Grassroots to Dems: We Can’t Wait No More
Once more, it looks like the grassroots are ahead of the elected leadership when it comes to setting the pace and agenda. In a post that echoes many of the sentiments I’ve shared here before, for example, that:
To define the Republican party for what they are all one has to do is have the BALLS to go out there and do that, that is: Talk of Republicans for what they are and as they are — then repeat what you said, defend your statement and do it all over again. Of course, it helps if one has supporters and party members with a spine to back one up, and then magnify the message; and, pretty soon, that meme gets out there in the mouths of pundits and the public.
Armando, over at DailyKos.com, quoting from Anonymous Liberal, arrives at the same conclusion:
What Democratic politicians fail to understand–and this is particularly ironic given the Democratic party’s historical association with the labor movement–is that this is fundamentally a collective action problem. The term “reasonable” has no objective meaning, at least in the realm of politics. Whether an idea is deemed “reasonable” has little to do with the merits of the idea and everything to do with the prevailing political climate as interpreted by our national media. GOP strategists like Karl Rove long ago realized that the national media will treat any talking point that is repeated by enough people as ipso facto “reasonable,” and conversely, will treat any idea that is not repeated by a sufficient number of people as “unreasonable” or “extreme,” no matter what its objective merits. It’s a very crude calculus and one that is easily manipulated by shrewd partisans.
. . . What Republican strategists have learned is that when a party speaks in unison, it has the power to define what is considered reasonable in the eyes of the national media, and in turn, the American public.
Democrats, however, cannot seem to internalize this idea. They approach politics as if the rules of reasonability and civil discourse are immutable or have been set by some neutral referee. When someone like Howard Dean steps over this arbitrary line, Democrats join the GOP in immediately calling “foul.” When a Republican steps over the line, however, more often than not his Republican colleagues act collectively to move the line. Suddenly we find ourselves in a debate over whether outing a CIA agent is actually a good thing, or whether a law that has been on the books for three decades and repeatedly reaffirmed by this President should be violated. It doesn’t matter what the consensus was five minutes ago. Talking points that would have seemed totally absurd days earlier suddenly become credible and reasonable, and for no other reason than they are being repeated by a chorus of Republican politicians, pundits, and bloggers. In this way, the definition of “reasonable” can be changed dramatically overnight.
And now to wait for the leadership to catch up to the rest of the us.
