Used and Abused

Wow.

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

There you go, liberal bloggers. That’s what the Democratic establishment thinks of you. They’re happy to have your coin, but keep your bullshit to yourself.

The blogs-vs.-establishment fight represents the latest version of a familiar Democratic dispute. It boils down to how much national candidates should compromise on what are considered core Democratic values -- such as abortion rights, gun control and opposition to conservative judges -- to win national elections…

Even if they disagree with their positions, Democratic candidates recognize from the Dean experience the power of the activists to raise money and infuse a campaign with their energy.

The GOP’s willingness to be beholden to those who would happily see reproductive rights binned like day-old bread, gays forever marginalized as second-class citizens, and every last American clamoring for figurative and material sustenance up the rungs of an unreliable ladder known as social Darwinism is despicable, but at least it’s not disingenuous. On the 33rd anniversary of Roe, the president gave a speech directly to anti-choicers, praising their work and lauding their efforts to “persuade more of our fellow Americans of the rightness of our cause.” Meanwhile, liberal bloggers who refuse to compromise on Roe are dismissed as some kind of wacky fringe element by the Democratic establishment, even though it’s widely regarded as “settled law” and a majority of Americans support it.

Pam has a most excellent post that sums up my feelings as well:

I've been talking about this crap for a good long time now re: gay rights -- they want our queer bucks and our silence and endless "patience" as they tilt the party rightward.

This dishonesty was barely hidden beneath the surface during the 2004 race and, as you can see from the above quote, it's out there stark naked before us now as the 2006 races heat up. This "bend over, you've got nowhere else to go" mentality is as bad as the Right's plan to drag out the gay boogeyman again for this election cycle…

If all we represent are money-machines and virtual foot soldiers, I call bullsh*t. No more of that. If a candidate cannot make civil equality or the protection of reproductive freedom a core value that they are willing to publicly defend, then what is the point of being a Democrat? What good does it do to win an election if the politician cannot stand up to the wingnuts, or worse, votes on our core issues just like a wingnut so it can be touted in their next race? The end result is the same to those of us directly affected by the cowardice.

If the Dems can’t be bothered to give a crap about those directly affected by their cowardice, the least they could do is understand that the reason we hold positions with which they “disagree” is because we are those people. We are women and men who fear the end of reproductive choice. We are gays and lesbians and bisexuals and transgendered individuals and their supporters, people of all colors, who want equality for all Americans. We are red-state poor folks and blue-state rich folks and every variation in between who support fair taxation, protection of the environment, workers’ rights, and a social safety net for the most vulnerable among us, and don’t support the notion of a unitary executive. (And we’re not exactly the obscure minority we’re being cast as, either; 65% of Americans oppose turning over Roe and 53% support, at minimum, civil unions for gays. The numbers creep even higher for protecting such institutions as Social Security, a social safety net, constitutional checks and balances, and basic workers’ rights.)

If Democrats don’t want to represent our interests, they have to realize that they are then, in essence, saying that they don’t represent us, and they shouldn’t bother asking for our money and looking for us to be their foot soldiers.

I don’t know how to solve this problem. I do know, however, that two parties who don’t give a crap about us in a de facto two-party system is one party too many.