=== This rather important detail about the "D.C. Democratic Establishment" emerges in The Argument mainly through the eyes of Bill Clinton, who seems frustrated to the point of fury by the refusal of insurgents to see him as a fellow reformer whose accomplishments have been obscured by later Democratic failures for which he doesn't accept blame.===

Bluebell:

Your comment reminds me of an incident back in the 1950s, when some McCarthyite congressman made a speech urging the Cincinnati Reds baseball team to change its name to avoid association with Communism.

One of the Reds' players promptly responded: "Let the communists change their name. We had it first."

Despite its current application to certain Iraqis, the word "insurgent" has a long history of use in describing those who are seeking to wrest power from entrenched establishments of all sorts. I did not mean it in any invidious way (indeed, it's probably a less pejorative term than "establishment") and certainly wasn't using it "against" anybody.

Ed Kilgore

Ohiomeister:

Your comment raises an issue that I didn't get into, and that's only indirectly raised in Bai's book. But it's important:

Is political calculation the only reason for being a "centrist?" And should courage and "principle" be attributed to anyone who's deemed "progresive?"

The second question is easier to answer, I think. I admire people like Russ Feingold and Tom Harkin, who take positions that aren't always easy in politically marginal states or districts. But the majority of "progressive" Democrats in Congress are from comfortable states and districts where they face no real competition, and their "principled" progressivism is basically a matter of playing to friendly galleries all day long, every day, for decades in some cases. Maybe they're "right" on the issues, but they hardly deserve a badge of courage, or any exemption for a general judgment on the cynicism of Washington Politicians.

On the first question, Bill Clinton is probably the toughest test case. Do you think he's completely cynical and poll-driven? Or do you think he represents a coherent and sincere point of view about progressive politics and policy that should be taken seriously when it's espoused by him or by others?

Accepting that there's plenty of principle, and plenty of cynicism, scattered around the Democratic Party is a good first step towards party unity, if that matters to you.

Ed Kilgore

On second thought, after listening to Hillary toss off neo-con talking points tonight, maybe I am an insurgent.

Bluebell:

Since you're the only person, so far as I know, who thinks the term "insurgency" as I've used it associates Democrats with Iraqi rebels, I don't quite see as how I'm reinforcing any right wing spin, unless Fox News is monitoring this comment thread and decides you've made a good point.

If you've got a better, yet faction-neutral, term for describing the highly disparate groups composing the "uprising" (if that's an acceptable word) Matt Bai wrote about, let me hear it, and I'll try to use it in the future. And I mean that seriously. The last thing any of us need is to have to argue about basic terminology.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore , Take a vacation. That's not an insult .I just think you would be more useful to yourself and to the rest of us who-like you- want to see a Democratic President if you sat on a mountain top and reread what you've written above.

One tip. Stop using over the top adjectives

Indeed, in a later chapter that focuses on the hated DLC

as a short hand for Markos disagrees with the DLC. A straight declarative sentence would be more persuasive.And accurate . Unless you really think Markos actually  hates the DLC.

And lose the quotation marks.

I gave up Time in high school because I resented its attempt to insinuate its views by using loaded adjectives " The Brits thought it would be beastly to do etc. etc." i.e.Time didn't agree with the British position. And maybe I'd have agreed with Time if they'd said that instead of using beastly as their short hand for Time disagrees with the British.

And I find it really hard to be fair to your position when you do the same thing.

ACH!!!!!! Grover Norquist has kidnapped Hillary and put a microchip in her brain. Social Security is all about fiscal responsibility. No wonder Greenspan loves the Clintons! Who knew Biden would morph into the radical leftist willing to raise the cap. I can't stand centrists! It's never about policy. It's always about wonkism. Fiscal reponsibility for WHAT PURPOSE! What are you FOR centrists? What do you VALUE? WHO are you for? WHO will you stand up for? Do you represent any PERSON?

