Markos has a new piece up at Newsweek, the first one since November 26, 2007.
For the intro and some instant analysis, join me below the fold.
A Silver Lining In the Blue Battle
Hillary’s destructive coup attempt: it’s a good thing for the Democratic Party.
By Markos Moulitsas | NEWSWEEK
Apr 14, 2008 Issue
Hillary Clinton has proved during the past few months that she is a fighter, that she is tenacious, and that she is in the race to win. There’s just one problem. She’s already lost.
No matter how you define victory, Barack Obama holds an insurmountable lead in the race to earn the Democratic nomination. He leads in the one metric that matters most: the pledged delegates chosen directly by Democratic voters. But he also leads in the popular vote, the number of states won and money raised. Still, Obama’s advantages aren’t large enough to allow him an outright victory. He needs the 20 percent of party delegates who aren’t bound to a candidate. It’s with these superdelegates that Clinton has staked her ephemeral chances.
Clinton’s near-lone chance of victory rests with a coup by superdelegate, persuading enough of them to overcome the primary voters’ preference. Yet a coup by elite Democrats would be ill-received, to put it mildly. Obama’s base spans the party’s most loyal and engaged constituencies: African-Americans, professionals who generate hundreds of millions in small-dollar donations and a conventional-wisdom-defying outpouring of youth support.
My impressions shortly…
If I may summarize-
- Hillary can only win by sundering the party, which would be far more damaging to party building efforts than Dean’s loss in 2004.
- While the extended contest is bothering the Washington establishment, it is resulting in registration gains and local party building.
- The pressure has improved Obama as a candidate.
Don’t bother with the third page, it’s just credits.
It’s not the most extensive or in depth analysis Markos has ever written, and the points are all very conventional to us, but it is in keeping with the general theme that the Obama candidacy represents the best chance for the Netroots to change the Beltway Establishment culture this cycle.
Enjoy your morning, discuss your conclusions below.
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Under the general category of BREAKING!!!.
Just a heads up for you all.
And you’re right to be concerned.
I might get over my heart break. I am undecided on that issue.
However. Much though I am heart broken, I hate to thinking of you traveling when you still feel bad.
I am just going to lobby for you to visit Memphis now and lobby for a Memphis get together to ensnare all the folks who couldn’t make Boston.
he is NOT the best way. if we rely on that thinking and he turns out to be mainstream, we are deeper in this hole.
the best way to change the establishment is to change it. one v.v.v. important concept is to detach ourselves from the idea that the pols hold ALL the power.
we can work in earnest right now to advance net and grassroots candidates for Congress in 2010. and we can let whoever wins the presidency know this is coming their way.
further, can enough of us raise money for the ACLU to start civil action against people in the administration? can citizens sue politicians for NOT upholding the constitution? why not at least file an action, even if it gets booted.
the way to change this game is to start a new one. force politicians into reckoning with us. a confederation of grassroots and netroots groups with some kind of charter and strategy. not all one big group. but factions, yes factions, because that is representational. it is the way to make it work: distribution of power. that’s the key.
if obama is our best chance, even with him on our side, we’re in trouble.
it has to be citizens being obama’s best chance to restore our gov’t.
hope you’re feeling better. see you in beantown?
its unseemly for democrats to pretend that superdelegates should cast their vote according to the ‘will of the people’…
if such were true, superdelegates wouldnt exist. they were created to override the ‘will of the people’, and if they do so, they implicate the system, no particular candidate and certainly not themselves.
how is it LESS democratic to tell someone whom they must vote for??? huh??
anyhoo…my quarrel isnt with you or with either candidate…it is with those who feign outrage that the system theyve been supporting for so long just might work against them. its disingenuous..hypocritical…and silly..
and is a laughing stock for his silly unmanaged website.
Many times Markos has played the “inevitability” card regarding Obama…gleefully ignoring Obama’s willingness to throw everyone under the bus. His unsubstantiated inflammatory posts, like his front-pagers, especially the one of “making Obama look blacker” really don’t give him the air of “weight” that he thinks he has.
And after excoriating republicans, the man still can’t put up a post criticising McCain. He accuses everyone who does not like Obama of being a racist.
I won’t ever read another post by this silly, political hack. I can’t wait till Obama runs right and throws Kos under the bus too. We are all going to be enormously sorry with an Obama presidency.
but I don’t think we will get there: the man with the silver tongue is going to lose to the man with the silver stars. Sorry Barry, sorry kosobama, you were too short sighted and to arrogant to see this.
Markos has been infected with punditolii vacuosum, a bacillus that can breed only in the rarefied atmosphere created when otherwise more or less sane people begin to believe their own bullshit.
I don’t have any problem with his support of Obama (hell, I can support Obama), or even his short-sightedness in allowing his site to degenerate into a sophomoric shrieking session cum fan-club, but I do get annoyed with his apparent inability to recognize that, well, actually, just saying something is self-evident does not make it so. He has lost his supposed match-up against Rove: the latter, while happy to promulgate absolute horse-crap, is at least the maker of the koolaid (and, therefore, presumably, isn’t obliged to drink it), whereas Markos has simply absorbed so much that his judgment has drowned. Next stop Brooksdom in all its horrors. Please excuse the mad mixture of metaphors.
Reminds me of the old game of Let’s Make a Dope Deal. Markos was a purveyor of a powerful drug, the opportunity to express opposition and outrage, fear and hope, rant and rave. Good dealers generally know that YOU DON’T USE THE STUFF YOU SELL, and Markos was fine as long as he kept his distance, tossing in the occasional cynic-bomb, exercising his proprietor’s right to jeer at all sides when they went over the top. Now he’s just another dope with a big megaphone and a sign accusing the rest of us of being, yep, “Morans”.
I think the registration gains are a joke. I’m guessing many, if not most, of the newly registered Democrats change their registration back to no party or Republican after the election.
They wanted him under the bus asap when his first column read like an op ed in a des moines, iowa high school paper.
This one is much worse, because its just monday morning quarterbacking by a hack pundit who is a closet republican.
I clicked a link on RawStory this morning to a dKos diary and was instantly reminded why I had removed myself from Big Orange.
It’s scorched earth over there.