Democrats, Socialists, and Netroots

I try to make it a habit to read the left wing blogs somewhat regularly to make sure I see all sides of the picture, as it were. I usually start with the king of lefty blogs, the most trafficked political blog in the world, daily kos. Then I ready mydd just to make sure that they are still doing nothing but repeating what is on dailykos. Then I read some local New England blogs like bluemassgroup.

Anyhow, I take Kos as representative of the entire left wing blogosphere, more or less, since so much of it copies so fully the kos content, tone, and mob mentality. Based on what I've seen, I agree with all the things being said in the press about the scary people on the left, and the extreme leftism of the so called netroots. Netroots (lefty blogs) are not so much democrats as they are socialists. Trouble is, no one on that entire side seems to know the difference.

Take this post and comments for example, which discusses a political trick that Vermot Democrats are doing to make sure that the dems dont have anyone running against socialist Bernie Sanders. Democrats are actually forcibly abdicating their own shot at the Senate in VT, in order to support a socialist!! This meets with universal approval among the commenters, many of whom applaud Sanders' socialism and none of whom criticize it. Many other posters equate his socialism with really great progressivism (I'd agree) and others do the same for liberalism. Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists - there is no line between any of them, no one sees a difference.

More and more, I don't either.

Republicans: Don't Shed a Tear for Lieberman

I'm confused about why conservatives and/or libertarians give any sort of a damn about Joe Lieberman losing the CT democratic primary. Sure, it means that the netleftists like moveon and dailykos have finally won something, and to the extent that their agenda touches our government, thats bad. And sure, it means that even centrist democrats are going to move to extreme anti bush and extreme anti war positions, and that will be marginally more annoying than what we've seen in recent years. Finally, it represents a movement to the left, which is almost always a bad thing in the long term. So on the surface there are lots of reasons to be unhappy about it but wait! - hey hold on a second here, lets consider the other side...

Lieberman himself has little going for him: He is a democrat. As such, he is fiscally liberal (i.e. welfarey socialistic) yet socially conservative. Talk about splitting the difference the backwards, he's got both positions wrong! Sure, he's pro war and that's great and all (cough cough) but the guy bashes Bush with the rest of em, and in the end he counts towards the democratic tally in the senate majority count, which he will do even if he wins as an independent. In that sense, he and Lamont are equally harmful.

But in Lieberman you had a supposedly centrist democrat with broad appeal in Connecticut whereas with Lamont you've got someone who, while he may or may not be a nutjob himself, will have been installed into power by leftist nutjobs. He will be beholden to them, for sure. As such, we suffer a short term infusion of leftist nutjobbery but potentially reap a backlash against same in the voter population of CT. Sometimes, you have to let the left have power so they can prove to the voters how utterly they must rejected, if not to lend a little momentum the other way. Think Jimmy Carter and pre-94 Clinton. Only Carter's incredible awfulness paved the way for, and enabled, the Reagan revolution.

This is a silver lining that I wish more people would see: its ok to give up a few yards in a close fight in order to let the bad guys blow themselves up for another 20 years.

Better yet, if the saner half of the Democratic party can hold on to their brains, the growing influence of the netleft may yet do what we can all only dream of for the moment: split and permanently destroy the democratic party.

Have a nice day,

Demolisher

ps: counterpoint from PowerLine;

UPDATE: Television reports indicate it's Lamont, winning pretty big. Several people have asked me which candidate I'm rooting for here. Some Republicans think a Lamont win will be a good thing, demonstrating how far off the rails the Democratic Party has gone. Not me. This is no time for partisanship. These days, I feel like a character in Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, with my fellow citizens turning into pods in alarming numbers. I'd like some reassurance that the pod people aren't yet a majority, even among Democrats.

FURTHER UPDATE: On the bright side, Cynthia McKinnie got trounced. Never let it be said that you can't shame a Democrat!

pps: Lieberman could still win in the general. Could the R's have a chance, too?