Jane Hamsher is a Big Fat Idiot

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 2 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

Let me make one thing clear at the outset.

This is not a right wing hit piece. I am not arguing with Jane Hamsher's politics. I'm a fan.

So why the headline?

Because since the President's inauguration, Firedoglake and progressive blogs in general have been acting foolishly. They have not been doing the job a rising political movement vanguard is supposed to do. 

That is the same job they had before the election. Growing the movement. Targeting political enemies. Recruiting replacement candidates. Pushing an Administration they support in a supportive direction.

Instead they've been carping, treating the President like they do Republicans. They have been assuming ill will on the part of his appointees. They have not taken their real political enemies seriously enough.  They have behaved like something they are not, political insiders. They have acted shocked (shocked) that sausage is produced in the Sausage Factory. They have let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Take health care, for instance. They have acted surprised that there are conservative Democrats who mean them harm, that there are Washington interest groups who don't share their views, that some of the people they supported because they were "better" than the Republican alternatives were not that much better.

As a result they have spent a full year mired in minutiae, they have given all the political initiative to the Worst Persons in the World, and they wound up opposing a bill that, while not very good at all, is still infinitely better than what we have now. 

The present bill is better because is changes market incentives. It features community rating, so that insurers' profits will be best served by keeping their insureds healthy, not by finding excuses to kick them off coverage. Who pays is less important than how much we pay, and the bottom line on who pays was always going to be that the people pay.

Liberalism's enemies, Democratic, Republican, and media alike, have treated the Netroots like chumps, like people who just fell off the turnip truck, and Jane Hamsher has fallen for it — hook, line and sinker. So, should I add, have John Arevsois of Americablog, Markos Moulitsas of The Daily Kos, and every other liberal blogger who has acted like a jilted lover in the face of the President doing preciesely what he promised to do.

There is still time for Jane and her cohorts to save themselves from being the Carterites of our time. But it's going to take a recommitment to first principles:

1. You are not in power. Stop acting like you ever were. Get out of the sausage factory. 
2. You want Better Democrats. Find them, follow them, funnel money, time, and media attention toward them. 
3. Get off the President's back. You prefer Bush? President Palin? What you have is infinitely better than what you could have. 
4. Organize, organize, organize. Build networks with progressive sites in states and cities around the country. List them, link to them, read them, use them as local affiliates. 
5. Think local. Stop looking to Washington for answers. Find activists, officials, and stories outside the Beltway. Bring them to Washington's attention. 
6. Remember who the enemy is. It's the Haties, the Cheneyites, the Economic Royalists. Mostly it's the assumptions built up over the last 40 years, the entire Nixon-Reagan-Bush Era. Why anyone thought they could be overthrown completely after one election is beyond me.

The assumption that "it's always good news for Republicans" is general because, until recently, Republicans were almost-always ascendant. The last two times Democrats had both Congress and the White House — 1993-94 and 197-78 — it ended badly. (Add 1967-68 to that and you can see that Democratic institutional success is beyond the living memory of nearly everyone in Washington City.)

Most of what Hamsher and the other Netroot bloggers have been engaged in this last year is friendly fire. Republicans have a lesson to teach here, and that lesson is unity matters more than anything. You fight in your primary, but you stay on side after that. On everything. 

The difference between this Crisis period and the last is Hatie Unity, which is absolute. (Democrats were split over the war in 1969, and on race, making them easy for Nixon to beat when he needed to.)

It will take at least two more election cycles — successful ones — before validation causes today's Washington assumptions to break down. Meanwhile you have to do as they do, and that's hang together. Because otherwise you will surely hang separately.

What makes this most ironic is that the situation isn't really that bad. Republican leaders, and the Republican Party generally, remain very unpopular, much less popular than Democratic leaders and the Democratic Party. The danger is the "enthusiasm gap" — the greater likelihood that Haties will show up at the next polls than Democrats.

Jane, Markos and the rest have helped create that Enthusiasm Gap. They may enjoy blaming the Obama people (especially Rahm Emanuel) for that, but in the end you're responsible for your own political actions, no one else. 

Rebuilding enthusiasm will be difficult, but it can be done. Follow the rules outlined above. Start local. Network. Challenge the real enemy, and even where primaries are necessary, unite afterward. 

You are campaigners, not bureaucrats. Campaign.