At
Booman Tribune today there is a blog by him suggesting that if Coakley loses, there needs to be a debate. However there is not a suggestion of a debate except among the left.
A couple of quotes that concern me:
He mentions Armando's quotes:
More explicitly, Armando makes the point that it makes no sense to shout down the disaffected left, even if they are partly to blame. Let's think about that.
He's 100% right that the left does not need to hear a lecture from Rahm Emanuel, or any squishy Blue Dog/New Dem 'centrists' about how we're all a bunch a cry babies who are hurting the party. But what about people on the left talking to other people on the left? How about an internal debate on whether our tactics are working or not? Because, I don't think they're working, and a lot of what I've seen in the progressive blogosphere this year has been more effective at demoralizing and dividing the troops than it has been in persuading anyone not on the left to do what we want or advise.
If Coakley loses and this starts some soul-searching debate or circular firing squad, I think the real conversation needs to be the left talking to itself.
Well, I have an answer for that question. The progressive tactics are not working. Why? Because they don't need us right now. We do not have the power and the money to give them what they want.
Our importance comes only at election time...at other times it is considered that our posturing is "sound and fury signifying nothing".
May I suggest that conservative Democrats think about how we won the the 2006 and 2008 elections. I suggest they stop and think about what happens when you ignore your base except when it is time to go to the ballot box.
All the lectures feel meaningless sometimes.
What would be discussed in that conversation?
Would we talk about the way women's rights have been gradually abandoned to keep the religious groups on board, especially in the health care debate? Would we tell ourselves that women need to understand that we have to concede our rights for bipartisanship?
That is probably what we would be expected to say after all. These groups which use women as wedge issues are powerhouses of money and good media. There are really few media outlets and just a few bloggers who think it might be important to consider the health of the mother in debating the right to a late term abortion.
Would we be told that we are single issue folks, that we need to think of the common good? Probably.
Would those of us on "the left" who are concerned about the state of education in this country discuss among ourselves that the rush to turn public schools into charters run by private industry is necessary for the future of education? Probably.
The current Secretary of Education is offering big money to states and districts to close more public schools and open more charter schools....schools that are usually run by private corporations yet funded with public taxpayer money. AND not regulated by anyone.
As a retired teacher I would have a hard time having that conversation with myself. I believe America became a great country by providing a public education system. I believe
that the demeaning of public education began under Reagan and has worked very well unfortunately.
In California Mr. Reagan had made political hay by heaping scorn on college students and their professors. As President his administration's repeatedly issued or encouraged uncommonly bitter denunciations of public education. William Bennett, the President's demagogic Secretary of Education, took the lead in this. He toured the nation making unprecedented and unprincipled attacks on most aspects of public education including teacher certification, teacher's unions and the "multi-layered, self-perpetuating, bureaucracy of administrators that weighs down most school systems." "The Blob" was what Bennett dismissively called them.
Three years into his first term Mr. Reagan's criticism of public education reached a crescendo when he hand picked a "blue ribbon" commission that wrote a remarkably critical and far-reaching denunciation of public education. Called "A Nation At Risk," this document charged that the US risked losing the economic competition among nations due to a "... rising tide of (educational) mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people." (The commissioners did not consider the possibility that US firms were uncompetitive because of corporate mismanagement, greed and short sightedness.)After "A Nation At Risk" the nation's public schools were fair game for every ambitious politician or self-important business boss in the country. Its publication prompted a flood of follow-up criticism of public education as "blue ribbon" and "high level" national commissions plus literally hundreds of state panels wrote a flood of reform reports. Most presupposed that the charges made by Mr. Reagan's handpicked panel were true. Oddly though, throughout this entire clamor, parental confidence in the school's their children attended remained remarkably high. Meanwhile Mr. Reagan was quietly halving federal aid to education.
That sums up Mr. Reagan's educational legacy. As governor and president he demagogically fanned discontent with public education, then made political hay of it. As governor and president he bashed educators and slashed education spending while professing to valued it. And as governor and president he left the nation's educators dispirited and demoralized.
I would have a very hard time talking to others on "the left" about the drive to privatize education by bribing the states with loads of money.
I wonder if we will discuss among ourselves the way the party leaders pick those who run. Will we discuss
the very outrageous case of the DCCC not supporting the Ohio Secretary of State who fought so many tough election battles for us?
Bob Menendez, the head of the DSCC, is threatening to attack Jennifer Brunner if she is deemed to not have enough money in her primary against perennial loser Lee Fisher.
The DSCC has all but written her off, however, and the establishment has turned to Fisher. In fact, Brunner said when she spoke with DSCC Chair Bob Menendez in Sept., he first told her that he “didn’t want to see a Democratic candidate at the end of the primary with zero dollars,” and he followed up that his organization would go into the state to work against a candidate perceived as “being negative in the primary or not raising enough money.”
Brunner said she responded: “If you do that, the women of Ohio will never forgive you.” Menendez, she said, retorted: “I know you’re not scared of me, and I’m not scared of you.”
Menendez told her he was not "scared" of her? How childish.
I wonder if bloggers will start suggesting that "the right", the "conservadems" have a conversation with themselves?
I rather doubt it.
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