Will Marshall says "netroots types aren't really the Democratic Party's base"

madfloridian

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Sat Aug-14-10 11:39 PM
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Will Marshall says "netroots types aren't really the Democratic Party's base"

Edited on Sat Aug-14-10 11:40 PM by madfloridian

He calls those of us he considers the "netroots" types a "subset of liberals".

He says we love to be attacked because it validates us.

Will Marshall is a founder of the PPI and original member the DLC, and he is one arrogant you know what. He has been one of the leaders in antagonizing and belittling us....by whatever name they chose to call us at any given time.

From Huffington Post:

On Gibbs v. the "Professional Left"

Fortunately for slackers like me, Washington's chattering class is too busy for vacations. And cable TV never rests, keeping the vital discourse of democracy going even as Americans frolic heedlessly on beaches, lakes and mountains. Well, the fun's over for me, so I might as well wade into the fray between the frazzled White House Press Secretary and his netroots tormentors.

For starters, it's hard not to feel some sympathy to Gibbs, for whom watching cable TV is an occupational hazard. Too much of a bad thing, is, well, bad and it's only human for Gibbs to vent about the ideological purism of talk show anchors and lefty bloggers who imagine that most Americans are pining for a full-throated liberal avenger in the White House. Real-life politics is nothing like The West Wing.

And Democrats might as well have it out now, the summer of their economic discontent, rather than, say, in October on the eve of the midterm. One truly silly argument is that Gibb's criticisms of the administration's "base" could alienate them and cause them to stay home on election day. In the first place, netroots types aren't really the Democratic Party's base.

They are a subset of liberals, who are themselves outnumbered by moderates and conservatives in the party. And they love to be attacked, because it validates their rather inflated sense of political self-importance. The worst thing you can do to the netroots is to ignore them.

In fact, every Democratic President in recent memory has been flayed by the hard left for lapses from orthodoxy. That is especially true of Franklin Roosevelt, the President many of today's disappointed liberals say they wish Obama would be more like.

Don't you just love it? He really goes after those of us on the internet. It's insulting, it's rude, and it is typical of the stuff the Conservadems have dished out to us for decades.

He is famous for his insults toward us, and he seems to take great pride in them. He believes in raiding the red zone and winning Republican voters. He warned us over being critical of the Iraq invasion.

The neoconservative strain of Democrats actively oppose "The Left".

In June 2006, PPI president Marshall opined in the Democratic Strategist that Democrats needed to �raid the red zone� and win over Republican voters. �Security will continue to dominate national politics for the foreseeable future. It is axiomatic that the American people are not likely to give power to a party they do not trust to defend their values and keep them safe,� Marshall wrote. �Democrats therefore must close the national security confidence gap that has dogged them since the era of Vietnam protests. This requires reclaiming, not abandoning, the party's venerable tradition of muscular liberalism�the Truman-Kennedy legacy that helped America win the Cold War. Updated for new threats, it offers the best answer to the challenge of Islamist extremism today.� Marshall suggests three specific tactics: �We must put security first�and mean it � Second, Democrats must convince the public that we are ready to take over the fight against Islamist extremism � Third, Democrats must recognize that since 9/11, patriotism has become the most potent values issue in U.S. politics� (Democratic Strategist, June 22, 2006).

He also said some very cold and heartless things about the body count in Iraq.

"In a January 2004 article titled �Stay and Win in Iraq,� Marshall took a blithely nationalist view of body counts in a war in which most of the dead are Iraqi civilians. �Coalition forces still face daily attacks but the body count tilts massively in their favor,� wrote Marshall, a leading voice for the liberal hawks in the United States (Blueprint, January 8, 2004)."

The Iraqi dead are seemingly unimportant. I think the same ones who were hawkish for the Iraq invasion and bombing are alive and well in our party. I fear we might only get words to pacify us, and no action on stopping the war. Because it is after all what they wanted.

He once made fun of populism and compared Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown with Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo, and Pat Buchanan.

Today's neo-populism has right and left strands. Republican populism is mainly anti-immigration: Think Patrick Buchanan or Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Ariz). Democratic populism, personified by two newly elected Senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is vehemently anti-trade. The two strands converge in the person of CNN blowhard Lou Dobbs, who blames immigrants and corporations for either taking American jobs or sending them overseas.

..."The old populism, after all, was a curious amalgam of cultural reaction and worker-farmer radicalism, mixing calls for important democratic reforms--public regulation of corporations, the progressive income tax, labor union rights, direct election of U.S. Senators--with nutty obsessions like "bimetallism," and nastier tinges of nativism, racism and religious bigotry.

I wonder just how far he and others will carry this contempt for those of us they call by many names?