Make Them Own It

Having been politically active for a full generation, having covered the Internet since 1985, online politics since 1996 and having been part of the Netroots since 2003, I enter the new era with a question never asked by liberals in my lifetime:

Now that we're in power what is our role?

The answer to that question lies in the hearts of the people you have beaten.

Make them own it.

Let's break that down into its component parts, because they are all important:

• Make means force, compel, staying on the case without rest and without mercy. It means you're the hammer, they're the nail, from now to the end of time. We are all Simon Wiesenthal now, and the criminals of the Bush Regime are the Nazis.
• Them means not just those in the Bush Regime who gave us these horrors, but all their enablers, including those in the media and those Democrats who let them get away with it.
• Own means you don't let them weasel out of their responsibility, now or ever. These people must not only be exiled, but kept out, forever. Note what the Reagan people did to Carterism (even though Jimmy Carter was a wise man decades ahead of his time). Hit them harder, longer, destroy them more thoroughly than Carter was destroyed.
• It means everything. The financial scandals. The Iraq War. The torture, the renditions, the eviscerating of the Constitution. All the actions of a government contemptible of government. Not only the actions, but the attitudes, and the ideology behind them, must be destroyed, called off limits by all future historians.

There is a difference between this work and the job of supporting the new Administration. The two tasks will diverge increasingly over time.

President Obama is going to take actions, and do business with people, whom we in the Netroots can't abide. He needs to hear our displeasure, respectfully. Let him know that we know, that we disapprove, that he is paying a price. But remember in this that he's our guy, so pick your spots. And be ready to back down.

Some good examples have been seen in the cabinet process. There was too much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that many appointees to political positions had actual experience in politics, usually in the Clinton White House. Experience is not a disqualifier, not necessarily, but if that experience mainly consisted of putting down liberal ideas on behalf of conservative ones, we have a problem.  There are differences in tactics, as between Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean. Then there are differences in policy. That's where we pounce.

The best examples in this week's news are the anger over Leon Panetta and Sanjay Gupta. The first is a test we're now passing, no small thanks to Rachel Maddow, who is becoming a real North Star on how to react in these matters. (Why NBC is doing to her what Republicans did to Sarah Palin is another blog post.) The second is a test we may yet fail, as those who wish to make the perfect the enemy of the good give the President friendly fire that can only help our enemies.

But there is a far more important part of the task I need to emphasize.

Offense.

Liberals have gained a lifelong preference for playing defense. Too often we wait for a conservative to strike the blow and then cringe from it. This is the most important change we must make.

It's our job now to strike the blow. It's our job to set the agenda. It's our turn to have enemies, to cast them down and cast them out. People like John Yoo (above) who endorsed this torture regime must be destroyed. Those who like Harvey Pitt supported the lawlessness of our time must be systematically denied any place of honor in society.

Yoo and Pitt are long term projects, and there are many more like them to engage in. Some people can recant their sins, come under close scrutiny and perhaps, in time be forgiven. Others deserve Nuremberg. Yoo and Pitt are among them. There are others. Naming them, shaming them, and shaming all who might honor them, into their graves, is our job. That's how you really destroy a movement and keep it from rising.

If you need an example of what we need to do to these people, consider Ramsey Clark. The son of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, he was hounded and hounded by the right, until he became a rather pathetic figure really (regardless of how you feel about what he said or what he tried to do in his later life). Bottom rail on top now.

The same goes for the institutions from which this evil sprang. I'm thinking of the think tanks, the corporate offices, and the whole Wingnut Welfare machine which gave birth to these machine men and women. We can start by campaigning, now, to rid the media of scum like Amy Holmes and Michelle Malkin, who do nothing but give hate an attractive female mouthpiece.

Now is the time when sites like Media Matters really come into their own. Having their words on the record, having them on tape, is a vital resource. Because many are going to try and weasel out of it, especially those who claim to work for "mainstream" media. Amazing how many enablers turn into Wernher von Braun when they're put under pressure. It's our job to apply that pressure.

It's a hard job. It's a long job. It's what the Netroots will be doing for the rest of our lives. But it's important work. It's vital. The whole polity of this country needs to be moved leftward, not just to inform better policies than we have had but to assure that the opposition which emerges from the Obama years bears no resemblance whatever to the banal, evil, feral human garbage we have had to live with for the last eight years.