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Thursday, January 31, 2008

The best post on John Edwards' withdrawal that you will ever read
Posted by Jill | 10:14 PM
After plowing through page after page of tantrums on the Edwards blog and cultish bashing of heathens from true believers of all three of the until yesterday major Democratic candidates, I was going to write a post called "The Netroots: Why We Suck", citing such behavior as the reason our leaders don't give a flying fuck what we think.

I didn't, because the post I did last night came out instead.

But Jim Booth at Scholars and Rogues eviscerates with a very sharp knife the kind of bullshit identity politics at play in the Clinton/Obama race of a kind best evidenced by New York NOW's screeching that Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama is somehow a betrayal of women:

What Edwards is really doing is paying the price for being a white guy at the time of historic (and mostly just) back lash against the “aristocracy of white guys” that has been the target of the concerted efforts of “liberals” who aren’t liberal at all. What these “liberals” (too often media pundits) are are ideologues who proclaim that someone would make a better (read “more media interest worthy”) Presidential candidate simply because that person is a) a woman or b) an African-American. Justice is one thing - ideology is another - this is ideology at its most reeking…. Yes, I hear your scornful retorts: “These are the times that try [white] men’s souls…” yadda, yadda….

I don’t say this to discredit Hillary or Obama, both of whom have real merit. I say this because the drive to push forward a woman or black candidate is (I fear) a media creation that allows the media then to control the narrative of the Democratic campaign - and the election. And the Democratic Party, which plays the sucker to every narrative the media creates for it, is playing the sucker again.

John Edwards has addressed overtly and directly real issues plaguing our country at this historical moment - the shift toward a class system that the “Repugnacans” have engineered - and their systematic removal of any realistic opportunity for those in the rapidly developing underclass to better themselves. Edwards, like me, Sam Smith, and many others across this country, has been able to work hard, gain success, and rise to a position of both (in a relative sense) wealth and power because of the past social and economic policies of the Democratic Party. I don’t begrudge him any of his success the way the entitled scions of the Right do - to do so would be to repudiate my own life. What I find most repellent in The Left’s rejection of JE is its own smug self-righteousness that it is doing so for the “correct” reasons.

Not so. The Left is rejecting Edwards because he reminds too many of us in the Left® of what WE came from - how we scrambled and worked and took advantage of opportunities made available by FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ. It’s easier to glom onto the myth of Hillary as a deserving member of her gender or Obama as a deserving member of his race (despicably patronizing behavior masquerading as visionary open-mindedness) than to stand up and say “offering opportunities for people to better themselves has been and should always be a basic tenet of the Democratic Party.” That would mean supporting Edwards - who espouses these positions - and rejecting the more fashionable idea of supporting Hillary or Obama because they represent a “historic opportunity.”

[snip]

I’m reminded of the way Sam Smith and I have often laughingly scoffed that the only Marxists left are those wearing tweed in tony offices in universities. The closest they ever get to the “revolution” is the occasional Cuban cigar obtained from a Canadian friend. Those of us who’ve benefited from the Democratic Party’s social and economic policies that allowed us to get educations and move up the economic and social ladder are like tweedy Marxists. We’re interested in opportunity as an intellectual abstract.


Go read the whole thing here.

One of the funnier recurring characters on Morning Sedition was Tom Johnson's "Pendejo the Revolutionary" -- a hapless, rather sniveling guy who fancied himself to be some kind of neo-Che Guevara, coming up with organization names like Progressive Underground Destabilization League (PUDL) and Tactical Elite And Battle Action Group (TEABAG) and Battalion of Aggressive Liberal-Loving Seditionists (BALLS) and the People's Underground Threat Alliance (PUTA).

Jim is absolutely right: it may very well be that in trying so desperately to be "transformational", to be revolutionary like poor Pendejo, we may very well find ourselves under another four years of incompetent, crooked, wasteful, Republican rule while we sit petting our shih-tzu Stompers, who cannot be left alone, wondering what went wrong.

(h/t)

UPDATE: The aforementioned Sam Smith weighs in here.

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8 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I wanna be a revolutionary gal, too. lol
1/31/08, 11:25 PM  
Blogger Joshua said...
"Those of us who’ve benefited from the Democratic Party’s social and economic policies that allowed us to get educations and move up the economic and social ladder are like tweedy Marxists. We’re interested in opportunity as an intellectual abstract."

So true. And so very Randist, don't you think? Sadly, it seems that not only the Republicans believe in "I've got mine and fuck you". Except in the Demcoratic case, it's more like, "I've got mine and... did somebody say something? Oh, it must have been the wind." Which is I guess marginally better, in that it's feckless rather than damaging. But still, you know, not very good.
1/31/08, 11:36 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
It's tough. I just sat back & let myself be amused by the long long campaign, just sort of giving Edwards a third of everything in the early contests to come. & there's Chris Dodd looking like a great VP pick (if we could take two haircuts), & Obama, too. & Edwards had "grassroots" net support. Suddenly, he's out on the margin, & I'm thinking, "How did that happen just as I was sorting them all out for MY primary day? Why should freakin Iowa, & New Hampshire do that to him?"
1/31/08, 11:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
the drive to push forward a woman or black candidate is (I fear) a media creation that allows the media then to control the narrative of the Democratic campaign - and the election

This is what I believe, and I am really unhappy about it. I saw it last time with Dean and the whole "Kerry is electable" lie, and I am gutted that they pulled it off again.
2/1/08, 1:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
As I have feared and predicted, the Dems have decided to nominate a "cause" and not a "candidate". They -- and since I am happily 'unaffiliated' it is decidedly "they" -- no doubt expect the people will vote for "the donkey" -- any donkey -- instead of a Republican.

Hopefully, the Repubs will also prove stupid...

Now, let's hope it's NOT a Hillary-Barack ticket... Or vice versa!
2/1/08, 9:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Thanks for this. Booth is one of the few bloggers out there who seems to get the reality of our classism and the ways in which the have-more elite works to keep people in their damned place.

Gonna be interesting if one fine morning all the have-nots wake the hell up...
2/1/08, 9:37 AM  
Blogger slag said...
Over at the Edwards blog, I had read a comment by a Republican who, since was Edwards was gone, was going to go campaign for McCain. My initial reaction was that the person's decision was totally prejudicially-motivated (all about race and gender). But then I saw this post on big think's blog, and it made me realize that Edwards spoke to people about certain issues in the same way McCain did. It's about bringing democracy back to the people. Until democrats get that idea and stop focusing on single issues (war, healthcare, etc), I really think they're going to keep losing. With that said, I'm still not voting McCain.
2/1/08, 11:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
"Not so. The Left is rejecting Edwards because he reminds too many of us in the Left® of what WE came from - "

What horseshit. Who is this "Left" that rejected Edwards? What evidence does Booth have for this fatuous statement? So your candidate didn't succeed. Get over it and stop whining.
2/5/08, 6:20 AM  
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