Atrios employing wingnut logic?
2 Comments Published by punkass marc August 19th, 2006 in Blogitics, PoliticsI usually enjoy the terse truth found at Eschaton, but this post came as a bit of a surprise:
I always get annoyed when people write something like this:
Should progressives shift their money and attention from the Connecticut Senate race to more important contests? Absolutely.I’d like more of that advice going to, say, the people who gave money so that Hillary Clinton could have $22 million cash-on-hand. Does Bill Nelson need $12 million to run against Katie Harris? On the House side, does Marty Meehan, who won with 67% of the vote last time, really need to have 5 million bucks in the bank?
There is always an incredible misallocation of resources in elections and that’s the money which flows to incumbents. Sure, they’re not all safe and it’s understandable that they need somewhat of a defensive warchest just in case, but if you want to criticize where donors are directing their money (and attention) start there.
This line of reasoning employs some of the old conservative tropes they use to get away with whatever it is they want to get away with at the moment.
“Everybody’s doing it/The whole system is screwed up.” If someone points out a bad decision, the idea that it’s just part of a broken system doesn’t excuse it. It certainly doesn’t refute any legitimate questions that have been raised. Wingnuts like to use this logic to dismiss ugly corporate behavior and dirty election politics in particular.
“The are people out there doing way worse stuff than this. Go bug them first.” Again, whether this is true or not doesn’t mean that the choice being examined isn’t a poor one. And it doesn’t excuse it if it is. This tactic can be effective because you’ve routed the do-gooders towards more entrenched, tougher-to-change wrongdoers they’ll be powerless to stop. This allows the wingnut to continue with the minor offense s/he finds satisfying.
I should say that I do not necessarily agree with the idea that we should shift our money away from the CT Senate race. If Holy Joe’s claims that he’s been promised full party seniority from Harry Reid should he win in the fall are true, then the primary process and any chance we have to unseat traitors in our midst will be badly damaged with a Lieberman victory. There are a number of reasons we should work hard to help Lamont finish this fight.
Even if I disagree with the quote, though, it’s hardly absurd. There are good reasons for us to charge hard into Ohio and Montana, and more money would help. If someone makes the case that the money going to Lamont could tip another race or two elsewhere, that’s a legitimate topic for discussion.
The TPM post from whence the quote came also makes other meaningful points, including Technorati counts that show Lamont has been discussed in the blogosphere thousands of times more than 6 other major Democratic senate challengers combined. All of us should probably step up support for and awareness of these other races.
Atrios may have good reasons for disagreeing with statements like the one made at TPM, but he should probably articulate them instead of dismissing them out of hand with wingnut logic.
Maybe I just read it differently than you did, but I didn’t get the sense that Atrios was really disagreeing with what Marshall was saying, just wishing that Marshall had had a better focus, namely, toward those people who are consistently giving to incumbents who don’t need the dough. I mean, I live in Florida, but I haven’t given to Nelson for precisely that reason–he doesn’t need it, and there are other places where my meager resources can be better used.
There’s a third reason Atrios is wrong — the TPM guest poster was specifically addressing Progressive support for the Lamont campaign, making the indisputable point that the blogosphere portion of the progressive movement has basically shot its entire wad on the Lamont campaign. The fact that big-money/corporate/union donors have chosen to give to Hillary means nothing — that big money was never available for use by progressives, anyway.
I have decidedly mixed feelings on Lamont. I mean, control of Congress is right there for the taking (save for an October Surprise); the left blogosphere is powerful enough at this point that its energy, properly directed, could really make a difference in some of these close races.
Two more points –
– There is concern over Lamont out there in the left blogosphere; you can read it in the (non-frontpaged) diaries on the Scoop sites; you can read it between the lines on the journalistic half of the ’sphere (TAPPED, Drum, TPM), and sometimes overtly as with the TPM guest poster recently. But human nature being what it is, don’t expect much soul-searching from the leaders of the activist wing of the ’sphere (Kos/MyDD/Atrios/Firedoglake) even if things go wrong in November; they’ve gone all-in on Lamont, he’s their creation to a very real extent, deny it as they might with endless praises for the CT grassroots.
– The best result of all this would have been something similar to what the Club for Growth, etc. did with Specter — they ran a wingnut against him in the primary, forcing him to the right, where he’s been ever since on things like Alito and wiretapping. That’s what progressives wanted out of Lamont at the start — scare Lieberman out of those Fox News appearances and get him to show some contrition on the war, and that probably would have been enough.