Legal Commentary

The Art Of The Deal

By Big Tent Democrat

One of the things I wrote a lot about early in the Obama Administration was political bargaining. Another theme was the role of activists. On both issues, the liberal blogosphere, in large measure, completely missed the boat in my estimation, choosing to largely defend the ineffectual political bargaining techniques of the Obama Administration and criticizing activists for not being sufficiently supportive of feeble Obama policy initiatives. I dubbed these folks the Beltway Bloggers in an attempt to separate them from the activist blogger. Unfortunately, many of the Beltway Bloggers, Ezra Klein in particular, like to play liberal activist on TV and MSNBC, Keith Olbermann in particular, let them play that role. It was a terrible mistake for all.

Digby writes about a TV segment that illustrates why:

Sam Seder went on to [say . . .] the left has been willing to compromise for a long time, while the right hasn't. [Conservative Matt] Lewis, grinning like a jack-o-lantern, ended with this sage observation:

Well I think the real world implication here Dylan, is that if the Republican base does not want to compromise and the Democratic base is willing to compromise Republicans are going to win more public policy battles than they lose.

What can you say to that?

That he's right, that's what you can say. The question then is what do you do to try and change that? That's the question for progressive activists.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 13, 2010 (boomark / email).