what this proposal amounts to is a reach for the ceremonial hara-kiri sword. We can't give up on partisanship any more than Harry Reid can give up on legislating -- it's a dirty job, but it's our duty to our beliefs and our country. And Stoller (who incidentally is a Harvard grad, and a resident of my proud Mather House) needs to clear his head, man up, and get back to work.