Eating Their Own
There appears to be an emerging civil war in the Democratic Party flowing along generational, ideological, gender and racial lines that has just spilled onto one of the premier sites of the Left blogosphere, the DailyKOS:
On Friday, it got to be too much for Alegre, a diarist on the flagship liberal blog DailyKos, who frequently writes in
support of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our online community has tried to accomplish in this world,” Alegre wrote Friday evening. “No more.”
Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”
“This is a strike – a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t ‘work” at DailyKos again,” Alegre wrote, promising to come back only “if we ever get to the point where we’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches.”
The blogosphere has never been known for its polite, gentle discourse, and while fiercely partisan, being a Democrat does not make one immune from attacks from the lefty blogs (see Lieberman, Joseph I.). But now, the major internal divisions within the Democratic Party seem to be splitting liberal bloggers. So what happens when the unity enforcement mechanism becomes disjointed?….One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:
“Why should this site and Kos profit from the traffic we add to DailyKos, and the sense by outsiders that it represents the netroots as a whole?” the blogger asked, adding later, “But I just don’t see how people come back together on a daily basis after a falling out like this.”
If you heavily promote a kind of political discourse based upon demonizing opponents and venting bile it soon becomes a habitual frame of mind. All disagreement becomes intolerable and ad hominem invective rules. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of zealots.
March 16th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Daily Kos used to be a good place for discussing election strategy, progressive politics, etc. I had an account there back in 2004-06. I left because it became such an echo chamber that disagreeing from the party line invited hundreds of comments accusing you of being a covert GOP operative or something like that. I even got labeled an apologist for genocide. But back in the good old days it didn’t have a party line and was actually a good place for discussion. Maybe there’s some optimum size for a site like that, where if it gets too large it because unmanageable.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:20 am
If you heavily promote a kind of political discourse based upon demonizing opponents and venting bile it soon becomes a habitual frame of mind. All disagreement becomes intolerable and ad hominem invective rules. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of zealots.
Do you read Kos enough to make such a judgment? I thought you eschewed politics.
Whatever, I read Right-wing blogs. For demonizing opponents, you all got us beat.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Thus the problem with the blogosphere and politrix that Adrian points out.
Thank God McCain won handily last month or we would be facing the same problem in conservative circles. Thus, your post is rather missing the point in highlighting the liberals…. the cons were just as bad back in January (Especially after McCain won NH) but were saved by McCain’s miracle comeback. Otherwise, it could still be a Romney/Rudy/Huckabee circle jerk right now…..
However, considering the anger the liberals have developed over the past few weeks towards Hillary (did you hear about Olbermann putting a foot in her ass this week over her scorched-earth campaign? he’s her biggest liberal admirer!), I’m not surprised the Clinton camp is reacting this way in response.
March 16th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Hi Mithras,
You’d be surprised how widely I read vs. link. Do Right-wing blogs demonize? Sure. It’s a two-way street in that department, no argument, but the Freepers and Powerline aren’t in the news for imploding today ( the problem with the GOP is that there’s nothing of interest going on there these days, determined as they are to be intellectully dead).
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I do usually eschew writing about pure partisan politics but the Obama-Clinton contest has some deeper significance – there’s a fundamental cleavage crystallizing in the Democratic primary race. It will be at least as serious as the GOP split in in 1992 with Buchanan’s fireworks or perhaps as determinative as the Goldwater-Rockefeller Republican divide of 1964. If Hillary goes all the way to the convention it will be because there’s some hope of pulling a rabbit out of a hat and the Clintons will move Heaven and Earth to bring that to come to pass. Outsider view, I realize but that’s what I am seeing.
Hi Adrian,
Well, you’ve just made my point better than I could. Party line enforcement is destructive of intellectual give and take regardless of which side is engaging in it.
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Hi Eddie,
McCain gives me no cause for delight except in the sense that he’s not a wingnut, is a reliable hawk and is at this point, a vetted, known quantity. Unfortunately, he’s also an authoritarian hothead in terms of temperment who can’t be trusted on free speech or other civil liberties. Nor does he understand economics which is going to be a major deal for the next POTUS.
March 16th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Ideologues, eating young. A habit.
As for your man McCain, he at least seems to be a proper Free Trader and I hope not an ideologue about taxation. You’re on the edge of a currency collapse, and frankly the cretin in the White House presently is both too dim and too rigid to understand what a bloody pickle he’s gotten his country into.
