Please indulge an old timer who has been here since caveman times. Although I no longer spend much time here (I'll explain why later.), I recently popped in to weigh in on a Hillary diary and learned that I am a "tea puppet" and a "right winger." For any of you young whippersnappers who discovered this place in the Obama era and would like to accompany a geezer like me on a trip down memory lane, follow me below the magic orange croissant...
Back in the dark days of the first BushCheney term when most people were still under the quasi-fascist spell of 911 jingoism, the Democratic Party seemed to have collectively adopted a strategy of sucking Bush's dick so no one would accuse them of not loving America enough. It was unbelievably depressing. It looked like all the contenders running for the Dem nomination were on board with this brilliant strategy of pretending King George was actually wearing clothes. Then out of nowhere an obscure governor from a small state jumped into the fray loudly and unapologetically saying what was obvious to the un-brainwashed among us: Republicans suck; the Iraq war is bullshit; Bush is a joke. It was like a rain shower in the desert! It turned a lot of former Green Party voters like me into Democrats.
Rewind to late 2002. The BushCheney propaganda blitz to sell a war with Iraq was well underway. I followed the issue on early progressive websites like Alternet and TomPaine.com. It was clear that all the Iraq hype about WMDs and connections to 911 were bullshit, but this information did not seem to be making it through the corporate media filter or the thick skulls of Dem politicians.
There was a huge void in mainstream politics for someone to point out that "Hey! Wait a minute! That dude (George Bush) sucks!" Howard Dean rushed in to fill that void and gave the party back its spine. And from the Dean campaign, myself and countless other early Kossacks discovered some early progressive blogs like Dean Nation and Daily Kos. Back when I found this place in 2004, Deaniacs seemed to be the biggest group, but there were plenty who supported Clark, Kerry, Kucinich, etc. A lot of arguing over who was the best and who was "electable." Eventually a lot of us held our noses and got on board with the extremely lame John Kerry.
After the bitter defeat, it was all about getting back up, brushing ourselves off and electing "more and better Dems." That was the mantra. I was fully on board. It made sense. It was obvious how much Bush and the Rethuglicans sucked. So the "more" part was obvious. But it was also obvious that there were way too many Blue Dogs and other corporate tools within the Democratic Party whose agenda was pro-corporate and anti-progressive. Hence the "better" part, which meant running proud progressives in primaries against the worst Dems. Great plan. Try to oust the suckiest ones, which also sends a message to all Dem candidates that they can be primaried if they fuck us too hard.
Another big effort by the early Kos community post 2004 defeat was helping elect Howard Dean as DNC Chair so he could implement the "50-state strategy" and start diffusing power out of DC to the local party activists so they could fight the Republicans in every single district at every level.
Some observant Kossacks happened to notice when a former sportscaster with a middle of the road nightly show on MSNBC began occasionally criticizing the Bush administration. Up until then MSNBC was trying to compete with Fox for conservative viewers. The Network helped Bush defeat Gore and then helped Bush sell his war with Iraq, even giving shows to far right nuts like Michael Savage and Joe Scarborough who used their airtime to denounce all Democrats and anyone against the war as traitors. Every time Keith Olbermann called out the Bush administration, another Daily Kos diary would promote it and MSNBC would get a flood of emails screaming for more. Keith noticed it, and began ramping up his anti-Bush diatribes and even started posting diaries here to give us all a preview of what he was going to dish out on his next show. And his ratings shot up and MSNBC realized that there was a niche that was not being filled. Then Rachel was hired (no doubt helped by thousands of emails to MSNBC from Kossacks) and the whole tone of the network gradually shifted left with Chris Matthews and even Scarborough getting the memo and shifting leftward.
It was an exciting time to be a part of this community and it seemed like we were really making a positive difference, influencing a major cable network, funding progressive primary challenges, getting our guy, Dean in as DNC Chair, "taking back the party" from the corporate hacks.
So what led me to this point where I no longer spend much time here and when I do, I am chased away as a "tea puppet" and accused of working for the Koch brothers? Well, ironically part of it is the work of so many great bloggers here and also on the old openleft blog. I followed the healthcare fight so closely in 2009 and 2010, thanks to great reporting by Kagro X, Slinkerwink, and others, that I actually had a pretty firm grasp of the parliamentary ins and outs of the process that it became obvious that the Dems never intended to pass a public option. They had the votes, but had clearly traded it away early in the process in exchange for a continued flow of corporate cash. When Republicans controlled everything and Dems had figured out that talking a good progressive game was a good way to get online donations and volunteers from their base, it was easy to believe that things would get better if we could just get more Dems elected. Well, we gave them those big majorities and they gave us continued no-strings-attached bailouts for the Wall Street billionaires who wrecked the economy, a Republican-designed privatized healthcare plan similar to the privatized Medicare expansion Bush delivered, zero accountability for Bush administration war criminals, a big stab in the back to labor on the card check bill they promised, more of the ultra-shitty corporate-empowering lobbyist-written trade deals, the same Clinton and Bush era hacks running the Fed and the Treasury. Here is the only substantial difference I see between the Obama and Bush administrations: Instead of huge costly all out invasions of other countries, Obama favors backing local insurgents to attempt to achieve the same neocon goals. The Obama approach saves trillions of dollars in federal expenditures, but the results seem equally tragic for the affected populations. And both approaches result in ISIS type blowback.
And this site became a place where I could count on being called a racist for criticizing the same shitty policies from Obama that I used to criticize Bush for and Clinton before that. It became a place where the same type of policies that everyone here was outraged about during the Bush administration were being defended because a Dem was implementing them.
This community is now bigger than I ever could have imagined back in 2004 when I joined, and there is still plenty of good stuff happening here, but there is just far too much apologizing and cheerleading for a party that is controlled by concentrated wealth. And anyone here who fights to change that will be fighting the party establishment. Judging by what I have seen, the party establishment almost always wins, and they deliver for their billionaire patrons and then make excuses to their working class base.
So here is my challenge to all of you still-faithful Kossacks: Come up with the next "more and better Dems." It was a good plan and a lot of people worked and donated for a decade to make it work. We achieved the "more" part in 2006 and 2008, but I have not seen much on the "better" front. Even when we win a primary here and there, it seems like our proud progressives quickly get with the corporate program and disappoint us when the time comes for a tough vote. The party is too institutionally corrupt. They were caught off guard by the Dean campaign and the phenomenon of online grassroots fundraising, but they will never let that happen again. The Obama team has reconsolidated power firmly back into the hands of the establishment. Time for a new strategy. Somebody sell me on something and give me a reason to give a shit about Democrats again. What is going to succeed in taking back the Democratic Party from wealthy establishment elites? What is going to force it to represent the working class for real and actually deliver policies that the people want? What is going to succeed where "more and better Dems" has fallen short? If you can't answer that, I don't fault you. But please don't chase people away from here who have decided to look outside the two-party system for answers if you don't have any answers yourself for how to fix a broken and unresponsive system. In the meantime, I will be looking for hope in local food production and local economics and boycotting corporations and supporting direct action by working class people in Ferguson and elsewhere and campaigns for policies like increasing the minimum wage.