Wingers, Fringers, and the rest of us
: There's a lot of interesting followup discussion to my post yesterday about close-, clubby liberals trying to lock out fellow liberals they don't like... like me.
They are trying to create a club that gets ever smaller as they reject more people who disagree with them about one of their fervently held beliefs or who don't hate the other side fervently enough to meet their standards. The club soon makes them and no one else happy.
They think the club is the Democratic Party. They think they took it over in the last election. In fact, they lost the last election for us.
It is time for more mature politicians -- see Bill Keller's definition of politiican here -- to take charge.
In the meantime, while the Wingers on one edge and the Fringers on the other edge spit and piss on each other, the rest of us -- most of us -- are left in the middle wondering where to turn.
See lots of discussion in the comments below. And see these posts from my PubSub egofeed, too. First from Fred Wilson a card-carrying (and checkbook-carrying and megaphone-carrying) liberal. He says that he and I disagreed only about the Iraq war; he affirms my liberal credentials and then says:
The war in Iraq needs to be buried in the past. It's over as a politcal issue. The left lost that one. There are bigger battles to fight like fiscal responsibility, a sound social security system, a woman's right to choose, etc. That's where my left leaning politics are strongest and its where the majority of the country agrees with the Democrats.
I wrote several weeks ago that the left needs to focus on Social Pragmatism and Fiscal Conservatism. That's a winning proposition. Opposition to the war in Iraq is not.
: Scared Monkeys
says:
This is the death nell for the Democrats. The Kos wing has taken over the party and they will turn the Jarvis’s, the thinking Democrats into Republican voters. There is only room in the inn for the fire breathing, hate anything Bush, democrats in the party. It is a shame.
I am a Republican. I was overjoyed that GWB won, but I am very scared. The nature of politics is that sometime the party in power will screw up. Then the other party, no matter how wacky, gets it turn (see Jimmy Carter).
Do we want the modern incarnation of the Democratic Party of Hatred to have the power? Please, Please Moderate Democrats fight for your party. Otherwise, when power does shift, we are going to have one heck of a mess on our hands.
And Jeff, I am a huge fan of yours , and appreciate all that you do. A year ago, I offered a place in the republican party to you. I recind that offer. Please get your party back in order. Help them to see that they are needed to be logical. Not oppressive.
Linkdump
says:
Personally I like to sit in the political middle and veer wildly back and forth because I think it’s the only sensible thing to do. I also think we need to round up the folks on both fringes and put em in a to-the-death pay-per-view cage match with survivors being exiled to a 20 ft diameter desert island with one palm tree.
: Pennywit
says:
A whole passel of us sit near the center of the electoral continuum.
We don't show up for party meetings. We don't salute the political messiah of the moment. Some of us arent' very loud, either. We may consider ourselves political spectators. But we vote. We talk to our friends about politics. Our loved ones learn of our disenchantment with one party or another.
And in a nation split as evenly as it is, our votes can decide the next election. So if we agree with you in general but disagree on particulars, you would be well-advised not to excommunicate us ... as I'm sure many of us could make peace with ourselves and reach an accommodation with the other party.
: Jason Van Steenwyk
says:
The bottom line: The left's turning on and betrayal of Jarvis demonstrates how out of touch with the country they have become. Dean will be an electoral disaster for the Democratic party. Their election of Dean to the DNC chair position demonstrates at once a failure to learn from any of the mistakes of the McAuliffe era -- mistakes that have caused the Democratic party to lose ground and credibility over a full decade -- and a touching devotion to maintaining their status as a minority party.
: And
saving the best for last, Sean Bonner says:
There's a lyric by an old hardline band that says "There's only two sides and a line that divides, if you stand in the middle you're not on my side." And that's pretty much the way the fringe on both sides of this political rock fight sees things. If you don't agree with them 100% then you are the enemy. Agreeing with them 90% is the same as disagreeing with them 100%. It's completely retarded, especially since most people, the ones who probably have the numbers and pull to make a change fall somewhere in the middle. Yet all we ever heard from is the fringe. It's almost as if taking about the things you agree with isn't interesting and not worth the coverage - the only thing work talking about is who you don't agree with. As if your enemies define you more than your friends. I think that's completely stupid.
: When people say that weblogs are all about the edges, I'll show them this.
Milk carton TV
: Watching the hours of TV devoted to the tragedy of the latest missing child in Florida is, well, uncomfortable. It is a good thing that TV is using its power to spread the word and, perhaps, help find the child; it has worked before. But once the word is spread, is it really necessary to eek out the angsts of the family -- and the suspicions of police and anchors -- at length, again and again? It's a sick sort of voyeurism, witnessing pain.
When I was a reporter on the midnight shift in Chicago -- where I sat and waited until somebody killed somebody or died a miserable death to write stories under our standing slugs: slash, crash, slay, burn -- I frequently had the unfortunate duty of calling the family of a victim of some sort of terrible crime or accident to get grist for our mill: human-interest quotes and pictures. I quickly learned the best line to use, the same one you hear on TV: Please tell us about your loved one, tell us more than just the name and the cold details that will appear in the paper. We're acting as if we and the audience are concerned. And maybe we are. But it's still an intrusion.
How much do we need to know about these horrible missing-children cases? What is the best way to serve? I think we could exchanges long, painful, salt-in-wound interviews with distraught relatives in front of their humble homes for more-frequent alerts.
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