Daily Kos :: An Outsiders' Reaction to His First DFA Meetup

I honestly can say now that I understand why people are the way they are for Dean and what he wants to do. His organization, and the people involved in it, are making a difference in their own communities, and by doing that they are making it better for all of us. I saw three future state Congressmen, at the least, and a couple that could possibly make it to national level. Two of them would not have even tried, if not for DFA.

That's nice to read. I'm burnt lately, calling myself "a technician" or "a plumber" in the world of poltrix online. Truth is, I need to get away from it in order to replentish whatever it is that keeps my inner fires burning. That's why I'm planning on living on east coast couches for three months. That's why I'm planning to be On The Road for the summer.

The good news is that stories like these are going to keep happening, and with Howard Dean likely to take the chair of the party -- this is looking more likely than Iowa ever did, largely because it's such a non-public proceeding -- I have reasonable hope that his common-sense facts-first reality-based and other-hyphenated approach will build these nodes of activity into a thriving network. There are 100s of bright young things burning to work for him. They'll do good.

For my part, all this gives me moral cover to duck out for a bit, to think about my own trajectory knowing that if I got hit by a bus the world would be in as good hands as could be reasonably expected. I'm needing a long dip in the deep metaphysical, been thinking about stuff on the other end of the divine membrane; impractical but stirring lines of inquiry.

I'll keep writing and reading and dropping opinions from time to time of course. If you ever want my take on something, feel free to drop a line. Gouts of fiery rhetoric will come, and I'll never cease to poke and pry at the puzzles of language, ethics and political theory. But I realize that politicking -- horseracing, hackery, jockeying for position -- isn't really my game, though I'm glad I know some damn good players. Campaigning is something I'll take up again down the line, and maybe in a decade I'll end up governing a household or something larger, but for now I'm happy to tie my soul to other things, and let the job be a job again.

It's Heating Up

The 2020 Democrats' Principles Project is picking up steam. It's a gradual build (as you'd expect it to be), but the web team has been creating shaolin-style java widgets, and the outreach people logging long hours in the clinches to get the word out on the wire. I zipped in to make some comments on the 2nd draft, and day later going back I'm one of 17 comments in most cases. That's heartening to see.

If you've got a stake in progressive politics going forward, I suggest you log on in and drop a comment. Who knows; maybe you'll underwrite the next great slogan of the Left. Lord knows it can't hurt to take a few more shots at it.

The buzz around the water cooler is that Howard Dean has basically locked up the Chair of the Democratic Party. That's cool. I would have preferred him to be president, but given how things went down this is a good thing. It means, at the very least, that the Ass party is going to re-orient itself, hopefully significantly. My hope with Dean is that he's got the wherewithal to restructure the party, and to not make doing so an occasion to consolidate his own power. That's not a faint hope either; I actually believe he will do it, but I don't know any more than you about what he actually plans on doing.

One thing that occurs to me now is that the kids from Gen Dean might be ripe to drive a revitalization of the Young Dems. We need some action for the youth. The kids voted well, but there are ominous winds blowing in many parts of the country.

I've been following this story with some interest, and this worries me:

An Arabic television channel aired a videotape Monday purporting to show insurgents firing a missile that downed a British transport plane in Iraq, and London said 10 people were missing, believed dead.

My closest personal attachment to the war at the moment is my friend JD from high school. He flys as a Loadmaster on a C-130. He's supposedly on his last tour in the Middle East (number 7 if you can believe it) before being re-stationed stateside to do training. I hope those orders hold up. If the latest scuttlebutt about how they're dealing with troop shortages holds any water it looks like my man might get a reprieve from the front lines -- someone will need to train those desk-jockeys -- and by the looks of it not a minute too soon.

So this doesn't bode well for my friend, and it doesn't bode well for the rest of our people over there either. Whatever else you might call them, the Insurgents aren't stupid. They've been attacking suplly lines since day one, and from what I can gather, the air link -- largely supplied by C-130s -- has grown in importance as there are no truly safe truck routes in many areas. If the Insurgents have found access to a steady supply of SAMs, things are going to get much tighter over there. Here's hoping it doesn't.

