Sshh - Don't Rock That Democrat Boat

Am I the only one worried about the nasty scent of a good old-fashioned shafting on the breeze? It's coming, and the folks on the receiving end are the liberal "netroots".

The Democrats did a rollover on Hayden's confirmation as well as the confirmation of a Bush crony as a judge when said crony was accepted by all the experts as singularly unqualified. Pundits like Robert Kagan are already talking about 2008, saying things won't change very much in foreign policy terms if a Dem gets the White House. Kevin Drum notes an LA Times op-ed that says liberal hawks are determined to woo the populace by not appearing to be "squishies" on terrorism.

Michael Hirsh is asking if the Democrats are scared of their own shadows and points out that what the new crop of "strong" Democrats are most afraid of are their own left:

They are the ones who so fear that a leftie like Nancy Pelosi will become speaker of the House, they actually question whether it would be a good idea for the Dems to take control in 2006. They are the ones who think they can outhawk Bush on Iraq and promotion of democracy around the world, but they are mainly driven by a fear of criticizing the premises of his foreign policy, which is to say, his war on terror. While nitpicking and nattering over Bush’s “errors of execution,” they still embrace his fundamentals. In other words, they all continue to sound like unreconstructed John Kerrys, frightened of seeming soft. When they get together, this fear is virtually all they talk about. It is a fear that reeks from the party’s new draft platform for 2006, causing Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, to crack to liberal hawk Peter Beinart recently: “If you have to say you’re tough, you’re not.”

But as David Sirota has been saying forever, and is saying again as people like H. Clinton and Chuck Schumer play kiss-ass with Henry Paulson, these scaredy-cat hawks are the ones with the real power and the real connections in the Democratic Party.

there really is a tightly-knit bipartisan economic consensus that governs Washington these days - a consensus based on the intermingling of politicians of both parties and the financial elite; a consensus that has transformed public policy from a protector of ordinary citizens into the personal sidearm of Big Business...it sends a message of happy complicity. Here you have Bush nominating a Wall Street fat cat - a situation ripe for Democrats to use as a way to differentiate themselves as a party that will stand up to such. And yet, many high-profile Washington Democrats are so comfortable in the minority and so awash in corporate cash that they subvert their own party’s potential success out of deference to the Establishment. In the process, they display that their true devotion is not to the public or even to their party - but to Big Money.

And you know what? The big-name bigmouths of the left "netroots" are trying to pretend that it isn't happening. They are staying quiet and hoping that the truly powerful figures of the Party will allow them to keep their access and their party-circuit invites and their pretensions to some small power of their own.

I've a small illustration. I sent out over two dozen invites to A-Listers to read and comment on my last post about "the question", many to individuals I've had good responses from in the past. I got exactly zero response. Now I can imagine some went unread in the flood of mails such A-List bloggers get but all? Do the recipents then think that "the question" is redundant because of course people like Hilary and Chuck wouldn't use Bush's Presidential powergrab as a precedent to do the same themselves? I've no clue. No one wants to talk about it even to say that much.

Here's what I think is happening. The A-List bloggers are by and large bright folks who realise that they keep their A-listing, now, because they have some access to the truly powerful. To keep that access, by 2008 most major leftie bloggers will be as much mindless cheerleaders for the party line as rightwing A-Listers were for Bush for so many years. They know that from now until 2009 the "netroots" are going to be milked dry for money and activist manpower by the party machine. They know that the reward for that work and cash is going to be akin to what the GOP gave the religious right when they did it for Bush - nada, zip, nothing, a few token bills easily overturned or emasculated.

And they are all keeping their heads down ostrich-style in the sand and hoping no-one notices what's coming down the pike.