Flavius:

I'm a bit taken aback by your suggestion that the term "hated DLC" when it comes to Markos is "over-the-top." As it happens, I have lots of very good reasons to believe that Markos does indeed "hate" the DLC in a deep and very personal way, as do many people in the netroots. Indeed, as he'd probably admit, Markos sometimes struggles against this hatred in an effort to be a big-tent Democrat, usually unsuccessfully. So my use of this adjective was merely a space-saver, not an unfair attribution.

As for your "not an insult" suggestion that I go on vacation or go to a mountain top: Sorry, I can't afford a vacation and don't have access to any mountain tops at present. Maybe you can write me a recommendation for a job at Time Magazine.

Ed Kilgore

You have to give the DLC credit for truth in advertising. David Brooks is an appropriate representation of where the "centrists" are ideologically.

I think it is probably a mistake to look for any coherent ideology, political philosophy or big idea characterizing the activist Kossack wing of the "netroots" as such. The "insurgents" are united mainly in their desire to produce Democratic victories, and that's about it. The philosophical component is rather minimal. The two articles of faith are:

1. Winning is better than losing,

2. Recent electoral failures something to do with not being sufficiently aggressive, partisan and disciplined.

Beyond that, it's a crap shoot, and the netroots are all over the place philosophically and ideologically.

For the Kossacks, the only really important arguments, the ones that really float their boas, are about tactics. The Democratic "establishment" is not defined in philosophical or ideological terms, but in tactical terms. The establishment consists of those people who believe that the best tactic for victory is to go to the center, act moderately and triangulate. The netroots opponents are those who think the best way to win is to position oneself somewhere off the center, act passionately and aggressively, and set the grass roots on fire. It's all based on applying a perceived Republican model for victory to the Democratic party.

Netrooters are united in their loathing for Republican government and policies, but loath those policies for a variety of different reasons. There is no utopian netroots vision of the future, only a move to defeat the Republican dystopia. The Big Idea, such as it is, is "No more wingnuttery! And no more triangulating enablers of wingnuttery!"

Ed-

I admire your willingness to respond to the comments here, unlike many others.

A couple of comments:

The 2002 elections were indeed "change the subject", but that was driven by consultants like Shrum and indeed by the DLC, not by liberal interest groups.

Bill Clinton's Accomplishments? What were those? I'll give you Yugoslavia, and the EITC, and the Brady Bill. Beyond that, NAFTA has been mixed, at very best. What else can you claim? An economic expansion driven as much by the Internet bubble as anything else? Bumping up the top tax rate by a mighty 1.25%?

The problem with Clinton is exactly that he didn't accomplish very much. He did not prevent the loss of Democratic majorities in Congress, and got caught having sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky, which arguably prevented Al Gore from becoming President, and failed to pass ANY major environmental or agricultural legislation. Exactly which of these accomplishments are you touting?

If my appearances at TPMCafe primarily turn out to be a rare opportunity for expressing anger directly at someone once identified with the DLC, I guess I am serving some sort of public utility function.

Please consider that the case might be that there are probably quite a few of us out there find your input on issues raised on this site invaluable, but are put off by commenting on your posts because we also don't want to get involved with having to "put up our dukes." When people are in the process of expressing anger, they are not ready really to discuss anything, are they? (Sometimes I wonder if I should admire those who post things on blogs under their own name and just ignore all the mischaracterizations about them in comments--now that, in a strange way, takes more guts than defending oneself? :-)) I really think it would be sad if you turn down future TPMCafe invites because of the rant factor in comments; I for one look forward to your posts to help me understand current political situations.

It wasn't an insult.

=== But I do wonder if anybody's interested in the main point of my post, which relates to the different elements of the D.C. Democratic Establishment, and the different responses of anti-establishment (I'll eschew the word "insurgent" henceforth) progressives to what they perceive as their main intra-party enemies. I raised as many questions as answers, because the subject is an open one. ===

Ed,

You could call the DLC types "moderate Republicans" and the rest of us "progressive Democrats" and that would be much more accurate.