The vote in Iraq seems to have gone as good as anyone could have expected, and better than pessimists predicted. That's cool. You can't knock democracy, even in its protoplasmic form. Chris Albriton has his observations from the street.

I'm inclined to point out that in spite of a fair amount of polling day violence ("a few dozen deaths" the wires report), the actual machenery of balloting seems to work better in the middle of a warzone than in fucking Ohio:

The predicted low turnout in Anbar, a hotspot of Sunni resistance to the American occupation, was exceeded to such an extent that extra voting materials had to be rushed to outlying villages, where long lines were formed at polling stations, Mr. Ayar said.

What a novel idea! When long lines form, extra voting materials are rushed to the spot of trouble. Polls close on time, no one walks away. In Ohio this year, people waited until 4 in the goddamn morning to vote.

Not to get off on a tangent, but Kenneth Blackwell should go to prison. I'm deadly serious. He should be put in a public stockade and grade school children should be bussed in from far and wide to pummel him with rotten fruit as a lesson in civics. However, since his tactic helped put his bosses over the top, he's more likely to get heavy backing in his run for Governor 2006, shades of his predicessor Katherine Harris.

Anyway, bully for Iraq on having a relatively orderly election. The question is whether the government elected will be able to siginificantly improve things. I think progress is going to continue to be slow, and hinges on whether or not the Sunni population will consider this government legitimate. If so, then there's hope. If not, then I don't see much light at the end of the tunnel.

As for us and our Troops; we'll keep spending billions and loosing thousands every year for a while yet, I think. The major question here is whether or not the Insurgents momentum is dulled by the elections, and whether or not they are able to secure access to more powerful arms. The weakness of the US Occupation is its supply lines, and if they are able to find a way to bring down our air transports -- e.g. if this starts happening with any regularity -- we'll be in serious trouble.

Chris Albriton has been an independent reporter in and out of Iraq for almost two years now. His is a set of opinions I have come to trust. With elections there tomorrow, I take his predictions with some stock. Why? Because he writes it as he sees it:

BAGHDAD—Tomorrow Iraqis will go to the polls and, inshallah, get a better government that they have right now... Eventually. But first they will have to vote, and that's an activity fraught with peril.

The security situation is unreal. No cars tomorrow—except those with special passes, which includes media, cops, political guys, etc. in short, if you're an insurgent and you hit a car tomorrow, you're bound to get someone vaguely important. Only five polling stations in Baghdad will allow cameras or other electronic gear, so bear that in mind when you look at photographs of the election.

I'll be out in the thick of it for a while at least... Out with my photographer and seeing what goes on. Not sure if I'll be driving or walking. That will depend on my security guys. This is a free election? Insurgent pamphlets are being distributed that anyone walking to a polling center is a target. Several centers have already been blown up. The fear is thick enough to cut with a knife. The Iraqi security forces—with their American patrons—have tanks at the end of my street. Old Soviet T-55s, but tanks, nonetheless.

No one knows what's going to happen, whether it's the level of violence, the level of turnout or who will win. The Sistani-blessed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list is expected to do well, but I would be shocked if it got an absolute majority. My predictions for the elections...

Like I said, he writes it as he sees it. As Mike pointed out, he works for Time also. I know this. The only restrictions on his blog are that he can't scoop himself. For instance, when he interviewed Allawi, he didn't blog about it until after the relevant issue of Time came out, at which point he posted a much more lengthy transcrip than was published on paper. The whole point of what he's doing has been to provide better "context" and, since he started working as part of the regular reporter pool, to talk about the State of Journalism in a war zone.