A convo yesterday with a Sr. bank manager (non-American both manager and bank), about Bear Stearns, that I had, the fellow was rightly madened by Bush’s last speech on Friday – your financial system is on the edge and he’s blithering on about not too much governmental interference….. As the fellow said "The asshole needs to keep his bloody mouth shut for the next 9 months and let professionals deal with economic policy, real professionals."
March 16th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
That’s a pretty ill picture.
Zen, unlike yourself, I am crazy about McCain. I couldn’t have asked for a better Republican presidential candidate. We don’t "do" domestic party politics at CA as a rule, but I know the feeling among the contributors is pretty unanimous about McCain.
Also, if it is Obama v.s. McCain, this looks to be a pretty sweet election:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9f9b36f8-f297-4a48-9574-f231803be083&k=9534
March 17th, 2008 at 1:13 am
McCain is not rigid about taxation or by his own admission, well versed in economics. This could make for maximum flexibility in crafting creative and innovative policy solutions or it could lead into political populism and accompanying economic yahooism. Being from a border state with NAFTA interests pushes McCain into the free trader column as a Senator. It will come down to what kind of economic team McCain assembles, people will be policy in this instance.
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Hi Curzon,
I prefer McCain to Huckabee and that rich, empty-suit, guy whose father’s presidential campaign also imploded ( must be a family tradition of sorts – become a respected governor, run for president, exit the race a laughingstock) but my qualms are considerable.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Mark,
Kos actually posts a reasonable response to the "civil war" on his blog.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/17/12417/1285/527/478498
I honestly think this will end up in civil war b/c HRC shows no signs of accepting reality and keeps hoping (and fermenting behind the scenes) excessively negative coverage of Obama from every angle by guilt-tripping the media and blackmailing them will destroy his candidacy.
She doesn’t seem to understand that she, not Obama, is going to be held responsible for that by the party, even by some of her own supporters. That the black vote will be quite monolithic in this regard, not only because McCain is the perfect Republican to appeal to them but also because she’s blatantly pursued scorched-earth strategies. That young people will also by and large be drawn to McCain over her, or not at all. How can she win with only 50% of her base and hardly any independents? This is nothing more than a Clinton vanity show… and for once the lefties are wide-eyed to reality and not to rhetoric.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Have to say Kos was on target regarding Hillary except in one respect, it’s not really a coup when the Dem’s wrote their delegate rules to permit an insider or cabal of them to do exactly what Hillary intends to do. Hillary, as odious as I find her at times, is completely within her rights as a candidate to pursue this armageddon strategy.
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I expect however, that the Party elders always assumed that these rules would be used with greater subtlety, behind closed doors, to cajole a loose cannon nominee into line by threatening to undo the nomination. A highly connected but ruthless second-rater using the rules to openly steamroll over the nominal winner while the world watched wasn’t anticipated.
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Ironically, the Deomcratic Party has come full circle since the ’72 election cycle when they unseated Mayor Daley’s delegates and went down the path of rules reform, empowering primary voters and interest groups to select the nominee – the decision is going to be entirely in the hands of elite party insiders like it has not been since about 1956 -1960.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Quite true… the loss of the Florida re-vote opportunity effectively dooms her candidacy now, because she’ll have nothing nearing overtaking him in the popular vote, again barring her stubbornness and victimization theory politrix.
Thank you for the mention of Mayor Daley. I was not aware of the delectable history behind this process in the Democratic Party.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:51 am
If I remember my historical anecdotes, the 1960 Democratic nomination was when pro-JFK voters in Boston chanted "Mayor Daley do your thing" – i.e., rig the votes for JFK.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:09 am
And he did. The old 1st Ward (D-Giancana) voted the dead for JFK like you wouldn’t believe. And really, what GOP pol watcher was going to object to guys who reported to Joey Doves, Big Tuna and "Momo" ?
March 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
love the pic of Saturno devorando a sus hijos by Goya!
March 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 am
Now for the second course…eating each other.
Obama aide: Bill Clinton like Joe McCarthy
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:57 am
Joe McCarthy ? What ? That only makes sense as some kind of buzz word on the netroots Left. There’s so much to savage the Clintons about, why reach for the nonsensical?
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Evidently the two campaigns have passed the point of reason, realizing that this is going to be a struggle to the political death, not mere momentary defeat. If I was the campaign manager (of either camp) I’d lockdown everyone for any on-the-record statements – stuff like this has to be left for third parties or off the record