No Argument
Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason Magazine, reviews a new book by Matt Bai in todays New York Times. Bai covers national politics for the The New York Times Magazine, so naturally, his book, The Argument, is about politics. Specifically, it is about the lack of ideas that defines the Democratic party today. It is not a flattering book and their will be a lot of Democratic "players" who will not be sending Bai any Christmas cards anytime soon.
With the possible exception of the Republicans, is there a major political party more stupefyingly brain-dead than the Democrats? That’s the ultimate takeaway from “The Argument,” Matt Bai’s sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of “billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics” along unabashedly “progressive” (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines. Well-financed and influential groups ranging from the Democracy Alliance to the New Democrat Network to MoveOn.org may be taking over the Democratic Party, he says, but they are not doing the heavy thinking that will fundamentally transform politics — unlike the free-market, small-government groups formed in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s historic loss in the 1964 presidential race…….
…….In detailing the machinations of superrich Democratic activists like George Soros, who blew through close to $30 million of his wealth in an unsuccessful attempt to unelect George W. Bush in 2004, and barricade-bashing cyberpunks like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the popular Daily Kos Web site, whose participant-readers attack all things Republican with the same fervor they showed when championing the already forgotten Ned Lamont in his unsuccessful attempt to unseat Senator Joseph Lieberman in 2006, Bai reluctantly and repeatedly owns up to a hard truth: “There’s not much reason to think that the Democratic Party has suddenly overcome its confusion about the passing of the industrial economy and the cold war, events that left the party, over the last few decades, groping for some new philosophical framework.”
Bai's book, and Gillespie's review, seems especially hard on Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his book-writing partner, Jerome "Plea Bargain" Armstrong.
Moulitsas, the Prince Hal of the left-liberal blogosphere, comes off as an intellectual lightweight, boasting to Bai that his next book will be called “The Libertarian Democrat” but admitting that he has never read Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and social theorist, who is arguably most responsible for the contemporary libertarian movement. Moulitsas’ co-author (of “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics”), Jerome Armstrong, talks a grand game about revolutionary change, but signed on as a paid consultant to former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, an archetypal centrist Democrat whose vapid presidential campaign ended almost as quickly as it began. When MoveOn — the Web-based “colossus” whose e-mail appeals, Bai says, have always centered on the same message: “Republicans were evil, arrogant and corrupt” — devised its member-generated agenda, it came up with a low-calorie three-point plan: “health care for all”; “energy independence through clean, renewable sources”; and “democracy restored.”
I would guess that Gillespie is off a few lists, too. But the entire point is not something really new. A lot of people on the more right-leaning side of the 'sphere have been pointing out this lack of ideas for quite some time. Mostly what the Democrats are about these days is being against George Bush. Even the "ideas" they are promoting sound good in theory but are not really well thought out. (Just take a look at the developing trainwreck of biofuels that I have documented over and over again.)
Without those big ideas, politics becomes a mechanical process - which is exactly what Bai is saying the Democrats are focusing on now - the machinery of politics. Gillespie points out that the Republicans are not exactly overflowing with big ideas at this point, either. But they have a real opportunity to get back to those big ideas. Especially with the other side's fixation on how the little gears and levers work.
Other Links to this Post
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Doubling Down On America — Sunday, 2 September , 2007 @ 8:30 am
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JunkYardBlog — Monday, 3 September , 2007 @ 1:47 am
By Mwalimu Daudi, Sunday, 2 September , 2007 @ 10:59 am
Have Democrats replaced the GOP as the Stupid Party? Matt Bai’s argument is a hard sell, considering the fact that Republicans still count Chuck Hagel, Arlen Specter, John Warner, Chris Shays, Olympia Snowe, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Ron Paul, George Voinovich, Lindsey Graham, and Walter Jones among their members. In fact, the GOP is perilously close to retiring the trophy.
A better description of Democrats is that they are the Insane Party. Socialized medicine, redistribution of wealth by using out-of-control taxing and spending, harnessing the judicial system to conduct partisan witch-hunts, censorship, crackpot religion masquerading as science, voter fraud, and accommodation of Islamofascism are its ideas. This is not “stupidity†(as Bai seems to define it), but a calculated move to take America into a fascist nightmare by appealing to the lowest and filthiest instincts of Americans and translating it into unassailable power.
By Joe, Sunday, 2 September , 2007 @ 11:00 am
This is so tiresome. Strange as it might seem to some, many Democrats are promoting “ideas” left and right. They often are upset at Bush because he is/seems to be foreign to said ideas.
Thus, things like privacy, reasoned policy, checks and balances, sound health policy, competent governance, internationalism, anti-torture, dangers of elites controlling the media, etc. Liberal blogs promote ‘ideas’ left and right. Just like conservative ones. As to ‘new’ ideas, that too. Candidates like Obama and Edwards thus receive much positive reviews in part for their new messages etc.
But, I’m not saying the ideas work in the end here. I’m saying however they are there. It is simply wrong to make this out as some sort of anti-Bush crusade. One might almost think it quite revealing … perhaps the people making the claim need to look in the mirror.