Three hits from the realm of politix:

1. Pursuant to the Bittorrent jive I posted below, check this out. Downhillbattle is at it again. Eyes on the screen is a pure brilliant piece of copyright political activism.
2. It looks from all signs that the Democrats are unified in defeat. The real questions now are will they be able to make headway in the national "marketplace of ideas" and take back some territory owned by the right wing noise machine, and will they be able to make hay from the fissures now apparent in the Republican coalition?
3. For my part, I'm still decompressiong. I realize it's been a while, but I was in the trenches for a long ass time, and in pretty deep too. I gave up a lot to do this. Re-evaluation is ongoing. Have to see what feels right.

Back to watching movies and breathing deep.

In the political circles I swim in, the fashionable debate these days is over whether you support Howard Dean -- who's candidacy I can lay credit (or blame) on for my own current participation -- or Simon Rosenberg, the brilliant leader of the Yuppie faction of the Democratic party (aka the NDN) who's got all the right organizational moves.

I don't have a vote or know anyone who does, so this is really only a debate. (There are only 440 voting DNC people around the country. Yeah; that's kinda fucked up, and hopefully it will change. But the debate rolls on.)

Here's where I'm at: I worry about Dean because I think some people might not be willing to accept him what with all the secretarian baggage he comes with. I believe he and his people will work with everyone in the party to make shit happen, but I don't know if everyone currently on the inside of the party feels the same. Also, Dean was just the candidate for his campaign; the actual organizational mojo was the work of his staff. That being said, I like Dean as a figurehead and tone-setter. I like his moral instincts, and I trust that there are plenty of people who would work for him in a heartbeat who understand how to kick ass with New Skool organizing techniques. In short, I think he'll do well communicating to the American people, I think he can re-brand the Democrats (which is what we need), and because he hasn't fucked me yet I trust him.

Simon, on the other hand, seems more popular with the folks I know. It may be that they're are closer to him and his organization. It may be that they trust his track record more than Dean's. Some ask about the wisdom of putting a loosing primary candidate in charge of the party. Some are put off by Dean's more vocal followers. Some just think Rosenberg would do a better job of reforming the party.

I can see Simon's qualifications, but I don't find myself liking him. Part of it is superficial -- I don't like his style, and I don't like the NDN's style. They're yuppies. I'm not supposed to like them personally, but it also worries me. I don't think they embody an idea of America (white-collar success) that can be broadly shared. People have knocked Dean before for being backed by the "Starbucks Ghetto" but that seems more an appropriate Simon's posse. I went to their after-party at the DNC. It gave me the fear... felt like the Marina.

I also feel that Simon Rosenberg is less trustworthy, because he told a small audience of activists I gathered with after the election all about his ideas for reforming the party, then insisted adamantly that he didn't want the job of DNC chair. I found out a few days later that he really did want it, so to my mind he lied to us. While I'm enough of a professional by now to understand that sort of thing, I'd rather not have to internally sigh and say "well, that's politics" to myself when picking the chairman of a party I'm trying to use as my vehicle.

I got into this to change the nature of the game. My sense is that Rosenberg is smart and committed, but essentially wants to build a Left-Wing version of the Republican Noise Machine. I'm looking to find a way to tune the country back to a good signal again, and that means more than doing Conservatives one better at the propaganda game.

In any case, I think either of them are preferable to the other lot. That Frost guy is a joke. Are you fucking kidding me?

San Francisco Examiner: Democratic race keeps Web flying

"It's really interesting to see the blogosphere cover a story with such depth and such passion that's to some extent flying under the radar screen of the national press," said Bob Brigham

Bob is my most favorite hack. Like a political locust straight out of Montana. I think if all goes well that he shold be at least be the basis for a television show.

I made this, along with Matt Stoller and Bob Brigham design credit goes to the timely Miles Kurland). It's a good project and a good time to launch it. Kudos to Matt for snapping up the URL.

Maybe Paul Krugman will link to it in an op-ed. That would be worth starting a scrapbook for.

If you want to get in on the action toss us a link and use the words Social Security when you do it. Take it, google!