Booman is of two minds, like a tree in which there are three birds.

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Booman the politico makes some recondite point that is also not easily understood by the lay person.

What brought people together into progressive blogging communities and networks was related to policy (the invasion of Iraq, torture, illegal surveillance, regressive taxation, bad environmental policy) but also other things (a one-sided corporate media, incompetent government, and lack of meaningful and effective resistance by the Democrats). But notice something. The progressive blogosphere rarely if ever engaged in serious policy debate about legislation pending in Congress. Insofar as it was discussed at all, it was normally opposed. And that kind of blogging can be habit-forming. What was appropriate when the Republicans ran everything is carried over and used against the Democrats.

During Bush, having generalized, albeit non-wonkish policy opinions, e.g., hate war crimes, love peace, was okay, but during Obama it’s just a residual bad habit.  That’s hardly consistent.  Booman’s own recognition and acknowledgment of this inconsistency in later paragraphs doesn’t make it any less inconsistent.  It just makes the inconsistency “acknowledged.”  

What’s further annoying is the fact that he places his own political acumen and expertise above the diverse opinions and expertise of everybody else drawn into the chattering classes after the judicial coup in 2000.  Sure, people like Kagro and Booman know a helluva lot about arcane legislative procedures, coalitions, and general sausage-making.  But I hate to break it to him that no Byzantine Congressional procedure or legislation, no matter how fucked up, will ever change, say, the laws of thermodynamics, leading one to suspect that legislating against thermodynamics might be a bad policy choice in certain circumstances.  Hence, the expert opinions of others may have a bearing on policy debates.  An expert endocrinologist, for example, may have some insight into what happens to the health of real people when that legislative sausage passes through the guts of people in varying economic circumstances, or what war specifically does to the brains of previously “normal” individuals.    And forget about the non-political experts: What about government of, by, and for the working stiff?  Who is the relevant expert on their worn out joints and lack of health care.  Yeah, that kind of blogging.

Now, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, what was wrong when Bush and the Republicans did it is also wrong when Obama and the Democrats do it. Holding government accountable is important no matter who is currently in power.

Right.  So why has demanding accountability now become a bad habit?  Because in Rubinites we still trust?

And the Democrats don’t have everything right on policy. On some things they are dead wrong. On others, they are divided and unable to pass good policy in the face of united opposition.

Yeah, Democrats are dead wrong on a lot of things, such as generally maintaining the Bush status quo, or offering incremental changes while winning the elections on a platform of change in the fierce urgency of now.  

So, people who really care deeply about policy and think the Democrats can and should be doing better ought to be speaking up and offering constructive advice or criticism. I think this is generally what Glenn Greenwald is doing. On the other hand, most of us got into blogging because we recognized the singular danger the Republican Party represented to our country, and our number one goal was simply to get them out of power. Like the teabaggers, we weren’t looking to make compromises on legislation but to defeat it. But unlike the teabaggers, we had facts to support our positions. If we got into blogging and political activism to put the Democrats in power, should we not be focusing on helping them pass their agenda and stay in power?

2006 & 2008 both showed us that displacing Republicans with Democrats was NOT enough.  The agendas were NOT so different after all.  Obama’s post-constitutional military-industrial adhocracy with corporate overtones and fascist harmonics was NOT all we had hoped for.  Thus, wanting to keep them in power is NOT the foregone conclusion.

The split in the blogosphere is over splintering goals. On one side you have people who now identify the government itself (the insiders) as the corrupt entity regardless of party. On the other side you have people who don’t disagree about the systemic problems but who are looking for best outcomes and a successful presidency.

Maybe some of us believe that the systemic crises are so profound that a nibbling-at-the-edges, tinkering strategy is doomed to be swamped and overwhelmed by various impending systemic crises.  A quadrillion dollar ponzi scheme was bailed out at taxpayer expense, without any reform and leaving all the toxic assets marked to fantasy and dumped into the landfills of government sponsored entities, at taxpayer expense, while the economy continues tanking, thus making another, bigger crisis inevitable.  Re-inflating the bubble at all costs when it is doomed to failure is stupid.  And where’s the accountability for fraud?  Where’s the sense of moral hazard?  We are on the Titanic down in steerage wondering what “best outcomes” and “a successful presidency” really means.

How about wealth-care reform?  Yet another corporate bail-out.   Aggressive wars?  Obama tapped the brakes on Iraq and escalated in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  Civil liberties?  The Imperial Presidency?  Transparency?  The general rule of law?  Pfft.  Just like Bush.  Pfft.