Ed,

Let me second artappraiser's comments.

I, for one, have not been throwing softballs your way in comments to your posts. The reason for that is precisely that you are identified with the DLC and it has been a hope that you could carry the message back that all is not well here in the hinterlands of progressive thought.

This isn't necessarily Markos territory, and that's why the party should be concerned.

Let me illustrate it another way. You see the tag line at the bottom of my post. I adopted that moniker (I believe aptly described by art-a as "Dada-esque") after Dubya led us down the road of being "with us or against us". In all those following pronouncements: war, torture, renditions, secret surveillance, loss of habeus and on and on and on, The Generalissimo succeeded with the help of Democrats.

As with poor 'ol Alphonse, who stumbled in to this changed reality and has been forever marked for it, so it is for the "centrist" Democrats. In the search for a label to slice and dice the philosophies of discontent swirling through the party, let me flip the labeling scenario and sum up what many of us think of the ruling school of thought in the Democratic Party:

Vichy Amerika.

And a special little label for Lieberman: collaborator

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Progressive Dem politicians who may be comfortable or even lazy and on cruise control don't undermine the party in the same way as those who side with the GOP on votes that will not harm them when they face re-election and have nothing to do with any sort of principled centrism. I am more than willing to accept and come to terms with people of some different viewpoints for the sake of party unity and winning elections when that is necessary.

Hans von Spakovsky is really the perfect example. I would love an explanation of that one from Sen. Ben Nelson. Neither centrism nor the views of the people of Nebraska would lead one to support a nominee for the FEC whose whole purpose at DoJ was undermining civil rights. There's no centrist principle that favors appointing hacks.

Insurging, outsurging, whatever you may call it,
my assessment of what I've seen/heard/read over
the last 4 years tells me one thing: China is
going to end up OWNING this country one fine
day, and for the simple reason that there's too
damn many POLITICAL scientists, and not enough
actual ones. Now, science requires a basic
knowledge of your mathematics, and basic
physics, and maybe a little chemistry, but
if you can get a rudimentary understanding of
those all going, and stir in a couple moles of
academic discipline, heck, you're already
halfway to becoming educated, and you never know
what kind of problems that'll bring...

Political science is more or less the practice
of getting people to do stuff. Actual science
is the way that the jobs 'that american students
won't do' will be done, by people in other
countries that have better schools that are
sufficiently well-managed to cut waaaaaay back
on the B.S., and actually sit their kids down
and teach em something worthy and worthwhile.

How does all of this relate to Iraq? Instead
of 3-card-monte carbon trading or whatever other
fiscal half-bakery the pundits are blathering on
about, to fix oil consumption and pollution
problems you have to look at the actual equipment
that people use in the course of their daily
lives, and figure out how to make it 'gooder'.
So, if you majored in bullshit, like most of
these people, you're screwed, because the Iraq
war's being based on oil demand will be beyond
your comprehension(or possibly your capacity to
be honest about the entire business).
Politicians like to have power, tell people what
to do, businessmen like to have money, 'consumers' like to get from Monday to Friday without getting robbed. Is there a mutual
common 'happy place' anymore, or are we basically
just on the same road to hell, here? Hmmm...

You don't need a manifesto or whatever to
understand that we're being lied to, and played
for every dollar these clowns can squeeze. I
hope the Independents can field a good candidate
or two, so we can hopefully have a more honest,
better educated, unaffiliated selection on the
ballot, there that hasn't already sold their
soul to some entity in order to gain office...

DNC and GOP are fric and frack, anymore, handing
out the doughnuts, buying votes, and not
really challenging anyone to think for themselves
anymore, which seems to kind of be the problem,
here. If more people challenged their representatives to actually start digging into
the scientific challenges and spend less time
pontificating on the merits of a healthcare TAX,
we might just be a little further along, here. Nuff said.