There is a place for both, but if you are waking each morning to blog about what a bunch of corporate whores the Democrats and the president are, you haven’t really adjusted your style to the new situation in Washington. In fact, you are effectively denying that there is a new situation in Washington. You just brought over what you were doing during the Bush administration and turned your guns on the Obama administration.

I haven’t adjusted my style, because the situation hasn’t changed much at all.   Booman is free to think that Gates, McChrystal, and Petraeus have a bold new vision for the Middle East, but I don’t see it.  Booman is free to think that Rubin, Summers, Geithner et al bring fresh thinking to the value of financial innovation and regulation, one that is strongly tempered by a sense of moral hazard, but I don’t see it.  Quite the opposite, really.   I am effectively denying that there is a new situation in Washington, because regardless of anyone’s true intentions, you cannot distinguish it from corruption.    

And, remember, I am talking about motivation here, not discrete posts. I’m talking about themes and focus. Is this first thing you do in the morning to look for ways to talk about how the president has disappointed you? How Congress sucks? Then you aren’t interested in keeping the Republicans out of power any more. You are fighting a different battle. And if you don’t have a plan for how your reinforcement of Republicans memes is going to help lead to better outcomes, you aren’t really a Democrat anymore, and your activism can’t necessarily be considered progressive even if uses progressive terms and angles. That’s fine. No one is compelled to support the Democrats over the Republicans or to support policies they disagree with. But we should call this kind of blogging what it is, which is anti-Obama, and anti-Democratic Party…and anti-government, really.

It’s not me reinforcing Republican memes.  It’s the fucking Democrats.  And Obama.  You did hear Obama’s Nobel speech, no?  It was incoherent.  One certainly would like to see Obama and Democrats succeed, but it’s like they have no motivation to actually succeed.  Mind boggling.

Finally, where does Booman come up with this “anti-government” bullshit.  That is just straight-up, moronic bullshit.  Please don’t level bullshit charges.   We want good, constitutionally mandated government informed by expert opinion, common sense, and moral sense.  

I suspect Booman’s ego is supple enough that he will not try to cling to and rehabilitate these awful arguments.

update

My suspicions proved incorrect.  Booman actually thinks that those to the left of him are unhinged.  In responding to the so-called Uygur doctrine of attacking Obama from the left, Booman rightly (in my view) claims that spurious attacks are detrimental to democratic base morale, then gives an example of such an allegedly spurious attack:

The first flaw is that there actually is a downside to having progressive opinion leaders blast away at the president and say things like this about him:

…you won’t make things better because you don’t work for us. You work for ExxonMobil, Blue Cross and Goldman Sachs, who are all stealing from us and making our lives worse. You can’t work for the people who are stealing from the public and serve the needs of the public at the same time. A House divided against itself must fall, you cannot serve the voters and Mammon, etc., as they say. It doesn’t matter anymore if some of you want to, or would if you could, because you didn’t and evidently can’t.

Most blogreaders and radio listeners and Olbermann/Maddow watchers don’t like to admit that they take their cues from opinion leaders. But many of them do. Because of this, progressive leaders can’t act like Charles Barkley and say they don’t want to be role models. Opinion leaders shape opinions, and they can breed cynicism and apathy if they so choose. If they go out and tell their audiences day after day that the president of the United States is stealing from them to do the bidding of Goldman Sachs and Exxon/Mobil, then a hearty percentage of their readers are going to, you know…start to believe it. And that’s where you start eating into your base and causing problems in a midterm election that will be decided on differential turnout. So, you ought not to go around saying these things unless you really truly think they’re true. And if anyone thinks that blockquote above is fair and accurate, then I just don’t know what to say to them. It’s a bunch of malarkey, is what it is, even if it does advance Cenk’s strategy of making the president look reasonable.

In short, Booman doesn’t mind honest leftist attacks on Obama, it’s just that you are not being honest, ’cause you’re full of malarkey.

I get the feeling Booman doesn’t read the same economic blogs that I read.  I’d really like to know how Booman distinguishes Obama’s economic policies with respect to Wall Street and Main Street from pure corruption.  Evidently, the many people who have tried and failed to make the distinction are unhinged leftists, full of malarkey, and he doesn’t even know what to say about it.  Certainly, Booman can dial us into the manifold ways Obama’s Wall Street bail-outs can be easily distinguished from raw corruption, and what distinguishes good economic policy from what would otherwise be the biggest political crisis of our time.